Former Rep. Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican who left Congress in 2007 and later spoke in support of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, died Dec. 11. He was 82.

Leach, a moderate former Princeton professor who represented a swath of eastern Iowa, broke with his party in 2002, becoming one of only six House Republicans to vote against a resolution authorizing then-President George W. Bush to launch a military campaign against Iraq. The next year, he became the first Republican to call for a withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq.

A former staffer to then-Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill., Leach was sworn in 1977 and served 15 terms, leaving after he was defeated in 2006 by Democrat Dave Loebsack. In Congress, he served as the chairman of what was then the Committee on Banking and Financial Services for six years before being term-limited out of that position.

He had hoped to take the gavel for the International Relations Committee — he was second in GOP seniority when he gave up the Banking chairmanship — but the position went instead to Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, who was No. 3 in seniority and had served six years as Judiciary chairman and who was less inclined to disagree with party leadership.

Leach was given the chairmanship of International Relations’ Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee.

Two years after his defeat, he endorsed Obama over GOP presidential nominee John McCain in 2008, with a lengthy critique of his own party.

“The party that once emphasized individual rights has gravitated in recent years toward regulating values,” he told the convention. “The party of military responsibility has taken us to war with a country that did not attack us…. And the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts.”

Obama later tapped him to lead the National Endowment for the Humanities. He left the endowment in 2013, going on to join the faculty at the University of Iowa.

In January, Leach joined Loebseck to write an op-ed in The Des Moines Register marking the three-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. The two former political rivals warned of the fragility of democracy. “The endurance of democracy is an issue that supersedes partisan lines, and anyone running to be the commander in chief should embody that value,” the duo wrote. “Donald Trump does not.”