Love him or hate him, Jimbo remains Jimbo

May 2, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press News Analysis

BOARDMAN

A hero of the tea party movement is seated in a corner booth at his favorite diner, his famous toupee sticking out above the wooden slats like a warning. That mop of hair, possibly more famous than the man himself, tells the regulars bent over coffee mugs all they need to know: Jimbo has entered the building.

He has arrived, as usual, with an entourage. But ever since he was released from prison last fall, Jim Traficant’s entourage is more befitting of an elderly grandparent being eased to and from doctor’s appointments than the blustering politician he once was. His assistants are old friends whose loyalty he has counted on over the years, as he tumbled from the House floor on Capitol Hill to the sports room at a prison in Minnesota, where he bided his time cheering on the Los Angeles Lakers with his buddies and painting watercolor landscapes of barns beneath full-mooned skies.

Anxiously, the entourage watches as their leader doodles all over a piece of loose-leaf paper, then folds the paper twice and abruptly shoves it under a place mat. Traficant is liable to storm out of here at any moment. Patience is not one of his strong suits.

This is the man who once compared the U.S. Congress to a bunch of prostitutes — then publicly apologized to prostitutes for comparing them to the U.S. Congress. This is the man who, while defending himself against a House ethics committee, told lawmakers that he would like to “kick them in the crotch.” This is a man who, according to his friends, claims that his ancestors are from Transylvania, making him a distant relation of Dracula’s.

Above all, though, this is the man who will decide, come Monday, whether he yet again will make a run for Congress, this time as a felon who was convicted of racketeering and bribery and as an independent proudly bearing the mantle of the Tea Party. The notion of a convicted felon running for Congress might seem preposterous. But here, in the gloomy ruins of shuttered steel mills, the name Traficant reminds people of better times.

And weird times.

The man has a gift, if you can call it that, for one-liners. And on this morning he fires off more than a few, if only to prove that after seven years of confinement, Jimbo’s still Jimbo.

“I don’t know how many years it’s gonna take,” he says, “but America will implode similar to the Soviet Union. Stevie Wonder could see it coming.”

During the 17 years that Traficant represented Northeast Ohio, his penchant for outlandish outfits irked his fellow lawmakers almost as much as the speeches he gave about everything from cow manure to Janet Reno. For this trip to the diner, he has selected a white turtleneck, his trademark yellow-tinted glasses and a pair of baggy sweat pants held up by a brown leather belt.

He talks for nearly two hours in stream-of-consciousness fashion, hardly stopping to take a breath, repeatedly referring to himself in the third person.

In his own mind, at least, Jim Traficant is still on trial.

“They had no physical evidence against Traficant,” he says, leaning over the table. “Seven people said they bribed him. They had no crime against Traficant. They taped every phone call he ever made, probably. Since 1983.”

He ticks off names and dates and federal dollars down to the decimal point, boasting about his accomplishments. But mostly, he rails against the people and institutions he’s mad at: the IRS, primarily, but also the federal government in general, Democrats, Republicans, the Department of Energy, Communists, illegal immigrants, Socialists, the tax code, the Justice Department, the media and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

All of which makes him a natural fit for the Tea Party, which was just getting started when Traficant emerged from prison to a “Jimbo”-themed welcome, replete with Elvis impersonators.

So why run? Traficant may have been sidelined for a while, but he still knows how to play the game. Besides, he already ran for Congress from prison once — and managed to win nearly 20 percent of the vote.

Oh, and he’s got a platform, too.

SDLqRepeal the 16th Amendment, abolish the Internal Revenue Service,” he declares. “No more corporation tax, no more Social Security, no more Medicare taxes. No more audits. No more deadlines. No more tax courts. And everybody pays.”