Act of 1965. In September 1971, he resigned his seat in the House to accept appointment to the Senate, temporarily filling the vacancy caused by the death of Winston L. Prouty. Stafford won the January 1972 special election to serve out the rest of Prouty's term and won reelection twice including the 1976 election against outgoing Governor Thomas P. Salmon. He served for slightly over 17 years, until his retirement in 1989. He chaired the Committee on Environment and Public Works from 1981 to 1987. While in Congress, he helped pass a law, now known as the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, or Stafford Act, to coordinate federal natural disaster assistance. Stafford's support of weapons sales to Nicaraguan contras led to the Winooski 44 protest. As he neared retirement from the Senate, New York Times writer Philip Shabecoff wrote in a profile of Stafford that his tendency to keep his own counsel meant he "may give the worst interview of any public official in the capital." Stafford commented on his own reputation for maintaining a low profile by saying "I talked more when I was younger." Later life In his later years, Stafford was regarded as the elder statesman of Vermont Republicans. In 1998, Jack McMullen, a recent arrival to Vermont, declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator. As related by Chris Graff, longtime Vermont bureau chief for the Associated Press, McMullen's candidacy sustained an immediate blow when Graff interviewed Stafford about the January 1998 ice storm and other current events. During the discussion, Stafford persistently got McMullen's name wrong, calling him "Mulholland". Graff wrote that he tried to politely correct Stafford, but finally realized that Stafford's intent was to convey his opinion that McMullen was too unknown and too new to Vermont to be a viable candidate. The lede in the resulting story was that Vermont's senior Republican was of the view that McMullen had not lived in the state long enough to represent it in the senate, and Stafford's dismissal of McMullen as "Mulholland or whatever his name is" became a running joke among reporters and political operatives. In the Republican primary, McMullen faced Fred Tuttle, a retired dairy farmer who had starred in a mock documentary film called Man with a Plan, a comedy about a retired farmer who decides to run for Vermont's seat in the United States House