A Democrat, he became a powerful voice on national intelligence in the Senate before leaving to become president of the University of Oklahoma.
David L. Boren, a popular reform-minded Democrat who led Oklahoma as its governor and then represented it for three terms in the United States Senate, where he was an influential voice on national intelligence, died on Thursday at his home in Norman, Okla. He was 83.
The death was confirmed by Clark Brewster, his lawyer.
The son of an Oklahoma congressman, Mr. Boren rose from academic brilliance as a Rhodes scholar into a steppingstone political career as a state legislator (1967-75), the nation’s youngest governor (1975-79) and a member of the Senate (1979-94), where he became the longest serving chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence. His Sooner eminence grew further when he served as president of the University of Oklahoma.
To dramatize his campaign for the governorship in 1974, a 5,000-strong “Boren Broomstick Brigade” converged on the Capitol in Oklahoma City as Mr. Boren vowed to “sweep out the old guard” with reforms. In his single term, he cut state income taxes, abolished inheritance taxes for spouses, pushed through anti-crime laws, improved a troubled prison system, funded public education for gifted students, and invoked so-called sunset laws to eliminate some 100 state agencies, commissions and boards.
A reliably red state today, Oklahoma was long a Democratic stronghold until recent decades.
Rising to national prominence in the Senate, Mr. Boren became a centrist, allying himself on many issues with President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, both Republicans. He championed tax cuts and campaign finance reforms to limit the influence of wealthy donors. As chairman of the Intelligence Committee, from 1987 to 1993, he helped shape foreign policy and was a mentor to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
Mr. Boren was also instrumental in building bipartisan support for sanctions against South Africa over its apartheid racial laws, and in 1990 he helped secure the release of Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader, after 27 years in prison. Mr. Mandela went on to serve as the president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and he and Mr. Boren became friends.