11232008 - News Article - Four degrees to Bob Cantrell - ROBERT CANTRELL

Four degrees to Bob Cantrell
NWI Times
MARK KIESLING
Nov 23, 2008
nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/mark-kiesling/four-degrees-to-bob-cantrell/article_d70ea956-8436-5dc2-b660-971e7333da8b.html
East Chicago's political fixer Bob Cantrell is far too sharp to have thought that his ploy to get his fraud conviction set aside was going to stick to any wall at which he threw it.

His whole argument was that no one at his federal trial "formally" identified him, a technical distinction that he hoped would reverse his 11-count fraud and tax evasion convictions.

For whatever reasons, prosecutors did not "formally" have witnesses identify the fellow at the defense table as Robert J. Cantrell, defendant in federal case number 2:07-CR-44.

But U.S. District Court Judge Rudy Lozano ruled Friday that there was plenty of testimony that the man who was supposed to be Cantrell was the man in court as witness after witness said they knew Cantrell and that he was in the courtroom.

So why go to all the trouble to drag out the sentencing, now set for Feb. 19? After all, Cantrell was convicted on June 6.

Maybe it's a grab at another straw.

Draw the line from Cantrell to former East Chicago Mayor Bob Pastrick, his adversary (nudge, wink) during the 1970s and 1980s when Cantrell was head of that city's Republican Party and Pastrick its Democratic mayor.

The line is short. And it is straight. The two men enjoyed a relationship in which each benefited from the other, if not financially then at least politically.

Draw the line from Pastrick to U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, the Indiana Democrat who was on President-elect Barack Obama's short list for vice president. The same Bayh who in November helped deliver Indiana for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1964.

There's another short, straight line. Pastrick knew Bayh's father, former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, before Evan was born. Pastrick is a member of the Democratic National Committee, was a frequent guest in the Bayh home and vice versa. Evan Bayh was a childhood playmate of Pastrick's boys.

Bayh will recommend a new U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Indiana to Obama, who will make the final selection. And it's better than even money that whomever Bayh anoints, Obama appoints.

And whoever it is will have the power to recommend what sentence Cantrell should face, and the new U.S. attorney could easily be more Cantrell-friendly than predecessor Joe Van Bokkelen.

See the lines? From Cantrell to Pastrick to Bayh to Obama. It's easier than playing "Six Degrees To Kevin Bacon."

Far-fetched? Maybe.

Just like trying to get a judge to believe you weren't at your own trial.