Mitchell Van Yahres, known during his 24 years in the House of Delegates as a dauntless advocate for the powerless and poor, died Friday. He was 81.
Van Yahres died around 6 p.m. of unexpected complications from cancer surgery on Tuesday, said Del. David Toscano. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, in 2005 won the 57th District seat that Van Yahres had held until his retirement.
Van Yahres, an arborist who moved to Charlottesville from New York in 1949 to build his family's tree business, was the city's mayor in the 1970s.
While in that office, Van Yahres ordered a shanty relocated from a slum into a trendy shopping center to show the affluent the conditions of the poor.
His idealism continued after he reached the legislature in 1982, where his progressive measures often died, even when his fellow Democrats were in control.
He continued even after Republicans won a House majority in 1999, an election that cost Van Yahres his chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee.
In the last of his 12 terms, he offered bills to add a 60 cent-per-pack tax to cigarettes to fund Medicaid and to repeal a state ban on civil unions between same sex partners. Neither ever reached the House floor.
Perhaps his most symbolic legislation came in 2004. House Joint Resolution 112 urged General Assembly members to go on a "welfare diet." It called on lawmakers to limit their foot budget for two weeks to "the same amount of money that is allotted in food stamps to a single individual." It died on a 14-0 Rules Committee vote.