MAINE — Former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank died on Wednesday at his home in Maine at age 86 after a battle with congestive heart failure. Frank had entered hospice care at the residence the previous month.

Frank represented southern Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives for 32 years, chairing the Financial Services Committee during the 2008 financial meltdown and co-authoring the Dodd-Frank Act, which sought to put Wall Street firms under tougher scrutiny. Signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, the measure created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, established the Financial Stability Oversight Council to track systemic risks, eliminated taxpayer-funded bailouts of failing big banks through the Orderly Liquidation Authority, enshrined the Volcker Rule restricting risky or speculative investments with depositor funds, and boosted Federal Reserve oversight of large financial institutions.

"I'm very proud of Dodd-Frank. I think we have been vindicated against our critics from both the left and the right." Frank said.

Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, on March 31, 1940, and raised in a working-class Jewish household, Frank earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1962 and remained there for six years as a government instructor and Ph.D. student. He served as chief of staff to Boston Mayor Kevin White from 1968 to 1971 and as a staff assistant in the office of Representative Michael F. Harrington.

In 1972, Frank won an open seat in the Massachusetts Legislature, where he was re-elected three times and earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. In 1980, he was narrowly elected to represent Massachusetts's 4th Congressional District with just under 52 percent of the vote, and went on to win 15 subsequent re-election bids.

In 1987, during his fourth term, Frank became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay. "If you ask the direct question: 'Are you gay?' the answer is yes. So what?" he said at the time.

In 1989, a news report detailed Frank's relationship with male sex worker Steve Gobie, whom he had provided with housing and jobs beginning in 1985. A House Ethics Committee investigation found that Frank used his influence to clear 33 parking tickets incurred by Gobie and wrote a misleading memo attempting to shorten Gobie's probationary period. The House reprimanded Frank by a 408–18 vote in 1990.

Frank supported the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and the passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. In 2012, he became the first member of Congress to enter into a same-sex marriage, marrying his longtime partner Jim Ready. He did not seek re-election to a 17th term that year and retired from politics in 2013.

"He has been about idealism and pragmatism to get the job done." former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said. "He was a real mentor to so many of us here."

Frank wrote a book titled "The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy," set for publication in September. "It was life-changing, lifesaving for me. I think the key to our having made the enormous progress we made in defeating anti-gay prejudice had to do with us all coming out and people discovering the gap between our reality and the way we were painted," Frank said.