After Hurricane Katrina walloped south Mississippi in 2005, then-Vice President Dick Cheney was among the national leaders who traveled to the area to assess damage, and he was instrumental in helping the state secure federal money for recovery, Republican former Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday.

Cheney died Monday night of complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, his family said. He was 84.

Barbour and Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson are among the Mississippi political figures who say they appreciate the legacy of Cheney, who is widely considered one of the most powerful vice presidents in U.S. history.

Barbour was governor from 2004 to 2012, overlapping with most of the Bush-Cheney terms from 2001 to 2009.

“He wasn’t loud, but he was strong … and he was a very nice man,” said Barbour, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee in the mid-1990s and served on the first Bush-Cheney national campaign committee in 2000.

Cheney has been a polarizing figure in Republican politics. Once a hero to the right, he fell out with the GOP in recent years as he criticized President Donald Trump.

After a heart transplant in 2012, Cheney remained politically active and was a frequent critic of President Barack Obama’s administration. But after initially endorsing Trump in 2016, Cheney had sharp words for the Trump administration and supported his own daughter, Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, as she became a leading “never Trump” Republican. Dick Cheney later published a statement saying he would vote for the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 presidential election.

Cheney spent decades in government and politics, including as White House chief of staff for President Gerald Ford, congressman from Wyoming, secretary of defense and vice president. He was influential in Bush’s tax policies and rolling back environmental protections opposed by big businesses. He was a main architect of Bush’s “War on Terror” and invasion of Iraq after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Thompson, Mississippi’s lone Democrat in Congress, is a former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. As chairman of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Thompson appointed Liz Cheney as vice chair.

“When I met Vice President Cheney, he personally thanked me for that decision and for the integrity with which the committee conducted its work, even at a time when many in his party chose not to participate in the one-year commemoration of January 6th,” Thompson said in a statement Tuesday. “Vice President Cheney’s legacy in shaping America’s national security will be remembered, and I extend my prayers to the Cheney family during this difficult time.”

Thompson said he worked with Cheney during creation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11.

“His leadership and support were invaluable as we brought together 22 federal agencies to form the Department of Homeland Security and strengthen our nation’s security,” Thompson said of Cheney.

Thompson also said Cheney’s death “saddens me deeply.”

Paul Hurst, an attorney who was Barbour’s gubernatorial chief of staff, said Tuesday that Cheney was “a great friend of Mississippi, and I was honored to work with him a few times.”

“He supported all of our recovery efforts after Katrina and advocated for others in DC to do the same,” Hurst said.

Barbour first worked for Ronald Reagan’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1976. After Ford fended off a challenge from Reagan at the Republican National Convention, Ford hired Barbour to run his campaign in seven Southern states.

“Cheney was very bright, but he was quiet,” Barbour told Mississippi Today in a call from his Washington office Tuesday. “He wasn’t loud. He spoke in short sentences. He was always very nice to me.

“When he got picked for vice president, I was on the George Bush national campaign committee,” Barbour said. “Cheney had for a while gotten out of politics at that time.”

Barbour said he remembers a letter he wrote after Bush and Cheney were elected that could have gotten him into hot water with the vice president.

“I wrote Cheney a letter about how we always said the Democrats, the Clinton administration, had kowtowed to the environmentalists, and that he and Bush and other Republicans said they were not going to do that any more,” Barbour said. “… I said, ‘Mr. Vice President, you have said this, and we want to see you back it up. Environmentalists are pushing bad policy that doesn’t do any good and just makes everything more expensive, so we are watching to see how you do.’”

A reporter “somehow got hold of the letter,” Barbour said, and he faced questions from his lobbying client, Southern Company, and apparently Cheney didn’t initially find the letter amusing.

“But Cheney thought the letter was funny after a while,” Barbour said. “He and I stayed friends long after that, and I have always had great admiration for him.”

Barbour said Bush, Cheney, their administration and Congress were a great help to Mississippi after Katrina.

“We were blessed to have President Bush the younger, Dick Cheney, (U.S. Sen.) Thad Cochran at that time,” Barbour said. “We had a very supportive Congress, and Cheney was part of that. They bent over backwards to help Mississippi and other states.”