And then he was indicted for taking bribes from organized crime figures. He defended himself in court, admitting that he took the money, saying it was part of “the most unorthodox sting operation in the history of Ohio politics.” Even though the money was never impounded, Traficant walked. And because the money was never impounded, Traficant’s salary was garnished by the IRS for refusing to pay taxes on it.

In 1984, he was elected to Congress, as a Democrat from the highest concentration of Democrats in the state. His antics in the House made him a godsend for editorial cartoonists and journalists who were looking for an appropriately ridiculous quote. But the substance of his messages was surprisingly apt.

He weighed against foreign steel dumping, seeing what it had done to the U.S. market, and the government who sat idly by and watched it happened. He decried the United States doing business with China – happily – despite its human rights violations. And he weighed in against the virtual omnipotence of the federal government, particularly the IRS, which had become his Inspector Javert.

The great irony is that Traficant – a man who would wear bell-bottoms into the 2000s – was ahead of his time to be appreciated. With his concerns about taxation and government overreach, combined with his chip-on-the-shoulder populism and entreaties to buy American, he was the proto-Tea Partier.

But Traficant couldn’t walk a second time. He was found guilty on 10 counts, and still refused to resign his seat in Congress, forcing the House to expel him by a vote of 420-1 (the one dissent? Gary Condit). That November, he still received nearly 20 percent of the vote for Congress, from a federal prison cell where he would ultimately serve seven years.

There are probably people who will write Traficant’s name in at the polls in November as a protest. The people of Youngstown watched Jimmy Carter refuse to guarantee loans for an employee purchase of the Sheet and Tube mills – and then rescue Chrysler from bankruptcy. Traficant just demonstrated what everyone in the Mahoning Valley learned the hard way: There’s no point playing by the rules in a rigged game.

There are people who believe that Traficant’s only crime was getting caught, and he was targeted for refusing to play ball. And when you watched Traficant get stripped of his committee assignments for voting for Republican Dennis Hastert for Speaker of the House, and then see Joe Lieberman welcomed into the Democratic caucus with open arms after speaking at the Republican National Convention, it’s not hard to believe.

While I was a newspaper reporter in suburban Pittsburgh, I met John Murtha, then the dean of the state’s Congressional delegation. Because he’s a politician, he steered the conversation toward me, asking where I was from. I told him Youngstown. “Traficant,” he said. “He’s a whore.” He then proceeded to tell me about Traficant’s entreaties to join the House Ways and Means Committee, which were blocked by the chairman, Dan Rostenkowski.

Murtha was an unindicted co-conspirator in Abscam. Rostenkowski, like Traficant, ended up doing federal time. Jimbo was a crook, but he wasn’t their kind of a crook.

He was our kind of crook – and that’s something nobody outside of the Mahoning Valley really understood.