Flashback 2010: Dan Rostenkowski — The ultimate mover & shaker

    Dan Rostenkowski's name was mentioned at a party Thursday night — bidding a belated farewell to my colleague Mark Brown, who officially retired two years ago, but whose fete was nixed by COVID, and so circled back for some well-deserved cake in the newsroom. It was delicious cake.  Mark was one of the Sun-Times reporters who helped put Rostenkowski in prison — for what I considered a "Lone Trombonist Crime" (the marching band on the field makes a hard right turn; one poor schmuck trombonist keeps going straight). That, plus the anniversary of Rosty's death falling Friday, nudged me to realize I've never shared his obituary here. Let's correct that.

 

 Loyola University
Chicago Digital Special Collections,

     Dan Rostenkowski was the most important congressman ever to represent Chicago, "Mr. Chairman" of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, confidant of presidents, pride of the Polish community and bringer of millions upon millions of dollars in federal pork home to Illinois, until it all came crashing down in a scandal over minor expenses — postage stamps and office chairs — that tarnished his legacy and sent him to prison.
     Mr. Rostenkowski died Wednesday at his summer home in Wisconsin, surrounded by family. He was 82.
     He was never an eloquent speaker, but Mr. Rostenkowski's inside knowledge and useful connections — especially with Mayor Richard J. Daley — eased his rise, first in Springfield, then in Washington, where he was friendly with presidents from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton. He and Lyndon Johnson were particularly close.
     Among his most significant accomplishments were the 1986 rewriting of the tax code, the passing of the 1993 deficit-reduction package and the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
     Some said that, had Mr. Rostenkowski's conviction come six months later, Clinton might have succeeded in reforming health care. Instead, Mr. Rostenkowski pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud in 1996 and was sentenced to 17 months at the Oxford Correctional Facility in Wisconsin.
     Mr. Rostenkowski never apologized for the actions — he called them "technical violations" —that sent him to jail, though doing so might have eased his return. The central debate is whether Mr. Rostenkowski was a victim of changing times, an advocate for Illinois who was too focused on the big picture to worry about trivial expense account rules, or whether his life as a consummate political insider — born to an alderman, weaned on the Cook County Democratic Machine, given the inside track, first in Chicago and then in Washington — finally caught up with him, that times had changed, and he, lulled by power, had arrogantly refused to change with them.
     Daniel Rostenkowski was born Jan. 2, 1928, son of Joseph P. Rostenkowski, the 32nd Ward alderman, in the house built by his grandfather, Piotra Rostenkowskiego, born in Poland in 1868, who came to Chicago as a teenager.

     Like his dad, the boy was called "Rusty" — "Rosty" came later — and accompanied his father to Washington in 1941 to witness FDR's third inauguration.
     His surname lopped to "Rosten," he attended St. John's Military Academy in Wisconsin. The young man considered West Point but instead enlisted in the Army, serving in Korea from 1946 to 1948.
     Big and nimble, he went to the University of Kansas on a basketball scholarship, where he lasted a few weeks. He aspired to baseball and got a tryout with the Philadelphia Athletics farm team in Florida until his father pressed him to return to Chicago, where he worked as an investigator with the corporation counsel's office, got his real estate license, did some public relations for the Teamsters. In May 1951, he married LaVerne Pirkins, whom he met on a blind date.
     But in these jobs, Mr. Rostenkowski was just killing time until the right opportunity came along — his father pointed out a vacant Illinois House seat and urged his son to run. In 1952, after restoring the "-kowski" to the end of his name, he won the House seat. In 1954, he moved up to the Illinois Senate.
     Toward the end of the decade, he eyed Congress. Richard J. Daley would have preferred Mr. Rostenkowski to stay close to home. "Daley wanted to keep him around as another Cook County hack," Jim Merriner wrote in his book, Mr. Chairman. But Mr. Rostenkowski convinced the mayor that he needed a young hand to grow in power in Congress, and Mr. Rostenkowski was elected to the U.S. House in 1958.
     He was easily re-elected 17 times over the next 36 years.
     Throughout the 1960s, Mr. Rostenkowski built his power in the House. In 1967, he became chairman of the Democratic caucus.
    Mr. Rostenkowski played a brief role at the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention that was to have implications on the rest of his career. With police and protesters clashing in the streets of Chicago, the convention floor dissolved into chaos. An enraged Lyndon Johnson called the Amphitheater to find out what was going on. Mr. Rostenkowski took the call. LBJ told him to restore order.
     Taking the gavel from House Speaker Carl Albert, Mr. Rostenkowski banged it and called for security to clear the aisles.
     "But for those brief moments at the podium," Merriner wrote, "Rostenkowski may well have become Speaker of the House."

     Instead, Mr. Rostenkowski made an implacable foe of Albert, who felt bullied and spent years trying to thwart his ambitions toward House leadership.
     In the early 1980s, Mr. Rostenkowski had a major role in funding the construction of Chicago's four-building Presidential Towers, a classic political boondoggle that seemed to benefit everybody but the low-income residents it was supposed to house.
     A Sun-Times investigation revealed that Mr. Rostenkowski had provided governmental favors for the complex at a time when his personal finances were being managed by one of the developers.
     But it was an investigation into petty expenses, also led by the Sun-Times, that blew into scandal in the mid-1990s and led to Mr. Rostenkowski's losing his House seat.
     "I was there 36 years," he said in 1996. "They changed the rules 30 times. I can honestly say I was not fully cognizant of the rules and where there were changes. Maybe I was brazen, I ignored it."
     He was accused of chiseling $695,000 from his congressional and campaign funds over two decades. A 17-count indictment included charges of embezzlement, fraud and witness tampering.
     The actual acts that he pleaded guilty to were using government funds to pay for china he gave as gifts to friends and having congressional employees perform personal errands for himself and his family.
     After his indictment, he lost his bid for re-election in 1994.
     Inmate No. 25338-016 spent his nearly 13 months at his prison job, recording the numbers on boiler gauges, and slept on the bottom bunk in a four-man room.
     The last two months of his sentence were served in a Salvation Army halfway house on South Ashland Avenue.
     After his confinement  during which he shed 50 pounds — he formed Danross Associates, a consulting firm, and advised corporate clients, including the hotel workers union. He gave speeches and appeared on TV as a commentator.
     Many supporters saw the conviction as a farce. Sun-Times political columnist Steve Neal called it "wrong and vengeful."
     "Dan Rostenkowski unfortunately ended his career with legal problems," Sen. Paul Simon noted in his memoirs, "but his contributions as chairman of Ways and Means helped the nation immensely. He had a quality not in abundance, backbone."
     Mr. Rostenkowski was issued a full pardon by President Clinton in 2000.
     Survivors include his wife, LaVerne, and daughters Dawn, Kristie and Gayle — who all shortened their names to Rosten. One daughter, Stacy Rosten-McDarrah, died of a kidney ailment in 2007.
     Visitation will be from 1 to 9 p.m. Monday at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, 1255 N. Noble. Services will be at the church at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Burial will follow in St. Adalbert Cemetery in Niles.

      —Originally published Aug. 10, 2010