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Traficant Gets Beamed Out
By Mike Bayham
August 15, 2002

Several years ago, I was walking into a friend of mine's apartment when I noticed that he had C-SPAN on his television. The congressman who had been speaking had just rapped up his talk when an unusual looking individual with wild hair (later to be revealed as a wig) and wilder suit took the floor. At that point my friend sat up, grinned, and remarked that his favorite congressman, Jim Traficant, was coming up to speak.

In fact more than a few politicos that watch the congressional channel admit that two of the best things on the network are British Parliament and Jim Traficant.

Not being an avid watcher of C-SPAN (seriously) I had no idea who the gentleman from Ohio was nor did I know of his reputation. At first I thought he was some granola hippie legislator by his appearance and was surprised to see the Democrat go on a tirade about President Bill Clinton and his negligence concerning illegal immigration and the security of the country's border with Mexico. At the conclusion of his speech he ended with his trademark line "Beam me up!"

I was surprised to see that politicians of his flamboyance were still present on the national scene. Even more shocking was that he was not from Louisiana, the home of the most controversial politicians outside of Minnesota. When I got home, I decided to check out his official website for his congressional office. When I logged on to it, I was not disappointed in the least.

Most congressmen's sites are fairly generic and vanilla with "glamour shot" photos of the congressmen in some kind of melodramatic pose or a group shot with their family. On Traficant's site there was a moving picture of the congressman standing there waving a 2x4. But the animated photograph is no more, along with the Congressman who was expelled from Congress in late July. In what had to be the most noteworthy dissent in recent political history, only soon to be ex-Congressman Gary Condit voted against expulsion while 420 of his colleagues voted to give Traficant the boot.

Things got even worse for Traficant when he was sentenced only a few days later to eight years in prison after his April conviction for a variety of charges, including bribery and tax evasion. Traficant suffered another setback when he was forced to forsake his toupee upon arriving in jail.

One of the most interesting of the charges was the allegation that he forced his employees to kickback part of their salary to him. If the manner Traficant carried himself in Congress was not something out of the Bayou State, the allegation certainly was.

Back in the days of Huey and Earl Long there was something known as the "deducts." Huey Long formulated a way to finance his campaign war chest by having state employees that received their job through the Kingfish's good graces deduct a portion of their wages and donate it to the Long machine. The container used to collect the money was known as the "deduct box," which is also the name of a Louisiana political website that serves as a political news and gossip Internet site.

But unlike Huey or Earl Long, Traficant was not able to escape eventual conviction in a court of law for a practice that became passe in the sixties when political corruption was becoming less palatable by the public. The "de ducts", to use the vernacular of Earl Long, were no longer able to fly.

To Traficant's "credit" he was able to escape justice for almost two decades and managed to be promoted to higher office in the process. The former Ohio congressman began his political career when he was elected sheriff in 1980. Three years later Traficant was investigated and tried on Federal charges of bribery and tax evasion, though he was acquitted.

A year later he was able to parlay the kind of publicity that would end most political careers into a term in a much different kind of Federal house his prosecutors had hoped to send him: Congress. Eventually Traficant's dealings with mobsters came back up when he was forced to pay taxes on bribes paid to him by gangsters.

In 2000 the Federal government investigated Traficant again though he was reelected despite the unfavorable attention. It should be noted that despite his Democratic registration, he was by no means a favored member of his own party. Democratic leaders did their best to defeat him in the primaries including running the brother of an actress who plays the captain in the Star Trek television show Voyager. The ploy failed and the voters in his district "beamed" Traficant back up to Congress for another term.

After being reelected in 2000, Democrat Traficant showed his displeasure with his own party by voting to reelect Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert instead of casting his vote for fellow Democrat Dick Gephardt. House Minority Leader Gephardt, in a rare move regarding the ethics of a member of his own party, repaid that favor by asking from the floor of the House for the embattled Traficant to resign his seat.

The law was not the only thing to catch up with Traficant this year in which his own congressional district was dismantled by the Ohio legislature putting another squeeze on Traficant's tenure in Congress. Despite being a Congressman without a congressional district, Traficant filed to run for Congress, though as an Independent even if his new name consists of prison numbers (his official name is now 113904).

Once again, Traficant's popularity seems to defy conventional wisdom (or human reason) in which he has polled well in the new district. Unfortunately for Traficant even if he wins reelection he will not be able to claim his seat (even in prison) because the Constitution mandates that congressmen must reside in the state in which they are elected. Traficant's request to be incarcerated in Ohio was denied and he is now a resident in protest in the Keystone State.

In all fairness to the ex-Congressman, most members of Congress (including the ones not in prison) are not really residents of their own state if you measure residency by where they spend the majority of their time, where they send their kids to school, or where they have the nicer house.

In any case, it appears that even a political Houdini such as Traficant will not be able to slip his way out of this one with a Federal judge, the Constitution, and the Ohio legislature having teamed up against him. Ethics and "good government" may have emerged victorious and Traficant is now in prison, though I think C-SPAN's ratings will endure the greatest hit of all from Traficant's "beaming" out of Congress.