Bob Beckel, who ran Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign and co-hosted more than 700 episodes of “The Five,” has died.
He was 73.
Columnist Cal Thomas broke the news Monday afternoon, calling Beckel his “friend and spiritual brother.”
“We did so many things together and I hope we modeled what two people of different political persuasions can be like when they love one another,” Thomas, who co-authored the column and book “Common Ground” with Beckel, wrote on Facebook.
Fox News host Sean Hannity also confirmed the news on his own show Monday night, honoring a “dear friend of this channel and a dear friend personally.”
Beckel, a New York native, served in the Carter administration before being hired as the campaign manager for Mondale’s unsuccessful run against Ronald Reagan. He went on to form his own lobbying firm in the mid-’80s.
At the turn of the century, he joined Fox News as a political analyst and helped launched “The Five” in 2011, playing the lone liberal on the panel that included Kimberly Guilfoyle, Eric Bolling, Dana Perino, Greg Gutfeld and Andrea Tantaros.
In June 2015, Beckel was fired, months after checking himself into rehab for a prescription drug addiction following back surgery. At the time, Fox News executive vice president of programming Bill Shine said he wouldn’t “hold ‘The Five’ hostage to one man’s personal issues.”
That same year, Beckel published his best-selling book, “I Should Be Dead: My Life Surviving Politics, TV, and Addiction.”
After a brief stint at CNN, Beckel returned to Fox News in January 2017, but was promptly fired four months later after “making an insensitive remark to an African-American employee,” according to the network.
Beckel is survived by his two children.
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