Buz Lukens

Buz Lukens

Donald Edgar "Buz" Lukens (born February 11, 1931 in Harveysburg , Warren County , Ohio , † May 22, 2010 in Dallas , Texas ) was an American politician .

biography

After attending high school in Waynesville , he studied at Ohio State University and graduated in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts . He then joined the US Air Force , from which he retired as captain in 1960 . He then became an advisor to the Republican Party faction on the House Committee on Rules of the US House of Representatives .

A member of the Republican Party, Lukens was a supporter of Senator Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and quickly became a major conservative activist for his party in southwest Ohio.

His actual political career began in 1966 with the first election to the House of Representatives of the United States , where he represented the 24th congressional electoral district of Ohio from 1967 to 1971 . In 1970 he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in the election for governor of Ohio . He later became a member of the Ohio Senate , serving from 1971 to 1987. In 1986 he was re-elected to the US House of Representatives and re-elected as a Republican candidate in 1988; this time he represented the 8th congressional electoral district of Ohio.

When it became known that he had sex with a 16-year-old Columbus girl for a fee in 1989 , a court sentenced him to 30 days ' imprisonment and a fine of $ 500 . This scandal led him to lose his party's primaries for nomination for the 1990 congressional elections to John Boehner , who later became the House Minority Leader of the Republicans in the US House of Representatives. On October 24, 1990, he resigned just under three months before the end of his regular election period in order to avoid an investigation by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct into allegations of sexual abuse .

Lukens was then also accused of being involved in a scandal over the now defunct House Bank , which gave Congressmen an unlimited fee-free overdraft . He was later charged with corruption in accepting a $ 15,000 bribe from two Cincinnati businesswomen in 1996 and sentenced by a court to 30 months' imprisonment. He denied the charge of buying votes.

Web links

• Buz Lukens in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• CHRON NATIONAL NEWS: "Disgraced former Ohio congressman dies at 79" (May 23, 2010)