Maurice Hinchey

Who is Maurice Hinchey?

Maurice Dunlea Hinchey, was a U.S. Representative serving from 1993 to 2013. He is a member of the Democratic Party. In 2012 he announced he would retire at the end of his term, ending a long political career.

A New York City native who moved to the Hudson Valley where he attended high school and college, Hinchey had previously represented part of the area in the New York State Assembly since 1974. As chair of that body's Environmental Conservation Committee, he took the lead in bringing environmental issues to the fore, particularly when he held hearings on the problems created by toxic waste disposal in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls. In his later years in Congress he vehemently opposed hydraulic fracturing to exploit the natural gas resources of the Marcellus Shale. Throughout his career he was considered a political progressive for his liberal stands on other issues.