The rise and fall of Bob Mellow [The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa.]

March 18--Bob Mellow was a survivor. As other politicians of his generation retired to enjoy their taxpayer-paid pensions, were sent packing by voters or resigned in disgrace amid corruption charges, he hung on as the state senator for the 22nd Senate District.

For 40 years, Mr. Mellow kept bringing home state money for his district, remained a power in state and local politics, won election after election without opposition. They named buildings, a road, a park after him.

Only in 2010 did he retire. He told everyone he wanted to spend more time with family, but by then the life he knew for so long was coming apart and the wheels of justice were rolling toward him.

On Thursday, federal prosecutors called him a fraud and accused him of cheating taxpayers.

They charged him with a conspiracy to use taxpayer-paid Senate staffers to organize his summer outings and golf tournaments and to do other political work for candidates and causes he supported. Mr. Mellow has agreed to plead guilty and faces up to five years in prison.

"It was not incidental; it was not minor, and it was not trivial," U.S. Attorney Peter J. Smith said of the conspiracy during a news conference.

The exact amount the political work cost taxpayers will be a matter for Senior U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo to decide and will affect Mr. Mellow's sentence, but another question will linger. Mr. Mellow, 69, the Senate Democratic leader for more than 20 years, and Senate president when Democrats controlled the body for 15 months in the early 1990s, seemingly had the good life. Married for decades, he had two daughters he treasured, plenty of friends who showed up for his annual summer outings and golf tournaments, seats on the boards of a bank and the premier local health insurance provider.

"It's an age-old question, young man, and it has baffled scholars and political analysts for years," said Christopher Borick, Ph.D., director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion and a Throop native. "What leads one at the pinnacle of power to cut corners that really, in the end, probably don't benefit them nearly as much as the other things in their career?"

In the beginning

Back in 1970, county Prothonotary Ray Alberigi accompanied a 27-year-old accountant for the county redevelopment authority named Bob Mellow door to door to introduce him to voters. The young guy was running for the state Senate, trying to win back for his party a seat once held by future Gov. Robert P. Casey,

"He was a great-looking, intelligent individual," Mr. Alberigi said.

The candidate had played football at Blakely High School where he graduated in 1960 and earned an associate degree in accounting from Bethel College in Tennesseee.

He undoubtedly had political connections. He got the county Democratic Party's endorsement for the seat, even though Democratic stalwart Charles Volpe thought he had the party's endorsement wrapped up, Mr. Volpe's son, Chuck, said.

During the campaign, Mr. Mellow promised "not to be a political hack who will blindly vote the party line," according to an April 1970 newspaper account. Mr. Mellow won that election, defeating Republican Arthur Piasecki, and when he took office, he acted like a conservative Democrat.

He favored welfare reform and cutting state spending instead of raising taxes. Three years before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, Mr. Mellow spoke out against liberalizing abortion laws and opposed a bill to legalize the procedure. He opposed gun control.

In Senate Democratic Leader Martin Murray, Mr. Mellow had a built-in benefactor. Mr. Murray was from Wilkes-Barre and immediately installed his Northeast Pennsylvania colleague as chairman of a top Senate committee.

Less than six months later, Mr. Mellow took part in a time-honored local political tradition: he hired his father, James J. Mellow Sr., as a secretary in his local office at a salary of $6,371 a year. If the appointment caused a furor, The Scranton Times archives do not note it, but James Mellow resigned the post not long after that.

In his first year in office, Mr. Mellow also called for a state commission to study public school financing, pushed for creation of a state lottery, and backed a bill to give $50 million in state aid to students in private and parochial schools.

He opposed giving state legislators a $3,600 increase in expenses and said he favored reducing the Senate from 50 to 40 members and the House from 203 to 121. And he came out in favor of a 2.3 percent state income tax, the state's first, at a time Pennsylvania's budget was staring at massive deficits as Democratic Gov. Milton J. Shapp took office.

Mr. Mellow was actively involved in overseeing reforms sought by good government groups in the wake of the corruption scandals that tarnished Mr. Shapp's administration. In 1978, Mr. Murray appointed him to the legislative panel charged with developing a state ethics law. The law, often criticized for being too weak, was eventually passed.

Ten years later, during his fifth term in office, Senate Democrats elected Mr. Mellow their leader. Four years after that, with the help of a Republican senator who defected to the Democrats, he became Senate president pro tempore for 15 months.

Over the years, he often expressed interest in running for statewide office -- state treasurer in 1976, auditor general in 1984 and governor in 2002 and 2010 -- but never pulled the trigger on a candidacy.

Instead, he stuck with being a senator, taking credit for helping pass the state's Children's Health Insurance Program, a workers' compensation reform law and the 2006 property tax relief bill proposed by Gov. Ed Rendell.

More than anything, because the Senate Democrats remained in the minority during the rest of his tenure as Democratic leader, he acted as a thorn in the side of Republican

Gov. Tom Ridge and focused on bringing home state money. Bob Mellow was a "go-to guy," the state version of the Republican who made his name locally by "bringing home the bacon" for his congressional district, former U.S. Rep. Joseph M. McDade.

"When we needed some funding for a project, we could always count on him," said Mr. Alberigi, 78, who became a four-term county commissioner.

Mr. Mellow was "an institution," as Dr. Borick put it in a 2009 interview.

"Not only in a local sense but by being a player in Pennsylvania politics for a generation," he said. "When politicians get parks named after them, they've been around a while and established a big connection with their constituents."

For a living politician, Mr. Mellow has a lot of construction named after him. At Lackawanna College, the school's revamped auditorium is known as the Mellow Theater. In Blakely, there's Mellow Park. Marywood University has the Robert J. Mellow Center for Athletics and Wellness. There is Robert Mellow Drive off the Casey Highway in Jessup, Valley View School District's Bob Mellow Sports Complex in Peckville and a wall praising him at the Valley Community Library in Peckville. For many years, an Allied Services building in downtown Scranton was known as the Mellow Building.

All had state money he funneled to them.

In a 2009 interview, Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce President Austin Burke, Mr. Mellow's friend for almost four decades, said the senator was never in a rush to publicly claim credit for a project. In 2005, days before the Scranton mayoral primary election, Gov. Ed Rendell arrived with $4.2 million in state money for the renovation of the former North Scranton Junior-Senior High School. The staged event was designed to help Mayor Chris Doherty's re-election, but the money came through Mr. Mellow.

"I don't think the community recognizes 10 percent of what the senator has been able to accomplish," Mr. Burke said back then.

Decades in office brought power that wasn't always focused on economic development.

Sometimes, it about small-town politics. State offices across the region are full of dozens of people who had Mr. Mellow's help getting a job. They often repaid him by buying tickets to and attending the very summer outings that prosecutors say were organized by on-duty Senate staffers.

In 2003, the Scranton School District planned to renovate its football stadium in a way that would make it attractive enough to host state playoff games and other events. Mr. Mellow offered to come up with $1.8 million for the construction, but asked school district officials to wait until a state budget was passed and he could deliver a ceremonial check personally. When school district officials said they couldn't wait because they wanted the stadium done on time, Mr. Mellow shifted his plan to Valley View School District's football stadium.

Scranton never got any money for the stadium.

"He pulled the funding on us," School Board President Bob Lesh said in 2009.

Nonetheless, Mr. Mellow kept winning re-election.

In 2005, he voted for and defended a massive legislative pay raise that was repealed months later amid a furious public outcry. The controversy did in the Republican leaders of the Senate, but not Mr. Mellow.

In 2006, Mr. Mellow had no opposition on either major party ticket and won despite emailing one taxpayer who challenged his support of the pay raise to "get a life."

Just before that election, Mr. Mellow obtained $35 million for the project that could ensure his legacy will not be seen solely as corruption: The Commonwealth Medical College.

His re-election meant he would be in office even longer than Mr. McDade, but just as voters were sending him back to Harrisburg, Mr. Mellow's personal life was crumbling. His divorce from his longtime wife, Diane, became final just after the 2006 election.

The divorce settlement officially granted him a half share in the company that owned building that housed his Peckville Senate office in January 2007, which he was forced to reveal on a statement of financial interest the following year.

In July 2009, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Times-Tribune picked up on the deal, learning that the Senate paid the company that owned the building, Brad Inc., more than $210,000 in rent over a seven-year period. Mr. Mellow's campaign committee, which also had space in the same building, paid another $47,000 during the same period. Mrs. Mellow told federal agents she knew nothing about the arrangement and her ex-husband controlled it.

In June 2010, FBI and IRS agents raided Mr. Mellow'sArchbald home and the local Senate office. They combed over his life and this week announced they had reached a plea agreement with him.

Mr. Mellow has not spoken publicly since announcing his retirement from the Senate. His lawyers issued a statement Thursday saying he agreed to plead guilty to concentrate on resolving "serious health problems."

These days, he is a regular at morning Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Archbald.

Mr. Burke said their talks lately have focused on sports, politics and Midvalley happenings, not the federal case against his friend or his health problems.

"I have no idea how this whole thing evolved," Mr. Burke said. Perhaps, he said, it "evolved under different times, under different mores."

"It's a sad development," former Scranton Mayor Jim Connors said. "He was such a hero to so many people. It's discouraging because it makes it look like this is what everybody does and this is the way of the world and I don't think it's fair."

Mr. Connors likened Mr. Mellow to another local political icon who pleaded guilty to corruption: Daniel J. Flood, the legendary Luzerne County congressman.

"Well, look, it didn't overshadow Dan Flood," he said. "Dan Flood is still revered for all of the great things he did and I have a feeling Bob Mellow will be, too."

Contact the writer: [email protected]

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