Final in a three-part series

FINDLAY — After he was first elected, Mike Oxley hardly had time to find his way around Washington before a crisis erupted back home — Marathon Oil Co. was the target of a hostile takeover and hundreds of local jobs were on the line.

Congressman Oxley, raised on Main Street a few blocks from Marathon's headquarters, immediately swung into action to stop rival Mobil Oil from taking over the hometown company.

The young congressman fired off letters to federal regulators, called for congressional hearings, and headed back home to a Findlay covered in red ribbons for a rally to “declare war on Mobil.”

He told the 5,000 at the rally that he had convinced every member of Ohio's congressional delegation to sign a letter of protest to the Federal Trade Commission and was sponsoring a bill to block Mobil's bid.

“Marathon is people, Little League coaches, Scoutmasters, the United Way,” Mr. Oxley told the cheering crowd.

In then end, U.S. Steel Corp. bought Marathon and left it in Findlay to prosper.

Twenty years later, Clyde and Donna Mason had no such champion.

There were no rallies, no red ribbons, no national attention when Intersil Corp. announced it was closing its Findlay plant, laying off 500 workers, and moving south. The lifelong Republicans wrote to the man they'd always supported asking for help.

This time, Congressman Oxley didn't come back home.

He wrote them a five-paragraph letter saying it was “unfortunate” the plant was closing but noted “it is a privately owned business that maintains the right to move its plant.”

For Mr. Mason, reading the letter was “like I had been kicked in the gut.”

The 64-year-old man had worked at the plant for 38 years, his wife for 47 years. Now they and many of their friends were out of work. And Mr. Oxley wasn't willing to help.

Over the past decade, Washington-based consumer groups and government-reform advocates have increasingly accused Mr. Oxley of selling-out to corporate interests.

They've criticized him for taking free trips to Europe and millions of dollars in campaign contributions from industries he's supposed to be policing. They say he's a hypocrite when he claims he's a watchdog of corporate greed.

But back home, he's still known by many simply as Mike, the kid who grew up in the story and a half wood-frame house at 1228 South Main St. with the wide front porch.

He graduated from Findlay High School, Miami University, and Ohio State University law school before joining his father's law firm and making a good life for himself, first in the Ohio House and then in Congress.

“He's well thought of in the whole district,” said Findlay Mayor John Stozich, a fellow Republican. “He's always been a class person, nice-dressing person.”

Mr. Oxley has countered out-of-town critics by labeling them as liberals or part of a biased media with its own agenda. In his district few voters seem to mind the criticism; he's garnered 60 percent of the vote each time he's up for re-election.

Democrats haven't always fielded a candidate to oppose him, and there are local Democratic leaders who won't say a bad thing about him.

“We deal frequently with each other,” Lima Mayor David Berger said. “He has certainly been the leading advocate for what was our largest industry at one point, the Lima Army Tank Plant.”

The Lima mayor praises Mr. Oxley even though employment at the tank plant has fallen from 3,800 to as low as 400 during the congressman's tenure in Washington, and Lima has lost a total of 8,000 good-paying factory jobs as other industries closed up shop.

Lydia Reid, the mayor of Mansfield, is even more direct.

“I like him,” she said. “When the city needs something he's been very responsive. He arranged for the Naval Reserve quonset hut to be torn down. Mike has been very instrumental in acquiring new buildings for the airport.”

As the top elected Democrat in the biggest city in his district, has she considered running against him?

“I think it's really, really hard to unseat an incumbent who has a war chest like Mike has,” she said. “He's got a lot of money and it's hard to find somebody that's as well known and has that kind of money to run.”

Plus, she said, “I wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds me, would I?”

Early experiences put Oxley on path toward Capitol Hill

There was always talk of politics — Republican Party politics — in the Oxley family.

Michael Oxley's maternal grandfather, a Nickel Plate Railroad ticket-seller, grew up a Democrat but switched to the Republican Party to help him get elected to Findlay City Council.

But his paternal grandfather, George Oxley, was attracted to the philosophy of the Republican Party.

The lifelong Fremont steelworker often complained to his grandson about how his union dues were used to help Democrats he didn't support. In time, he became a leader in Sandusky County's Republican Party.

His father, Garver, became a Findlay lawyer and Republican prosecutor of Hancock County. His mother, Maxine, stayed at home with Mike and his younger brother, Tom.

Mike Oxley remembers his childhood, playing baseball and basketball with neighbors, as “idyllic.”

His first job was at the Findlay Country Club as a caddie “carrying doubles for $5 with a tip, and I didn't always get a tip.”

He would start planning for a new career at age 12, after his father turned to politics and won the prosecutor's job.

Jack Betts, a family friend and the congressman from Findlay, invited the Oxley family to Washington where Garver was sworn in as prosecutor at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The day included a trip to the Capitol and lunch.

“We went to lunch in the members' dining room and I got to meet some of the members,” Mr. Oxley recalled. “Jack took me around and some of the members signed the menu for me. I've still got that somewhere.”

He decided then that he wanted to become a politician.

A tall, clean-cut kid, with a crew cut and a broad smile, he won his first election in 1961 as a junior class representative to the student council at Findlay High School.

But his biggest disappointment, and embarrassment to this day, was getting cut from the varsity basketball squad his senior year. “I just wasn't good enough, which was pretty sad because our team stunk,” he said with a laugh.

After graduation in 1962 he headed to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was known as “Mr. Conservative.” He majored in political science, graduated in 1966, and headed to Ohio State University and its law school.

“It was just like politics. It was something I knew I was going to do all along,” Mr. Oxley said.

While in Columbus he worked in the offices of then-Lt. Gov. John Brown and then-Ohio Attorney General Bill Saxbe, helping Mr. Saxbe's successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.

In his final year of law school, Mr. Oxley was unsure what to do after graduating. After a friend told him the FBI was recruiting on campus, Mr. Oxley talked to an agent and signed up.

He became a crime-fighter, posted first to Boston where he investigated truck hijackings and organized crime and then to New York where he was assigned to the bank-robbery squad.

“We averaged 13 bank robberies a day in the summer of '71. It was unbelievable,” he said.

While in New York, he met Patricia Ann Pluguez, an attractive United Airlines stewardess. A fellow agent had set them up on a blind date.

By 1972, they were married and heading back to Findlay. A job had opened up that was made for Mike Oxley — the Findlay representative to the Ohio House.

Legislative districts had been moved around because of reapportionment, and local Republicans wanted him to come home and run. He did and won. The next month, his wife gave birth to their son Michael Chadd.

He served in the Ohio General Assembly until 1981, when Findlay Congressman Tennyson Guyer died in office, and Mr. Oxley saw his chance to realize his childhood dream.

With his family's GOP contacts and his hometown charm, he waged a well-financed campaign that lasted only two months. He won a six-way primary race and took on fellow Ohio House Rep. Dale Locker, a Democrat from Anna, Ohio, in a special general election.

In the general election, Mr. Oxley raised more than three times the amount of money as Mr. Locker, $271,780 to $78,140. But he won by only 341 votes out of 83,633 cast. He was just 37.

That victory would launch a 22-year career in the U.S. House of Representatives that would remake the Findlay lawyer and state politician into one of America's most important legislators and, as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, one of its most powerful.

In two decades, he has risen from a minority member of the Ohio House's Judiciary Committee to the head of a congressional committee that oversees the U.S. Treasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. It also keeps an eye on the country's stock markets, mutual fund industry, banks, and insurance companies.

His busy Washington schedule is why Congressman Oxley's critics back home say he doesn't have time for them — especially those who have lost their jobs while he's been moving up the political ladder in Washington.

John Sausser, a longtime Findlay Democratic city councilman turned independent, has watched Mr. Oxley change over the years.

“Oxley's too busy shining his own career to really put the effort into Findlay, and the Republicans know it. They just don't want to admit it,” Mr. Sausser said.

Lawmaker refused to meet with desperate steelworkers

They had been locked out of their steelworker jobs for nearly three years. They had lost their health insurance. Some lost their homes. And they were desperate to get the attention of their congressman — if only to hear their side of the story.

They thought they had their chance one summer day in 2002: Mike Oxley had come back to speak to the Mansfield Rotary Club.

After Rotary members barred the steelworkers from attending the speech, a handful of locked-out AK Steel Co. union representatives pulled out signs protesting the lockout and waited outside to confront their congressman. John Puskar remembers keeping one eye on the door and another on Mr. Oxley's car.

“We started seeing the people come out and we recognized his driver, who got in his car and takes off and goes around the block by himself. Everybody comes out but Oxley,” Mr. Puskar recalled. “Then we see the car coming around the other side of the building. The driver opens the door and Oxley jumps in and they take off.

“We were literally running down the street after him yelling and screaming that we wanted to talk to him.”

Mr. Oxley didn't stop.

It wasn't the first time he had snubbed them.

After the company locked out the 620 employees at the mill during contract talks in September, 1999, United Steelworkers Local 169 members repeatedly wrote and called their congressman to help them end the lockout. The workers wanted to get back on the job while negotiating a new contract.

The workers' union asked all area members of Congress to intercede. Eight Democrats and two Republicans — including Steven LaTourette and Robert Ney — wrote to AK Steel in March, 2000. The 10 congressmen urged company leaders to end a lockout “that is damaging the Mansfield community and the Ohio economy.”

Mr. Oxley refused to sign the letter.

In May, 2002 — nearly three years into the lockout — a group of guys at the union hall thought they might have better luck if they could talk to Mr. Oxley in person. They drove all day to Washington, strode down the marble halls of the Rayburn congressional office building, and walked into their congressman's office.

He was in, but an aide said he wasn't available. Local 169 President Randy Reeder told an aide that he and the steelworkers would wait.

“He would not come out to visit with us,” Mr. Reeder recalled. “The staff person told us that he said, ‘It's a labor dispute and I don't get involved.' I tried to explain to his aide it's happening in his district, that makes him involved whether he wants to be or not.”

After pleading their case and being told the congressman wouldn't talk with them, the steelworkers got a room at a cheap hotel and returned to Mansfield the next day.

They never heard back from Mr. Oxley's office.

By the time the company began recalling locked-out workers in January, hundreds of workers had gone more than three years without health insurance. Several steelworkers died during the lockout, according to union leaders.

Some couldn't afford to continue to take medication they needed. One locked-out worker died when a car he was trying to repair fell on him. Fellow workers said he couldn't afford to have the car fixed.

Steelworker Tim Risinger is still bitter.

“If Oxley had done what he should have done, he wouldn't have let this company do what they did. But he didn't even try.

“We begged, but he wouldn't do a thing.”

To Congressman Oxley, the lockout at AK Steel was none of his business.

“I told them I'm not a labor negotiator, never have been, never will be. This is a private sector dispute and has to be solved in the private sector,” Mr. Oxley said. “They wanted me basically to solve their problem for them. I didn't get elected to be a labor negotiator.”

But he didn't have a problem taking AK Steel's money.

A year after the lockout began, his political action committee accepted a $1,000 check from the company. And a few months after he dodged the steelworkers in Mansfield, he accepted $1,000 from the company for his re-election fund.

Could Mr. Oxley have picked up the phone and called the company, trying to resolve the dispute? “That is not my role. I'm not a labor negotiator,” he repeated.

Other members of Congress saw their roles differently.

Three Democrats — Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, Sherrod Brown of Lorain, and Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland — not only signed the letter asking the steel company to end the lockout, they joined the workers on the picket lines and at their community rallies.

“They were in a terrible situation not of their making,” said Congressman Brown, who was born and raised in Mansfield. “I've never seen a community rally behind a group like Mansfield did. You'd see yard signs everywhere. The community support and the political support sustained them.”

None of the three Democrats received campaign contributions from the company.

The thought of the three Democrats protesting in his district still angers the congressman.

“If I'd have done that in their districts they would have been pissed off,” Mr. Oxley said recently. “They had no business doing that in my district. That's all I'm going to say about it.”

Mr. Reeder said it was not only the Democratic representatives' business, it was particularly Mr. Oxley's business. The union official said he was left to conclude that Congressman Oxley is more concerned about the interests of the CEOs he spends time with in Washington, travels with, and who pay for his campaigns.

“Mike Oxley doesn't care about alienating the working people because he knows that's not where his support is. His support is all the business people.”

Oxley trumpets his efforts to boost district's economy

To Congressman Oxley, union activists are focusing on a few bumps in the local economy rather than looking at the overall financial health of the 4th District.

“There's a lot of successes that we've had too,” he said. “Look at Honda and how successful it's been. We've got 30 Honda suppliers in my 11 counties. We've got the assembly plant in East Liberty. We just got a new Ford engine announced for the Lima plant.”

The economy is coming back, he said, and unemployment in Hancock County is consistently low — below the Ohio average. A new industrial-business park just north of Findlay is pumping even more jobs into the local economy.

He's quick to say that “it's the private sector that creates jobs, not the public sector.” He takes credit for helping President Bush and the Republican majority in Congress pass legislation that he says has created a climate for job growth. The President's income and dividend tax cuts, he said, are two of the biggest reasons why things are looking up.

Congressman Oxley said he's done other things for 4th Congressional District, specifically the widening and reconstruction of U.S. 30 through much of his district, which is mainly a limited-access highway now.

And, Mr. Oxley said, he's flown across the world seeking jobs for his congressional district, including a trip to South Korea last year to try to land a Hyundai facility for Wapakoneta.

“I flew over, was there 24 hours, and flew back,” he said. “It was a damn long flight, and I went there because the governor wanted me to go, and the locals from ‘Wapa' wanted me to go. We ended up not getting it, but I felt an obligation to do that.”

Business interests foot bill for couple to travel abroad

Congressman Oxley is no stranger to long flights to Asia.

In the 1980s he made almost yearly trips to Taiwan paid for by business groups such as the Sino-American Cultural & Economic Association — including his 1986 trip to play in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Golf Tournament.

Taking advantage of congressional rules that allow him to accept free trips from lobbyists and corporations, Mr. Oxley traveled regularly across the country, often to play in corporate-sponsored charity golf tournaments.

But in the 1990s, Congressman Oxley's travel destination changed — he discovered Europe.

House travel disclosure records show that since 1996 Mr. Oxley, with his wife, Pat, at his side, have flown off to Europe each year for extended stays, almost always traveling first class — and always paid for by business interests.

They've visited Rome, Prague, Scotland, London, Madrid, and Paris. And Berlin, Frankfurt, Florence, and Stockholm. There were the trips to Venice, Brussels, and Vienna.

The Oxleys visited the United Kingdom five times, Italy four, and Germany twice.

And when they travel, they haven't had to worry about cheap airfare and bargain hotels. Transportation expenses for their 1998 trip to Madrid cost $9,150, with their lodging tallying $2,100 for a seven-day stay. Travel expenses for their five-day trip to Paris the year before cost $9,262. The $11,995 they spent on transportation costs for their eight-day trip to Brussels and London in 1998 topped them all.

For years, Mr. Oxley has been a regular at the Trans-Atlantic Conference sponsored annually by the Ripon Educational Fund. They've been held in Rome, Prague, Madrid, and Stockholm.

In August, the conference was held in London, and joining Mr. Oxley were 19 other congressmen — and an estimated 100 lobbyists, according to the Washington Post. While the lobbyists paid for their trips, the congressmen did not. The Ripon fund has been financed by many Fortune 500 companies including Prudential, Ameritech, Microsoft, Bell South, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, and Waste Management.

Congressman Oxley said there's nothing wrong with allowing corporations and others to pay for his and his wife's trips to European cities. He said they are not going as tourists but so that he can participate in fact-finding tours or educational seminars that help him become a better legislator.

His wife comes along for reasons of protocol. “She has a role to play at receptions and dinners, plus I don't like to travel by myself,” he said.

Mr. Oxley points to his trip earlier this year to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “This is one of the premiere meeting places for people who are interested in the global economy, world trade, international issues. Where else do you get a chance to be on the same panel with international CEOs, finance ministers from various countries, or ambassadors, and exchange ideas?”

And, he said, the folks in Findlay would rather have corporations pay for his travel. “My taxpayers at home don't seem to mind as long as they don't have to pay for it. And they think I'm doing my job the way it's supposed to be done.”

Congressman appears safe in solid Republican district

Mr. Oxley's critics in Washington say voters keep sending him back to Congress every two years because he keeps feeding them a steady diet of conservative one-liners, as well as a few road projects every year.

“If I polled the people in his district, they'd basically say, ‘Leave my guns alone, don't burn the flag, don't support gay marriage, have a strong military defense, and don't tax me more than you have to,' ” said Mike Casey, a former Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill and an Ohio native. “But do they really want their money going to subsidize oil companies? And do they really support the Wal-Martization of rural lands in his district? I bet they don't.”

Now a vice president of public affairs for the Environmental Working Group, Mr. Casey said Congressman Oxley is virtually unbeatable.

“He is not the first member of Congress who stayed in place while being something other than what people think he is,” Mr. Casey said. “In the last district configuration he had the fourth-most Republican district in the country, so he's safe.”

Mr. Oxley couldn't disagree more with the charge that he doesn't represent the people of his district.

“I provide good conservative representation to the folks. I'm accessible and I vote the right way,” he said. “At the end of the day I think it's how you represent your constituency and cast the vote that you think the majority of folks in your district would vote. That's the ultimate responsibility for a representative.”

Local businessmen share laughs with congressman

He talks to the crowd like an old friend. He's not a congressman here, not at the Findlay Country Club where he got his first job and played more golf than he can remember.

Forget the legislation, the lobbyists, and the trips to Europe and Asia. He's back home. He's just Mike.

“Congratulation to the Trojans on their win last night. It's always nice to beat the Spartans,” he says, warming up the businessmen, reminding them that they competed in the gym before they competed in the boardroom.

Then he really works the room with a joke about a common enemy — newspapers.

It goes something like this:

The world ends, but newspapers somehow get out one last edition with the same big headline — WORLD ENDS — but they all have different accompanying headlines:

New York Times — Women, Minorities Suffer Most

Wall Street Journal — Dow Plunges to Zero

USA Today — Final, Final Sports Scores See Section C, Page 21

Findlay Courier — Commissioners Put Sales Tax on Hold

Washington Post — Unnamed Sources Blame Bush, GOP

Toledo Blade — Oxley Involved Somehow, See Evil Editorial

The crowd roars. He has them in his hands.

These are his people. And he is their guy.

It's not the first time he's bashed the media. For years, he has been the focus of critical stories about his fund-raising and free trips in papers ranging from the Times to the Courier.

The congressman has often said that newspapers have a “liberal” agenda, and worse. He once accused one of the owners of The Blade, Allan Block, of slanting a negative story about his free trips after a dispute between the pair over proposed legislation that would have affected the Blade's sister company, Buckeye Cablevision. Mr. Block called the accusation a “damnable lie.”

But the businessmen at the Findlay chamber of commerce have long since made up their minds on who's right.

That day, after sharing a good laugh with their congressman, they gave him an award to hang with the others on his office walls — the Spirit of Enterprise Award from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in recognition of his “pro-business voting record.”

They have rewarded him many times, election after election, with their votes and their checks.

Lack of action disillusions displaced Findlay workers

Betty Carman lives a few miles away in a small, modest home near Findlay High School. She wonders how she's going to pay her mounting medical bills.

Her leg hurts often, and the small woman uses a cane to keep up with her 2-year-old grandson, Jordan, and navigate around piles of toys. She has a lot more time to baby-sit now that the Intersil factory she worked at for 34 years closed, moving production to Florida.

The 55-year-old woman also has a lot more time to worry about how she's going to pay her bills and find health insurance.

She's never been one of Mr. Oxley's people, she said, because she's a Democrat, a union official, and was a working woman.

When plant managers announced in March, 2001, that Intersil was closing its Findlay plant, which made integrated electrical circuit boards on silicon wafers, Mrs. Carman said she didn't bother trying to contact Congressman Oxley.

It would be a waste of time, she said, after seeing how he had treated the Mansfield steelworkers.

“We didn't have any faith in him with the reputation he has,” she said.

Mrs. Carman said several Republican workers at the plant wrote to Mr. Oxley asking him for help, but all they got back were letters saying he couldn't do anything.

Mr. Oxley insisted his office responded to every letter and phone call and said he couldn't do more.

“To somehow have the government force an inefficient plant to stay open in the long term would destroy the economy, not only the business of that particular company but it would have a negative effect on other companies in that area as well,” he said.

But former plant manager Jim Baney said Intersil was a highly productive and efficient operation right up until its closing last December.

He said the plant had a good group of employees who had been there an average of 27 years.

“It wasn't the performance,” he said. “It was just amazing what these people produced even when they knew the plant was going to close.”

Clyde Mason knew how hard they worked. The lifelong Republican and his wife had spent their careers at Intersil, working 85 years in the plant between them.

After Mr. Oxley started his congressional career helping to save Marathon Oil, his unwillingness to help keep Intersil open has some in Findlay shaking their heads. But Mr. Mason said he knows why.

“Once you get away for that long you lose the feel for what's going on in your backyard,” he said.

First Published January 13, 2004, 2:01 p.m.