James Traficant, ex-Ohio congressman convicted of corruption, dies

James A. Traficant Jr., an iconoclastic nine-term Ohio populist in the U.S. House of Representatives who was convicted on corruption charges in 2002, died yesterday at a hospital in Youngstown, Ohio. He was 73.

A family spokeswoman confirmed his death. The former congressman was injured in a tractor accident on his farm near Greenford, Ohio, on Tuesday. A former aide said he apparently had a heart attack while driving the tractor, which overturned inside a building and left Traficant trapped underneath.

A maverick Democrat who found his own path politically and seemingly in everything else, Traficant was one of the most deliberately outrageous members of Congress in history. Glib and voluble, he was known for wearing cowboy boots, skinny ties and out-of-date polyester suits and for a bouffant mound of hair that seemed to defy gravity.

Before he served in Congress, Traficant was elected sheriff of Mahoning County in 1980. In 1983, he went on trial for corruption. Federal prosecutors had tapes of Traficant admitting that he accepted more than $100,000 in bribes from organized crime figures.

Although he had no legal training, Traficant acted as his own attorney. He said he had collected the bribes as part of sting operation he was conducting in order to trap gangsters in the act. Traficant was acquitted.

A year later, in 1984, he was elected to Congress. He became known for his rambling, sometimes crude rhetoric during short speeches on the House floor. Many Washington insiders regarded Traficant as an uncouth scoundrel, but he remained popular in his home district was easily re-elected eight times.

In 2002, Traficant was indicted on 10 felony counts of racketeering, bribery and fraud. Federal prosecutors charged that he required several of his congressional aides to pay him monthly kickbacks of as much as $2,500 for the privilege of being on the government payroll. After a two-month trial in Cleveland, in which Traficant argued in his own defense, he was convicted of all 10 charges.

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On July 24, 2002, Traficant became only the fifth member of the House, and the second since the Civil War, to be expelled from Congress. The vote was 420-1.