Mark Kiesling column: Bobby Cantrell, the man behind the indictment
NWI Times
Mar 22, 2007
nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/mark-kiesling/mark-kiesling-column-bobby-cantrell-the-man-behind-the-indictment/article_81b2ab68-d51f-5ab8-ab92-fc2128be90b2.html
The Dutchman has pulled up a big fish this time, maybe the biggest he's grabbed in his six years as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Indiana.
Bobby Cantrell has never held public elective office, but his indictment Wednesday on 11 federal felonies is going to rattle more cages than if U.S. Attorney Joe Van Bokkelen had indicted the mayors of every city in Lake County.
Who is this guy, the man newspapers invariably refer to in reporter shorthand as a "political fixer" or a "political operative?" Why is he so significant, this man who has never once gone before the voters, who has gone out of his way to avoid the spotlight and who now faces what could be a life sentence in prison?
Everything important about Robert Cantrell is in one single place, and that is between his left ear and his right ear.
You've heard about the guy who "knows where the bodies are buried?" Well, he's your undertaker.
For years, he led the East Chicago Republican precinct organization, keeping it a puppet whose strings were pulled by former Mayor Robert Pastrick, then chief of the county's Democratic Party whose influence extended to Indianapolis and Washington.
East Chicago was the place Democratic pols went to be baptized. If Pastrick was the priest, Cantrell was the altar boy.
He is an intelligent man whose mind likely holds the key to unraveling just about everything done above and below the table in Lake County. He has taken credit -- and been given credit -- for either up front or behind-the-scenes campaigns that have put County Clerk Tom Philpot, County Treasurer John Petalas and Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott Jr. into office.
Some shy away once Cantrell has done his work. McDermott's team members have done their best to distance their candidate from Cantrell, who contributed time and money to the campaign and whose son John was McDermott's former law partner and is still tied to the city.
Others stand by their man. Just last week, Philpot acknowledged his friendship with Cantrell. "Bob Cantrell is a friend of mine," he said. "But that does not mean I support everyone he supports or that he supports everyone I support."
John Cantrell is also a contract attorney with the clerk's office.
Bob's kids have done well. John, Julie and Jen are all lawyers. Julie, who was a tough prosecutor in Lake County for years, has been a Lake Superior Court Judge since 1996 and won re-election as a Democrat.
In November 2003, Bob Cantrell quit his longtime association with the Republican Party and came out as a Democrat. He also began teaching a class at Purdue University Calumet in Hammond, aptly titled Politics 101.
As teacher of American Government and Politics, his course description says he lectures on "a study of the nature of democratic government, the U.S. Constitution, federalism, civil rights, political dynamics, the presidency, Congress and the judiciary."
I've found Bob Cantrell to be a personable fellow, and I imagine his class could teach students a whole lot more than a dry textbook. Say what you will about the man, he is no ivory tower egghead. He's got his boots on the ground on the political battlefield.
He's been a fighter all his life. Maybe it's some cosmic irony that the week East Chicago basketball players compete for their first state championship since 1971, Cantrell is indicted.
After all, he was a member of that 1960 East Chicago Washington state championship team and the 1960 winner of the state's Arthur L. Trester Award for Mental Attitude, which rewards "scholarship, leadership and athletic ability in basketball."
He's been a leader, more recently a scholar, and I hear he can still hit the inside of a hoop. Now, he faces his greatest challenge.
There have been others, past and present, like him. Men who preferred to work behind the scenes, much as Cardinal Richelieu preferred to be the power behind the throne of Louis XIII of France, for whom he served as prime minister.
Men like Brad Bodney and Vince Kirrin, neither of whom held elective office but who directed political strategy from behind the curtain. Tom Cappas has worked the same way in East Chicago as a close adviser to Pastrick.
But none of those men were ever indicted. And many (yours truly included) suspected Cantrell never would be, either.
The body of the charges are found elsewhere in The Times. But it appears as though last week's guilty plea by one of Cantrell's employers set the stage for Wednesday's drama.
Nancy Fromm, owner of Addiction and Family Care in Hammond, admitted to hiding income and underreporting business profits. Cantrell was a consultant for Fromm and was the fixer who got her business into some courts in Lake County, including his daughter's.
"We've never had an ethical violation," Fromm told me last week. "But I sure screwed up the money."
Fromm obviously knew which closet Cantrell kept his skeletons in. Now, the feds are going to want to know from Cantrell whose skeletons he can produce.
That rattling you hear isn't the skeletons. It's the teeth of untold local politicians.
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