Donald 'Buz' Lukens, Ex-Ohio Lawmaker Derailed by Scandal, Dead at 79

"Buz" Lukens had a thing about timing. He was prescient as an early supporter of the presidential aspirations of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, but he was way off when he launched his own campaign for governor of Ohio in 1970. And he ruined his political comeback and disgraced himself when he was convicted of paying a 16-year-girl for sex in 1989.

Former Rep. Donald E. "Buz" Lukens died of cancer Saturday in a Dallas nursing home. He was 79.

Say this for him -- he was a genuine political character. Charismatic, with "Hollywood looks" as the New York Times put it, Lukens was a conservative wunderkind in the early 1960s, pushing the party to the political right as national chairman of the Young Republicans and embracing conservative leaders such as Goldwater and Rep. John Ashbrook of Ohio. He was elected to Congress in 1966 -- a hawk on the Vietnam war -- but left Capitol Hill to run for governor of Ohio four years later, losing in a GOP primary.

He served in the Ohio State Senate in the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, still a sharp dresser with close-cropped jet black hair. But he but did not have a distinguished legislative record, and came up short in an unsuccessful campaign for state auditor. It seemed as if his moment had passed. Yet he rebounded, winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986, where he remained an enthusiastic supporter of President Reagan and conservative causes, including the Contra insurgency against the the communist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

He was forced to resign from Congress after a report of his sexual dalliance with a 16-year-old in Columbus and a subsequent charge of an inappropriate advance on a Capitol Hill elevator operator. He served time for the Columbus incident and later was convicted of accepting a bribe from two Ohio businessmen.

Lukens was resilient. "I'll be OK," he told a sympathetic colleague on his last day in Congress. He moved from Ohio to Texas and reportedly taught English as a second language and volunteered for the Red Cross. A native of Middletown, Ohio, his one marriage ended in divorce. He was succeeded in his southwestern Ohio district by John Boehner, the current House minority leader.