There may have been an unusual number of celebrity deaths in 2016, but 2017 saw the departure of no shortage of notables. As we do each year, Politico Magazine invited friends, colleagues, scholars and observers to remember dozens of figures who died over the past year after having led lives that shaped American and global politics in all kinds of ways—from television screens and comedy clubs to the pages of newspapers and magazines to the halls of government.

Some were revolutionaries: Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens, a French spy who helped tip the scales in World War II, while proving that women could do intelligence work, too; Dick Gregory, who helped bring African-American comedy into the mainstream and fought for civil rights along the way; or Edith Windsor, the plaintiff who pushed for marriage equality. Some—like Pete Domenici, John B. Anderson and Zbigniew Brzezinski—hearken back to an earlier, less partisan era in American politics, while others—think Lyndon Johnson’s Senate whisperer Bobby Baker or baseball player-turned-conservative Senator Jim Bunning—remind us that politics has always been a combat sport.

Most died late in their lives, though some—San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh—faced unexpected deaths. Others left at moments that seemed almost cosmic. There was Roger Ailes, who died less than a year after resigning from Fox News over charges of sexual harassment, and Christine Keeler, the woman at the center of Britain’s most famous political sex scandal, whose death came right as U.S. members of Congress were stepping down over sex and sexual harassment scandals of their own. (Not to mention that the man who distributed a British TV drama about Keeler’s affair in the United States was none other than Harvey Weinstein.) And then there was Wayne Barrett, the longtime Village Voice muckraker who made his name in part by investigating an up-and-coming New York real estate mogul almost four decades ago. Barrett died on January 19, the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated as U.S. president.

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John B. Anderson, the great independent hope, by Jeff Greenfield

Bobby Baker, the ‘101st senator’, by Josh Zeitz

Jimmy Breslin, the tabloid bard, by Brian McDonald

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the professor-strategist, by Charles Gati

Jim Bunning, the baseball-playing senator, by Nathaniel Rakich

Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens, the glass ceiling-breaking spy, by Liza Mundy

Pete Domenici, the senator of a bygone era, by Alice Rivlin

Dick Gregory, the revolutionary of African-American comedy, by Mel Watkins

Nat Hentoff, the free-thinking quick-change artist of the Village Voice, by Jack Shafer

Christine Keeler, the Swinging Sixties’ icon of political sex scandals, by Hinda Mandell

Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor who wished for too much, by John Kornblum

Ed Lee, the low-key mayor who saw San Francisco go wild, by Scott Lucas

Liu Xiaobo, China’s poet-dissident, by Suzanne Nossel

Charles Manson, the murderer who killed the Summer of Love, by David Felton

Norma McCorvey, the woman who became ‘Roe,’ then regretted it, by Joshua Prager

Mary Tyler Moore, the actress who rethought gender in the workplace, by Joanna Weiss

S.I. Newhouse, the mogul who gave magazines their gloss, by Thomas Maier

Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian strongman America loved to hate, by Peter Eisner

Kate O’Beirne, conservative journalism’s quick-witted den mother, by Mona Charen

René Préval, the unassuming president who wanted to save Haiti, by Amy Wilentz

Raymond Sackler, the philanthropist who helped spawn the opioid crisis, by Sam Quinones

Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s unrelenting despot, by Laura Kasinof

Bob Silvers, New York’s presiding man of letters, by Tim Noah

Liz Smith, the grande dame of dish, by Joan Juliet Buck

Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s champion of the art of the possible, by Emma Sky

Edith Windsor, the smiling face of marriage equality, by E.J. Graff

From the Politico Magazine archives:

“The Roger Ailes I Knew,” by Larry McCarthy

“Wayne Barrett: The Muckraker Who Tormented Trump,” by Michael Kruse

“The Politics of Being Chuck Berry,” by David Cohen

“When Ruth Bader Ginsburg Thanked Hugh Hefner,” by Carrie Pitzulo

Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/28/why-they-mattered-2017-obituaries-216193