Ex-Dem chairman led colorful life, career

Hanni had suffered a stroke in 2007 and a heart attack in April.

STAFF REPORT

COITSVILLE — Arrangements are pending at Rossi Santucci Funeral Home, Boardman, for Atty. Don L. Hanni Jr.,82, who died Wednesday morning at home. He was 82.

Hanni’s son, Keith, said his father had been ill since suffering a stroke in October 2007, but had improved somewhat before having a heart attack in early April.

Hanni was born Aug. 25, 1925, the son of Don L. Sr. and Josephine Amato Hanni, and grew up on a section of Youngstown’s East Side known in those days as “Little Italy.”

According to an account of Hanni’s life, written by his son Mark, Hanni and a couple of his friends lied about their ages and enlisted in the Army in 1941 at age 17.

Hanni was among the Allied Forces who landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

When he returned home, the East High School graduate worked his way through Youngstown College as a retail grocery salesman for the Tamarkin Company. He graduated in 1949 with a bachelor’s degree in social studies and history, and began law school that year. He taught at Springfield Local High School in 1950, where he was the principal in 1951.

Vindicator files, dating back to 1951 when he won election as president of the Young GOP Club, are chock full of details about his exploits, triumphs, political battles, sharp legal mind and quick — sometimes off-color — wit.

He passed the bar in August 1953 and was named an assistant “police prosecutor” a few months later, a job from which he was fired in February 1956.

He won election as a Youngstown Municipal Court judge in 1959. He lost his bid for a seat on the Mahoning County Common Pleas Court bench in 1962.

In 1965, Atty. Joseph Donofrio notified the board of elections that he would oppose Hanni in the race for municipal judge in the fall.

The board rejected Donofrio’s petitions, and Hanni denied he had anything to do with that. Hanni then officially protested against his candidacy.

After a hearing, Hanni was alone in his race for municipal judge.

Then, the 7th District Court of Appeals ordered the elections board to put Donofrio on the ballot. He ended up beating Hanni 25,965 to 20,672.

In 1969, he filed a petition to run for mayor of Youngstown. The incumbent mayor, Anthony B. Flask, was renominated. He lost a race for Democratic committeeman in 1974.

Hanni’s legacy as a Democratic Party chairman began in 1978, and he immediately began to wield his power.

He told an aide to President Carter at a White House luncheon that year that the administration should immediately find ways to improve employment in the Mahoning Valley if it wanted to hold the confidence of district voters.

Hanni was chosen for a four-year term on the county board of elections in 1980 and unanimously renominated by local Democrats to that board in 1984.

He was re-elected as chairman of the Democratic Party in June 1980, and in 1981 he was designated chairman of the county elections board.

In January 1982, he was toasted by nearly 1,000 people at the Maronite Center and roasted by a dozen of them, including comedian Phyllis Diller.

In March of that year, he was re-elected to a two-year term as chairman of the board of elections.

In 1984, he joined the Ohio Democratic Party Executive Committee.

A staunch supporter and defender of the Mahoning Valley and its businesses, Hanni gave county Commissioners John Palermo and Thomas J. Carney a tongue-lashing in April 1986 because they bought office furniture from a Michigan firm, rather than Youngstown’s own GF Furniture Systems.

Also in that month, Hanni settled for $6,250 a $2 million damage lawsuit he had brought in the fall of 1982 against James A. Traficant Jr., saying then-sheriff Traficant used his police powers to “maliciously interfere’’ with Hanni’s constitutional rights.

Also in April 1986, the frank and plain-talking Hanni told the East Side Kiwanis Club that voter apathy had contributed to the election of mediocre candidates for public office and that the community’s deterioration could be traced to “functional morons” in public office.

In March 1988, Hanni wrote a letter to Gov. Richard Celeste containing a veiled warning of possible political repercussions if the state did not locate a new state prison in Youngstown. A decade later, the new Ohio State Penitentiary was built and opened here.

Hanni’s 16-year reign as Mahoning County Democratic Party chairman ended in May 1994 when he was replaced by Atty. Michael Morley after a bitter contest for the chairmanship.

In the years after his reign as local party chairman ended, Hanni continued to be a much-sought-after criminal defense lawyer, operating from his downtown Youngstown office and zealously defending clients in court in high-profile cases. His activities were limited after he suffered his stroke in 2007.

Hanni also continued his involvement in politics, inviting former President Carter to run again for president in 2000 because other candidates were unsatisfactory, but Carter declined.