Former Iowa congressman Jim Leach dead at 82

IOWA CITY — Former Iowa congressman Jim Leach died on Wednesday at the age of 82. He represented Iowa for 30 years until 2006.

Leach chaired the banking and foreign relations committees and was among six Republicans who voted against a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq in 2003.

In 2008, Leach, a Republican, endorsed Barack Obama and the following year Obama appointed Leach to be chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

After leaving Congress, he worked as a professor at his alma mater Princeton as well as at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He resigned from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2013 to join the faculty at the University of Iowa.