LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Reuters) - Former U.S. Representative Ray Thornton of Arkansas, who helped draft the articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, has died in hospice care in Little Rock at the age of 87, officials said on Thursday. “Ray was an Arkansas gem who passionately served the people of this state for many years. He was a man who had a genuine heart for the people of Arkansas.” said Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.     Thornton, a Democrat, held a variety of elected and appointive positions in Arkansas. He was state attorney general before winning a seat in Congress in 1972.   After failing to win a U.S. Senate race in 1978, Thornton served as president of two state university systems, then ran successfully in 1990 for U.S. Congress in a different district. “He was courageous in the House of Representatives with his votes on the Nixon impeachment,” said Robert Brown, a retired justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court and a former political aide.  “Ray did as much as a public servant in Arkansas as anyone in recent history, and he did it all with a courtliness and sense of humor that seem to be sorely lacking in today’s politics.” Thornton, whose health had been declining for weeks before he died on Wednesday, enraged then-President Bill Clinton, a fellow Arkansan and Democrat, by voting against the president’s 1993 budget bill designed to reverse years of deficits.  Thornton said he was merely honoring a pledge to his constituents to oppose any tax increases, especially a motor fuels tax regarded as onerous.  Thornton’s opposition and pressure from the White House compelled another Democrat, Representative Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky of Pennsylvania, to change her position and support Clinton’s legislation.  Mezvinsky was defeated in the next election. Her son, Marc, later married Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea. Upon leaving Congress a second time, Thornton was elected to the Arkansas Supreme Court, where he helped strike down a state law establishing term limits for members of Congress.  In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Thornton’s finding, ruling that state’s lacked the authority to restrict federal tenures. 
Thornton, Arkansas congressman who figured in Nixon impeachment, dies