Marvin Mandel

Joseph Louis Kosojet, a retired IRS auditor who served on the team that investigated former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and former Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel, died of kidney failure Saturday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson. The Timonium resident was 90. Born to Czech immigrants in the family's Washington Street home in Baltimore, Mr. Kosojet had seven older sisters. He attended St. Wenceslaus Roman Catholic School and enjoyed working as a water boy for his brother-in-law, Samuel "Joe Dundee" Lazzara, a world welterweight boxing champion.

Forty-one years ago, Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel pulled off a series of staggering triumphs that The Sun compared to winning the Triple Crown: Maryland's first gun-control law; a unique, state-run auto insurance agency; and a higher gasoline tax to support Baltimore's first rapid rail line. He achieved this in the face of ferocious opposition from the National Rifle Association and the insurance and trucking industries. It took Mr. Mandel's enormous persuasive skills - including arm-twisting and deal-making - to win those monumental battles.

1970: Marvin Mandel is elected governor1970: 3.9 million live in Maryland1971: William Donald Schaefer is elected mayor

Generations of Maryland politicians celebrated Tuesday former Gov. Marvin Mandel 's recent 90th birthday at a dinner in College Park that featured countless age jokes and heartfelt tributes, as well as a handful of awkward moments and surprise reunions. Mandel, a conservative Democrat who has maintained friendships with elected officials on both sides of the aisle, attracted such notable guests as Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele and Rep. Steny H. Hoyer , the House majority leader.

THE talk about state troopers and gubernatorial trysts in the life of Bill Clinton sets bells ringing for Marylanders with long memories. We quote from Bradford Jacobs' book, "Thimbleriggers," as he chronicled Marvin Mandel's famous romance with Jeanne Dorsey during his days as speaker of the House and governor of Maryland:"Immediate reports were elementary, credible. A pedestrian had been killed, the governor injured somewhat in an accident on the road leading from Southern Maryland. A state trooper was driving the governor, but he seemed not to blame.

When The Code is more important than The Game, something is wrong with The Game.Tramp freighters that want to unload illegal immigrants without being noticed, these days, shun the barren coast and head straight for New York.If his dumping of Lani Guinier shows how Bill treats a real friend, you don't want to be an appointee he doesn't know well.In Guatemala, every boy can grow up to be president -- for a day.The portrait of Marvin Mandel has been commissioned by his employer Bruce Bereano as a public service for the grateful people of Maryland.

Gary S. Mandel, son of former Gov. Marvin Mandel, has filed for personal bankruptcy.The younger Mandel, an Owings Mills resident who works for the Janet & Strausberg law firm in Pikesville, filed for a Chapter 13 under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code on Monday.He refused to comment on the action.Gary Mandel only last year was reinstated to the Maryland Bar following his 1986 disbarment. He was convicted in 1985 of four federal charges of forging prescriptions to buy Dilaudid, a pain-killer to which he had become addicted while undergoing treatment for a back injury.

A portrait of Marvin Mandel was placed in the Governor's Reception Room of the State House last week, 16 years after he was convicted on federal charges of mail fraud and racketeering and seven years after a judge vacated the conviction.The public hanging was appropriate. The state's stated policy in this matter is that the Governor's Reception Room should display the portraits of as many ex-governors as there is proper space -- in reverse chronological order. Each time a governor leaves office, his or her official portrait is supposed to be added, and the portrait of the governor last in this reverse chronology is removed -- to storage or to a less prestigious room.

Although Frances Glendening is no longer an official presence in Annapolis, the former first lady will soon pose for an oil portrait that may have a permanent home in Government House. The portraits of Gov. Parris N. Glendening and his former wife will go ahead as planned, according to Government House Foundation, the group charged with raising private funds to commission the portraits and carrying out improvements to the official residence. The group would not say which state artist has been selected or how much money has been raised.

John Helm Pratt, a federal judge who handled cases that affected school desegregation in Maryland and elsewhere, as well as the first trial of former Gov. Marvin Mandel on corruption charges, died Friday of lung cancer at his home in Chevy Chase. He was 84.Judge Pratt was appointed to the U.S. District Court in 1968 for the District of Columbia and oversaw a number of significant cases during his 27 years on the court.In 1976, he declared a mistrial in the first political corruption trial of Marvin Mandel after learning that jurors had been exposed to publicity about the case.

Bruce A. Mills, a retired Internal Revenue Service agent who was part of a team that investigated Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and Gov. Marvin Mandel, died Sunday of complications after surgery at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He was 74. Mr. Mills was born in Linton, Ind., and moved to Dundalk in 1937, when his father took a job as a steel worker at Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point plant.

Gov. Martin O'Malley sat in the audience last week as the portrait of his once and perhaps future adversary, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., was unveiled. Some have said these two young lions of Maryland politics are antagonistic twins destined for more rounds of political combat. However, their wives, Kendel Ehrlich and Katie Curran O'Malley - as if signaling some kind of sartorial truce - came to the event in essentially the same dress. The emcee, Edward T. Norris, is a convicted felon and talk-show host who, before his conviction, had been head of the Baltimore police for Mr. O'Malley and then superintendent of the state police for Mr. Ehrlich.

James Joseph Doyle Jr., a retired lobbyist and attorney who was once one of the most well-known figures in Annapolis, died of pneumonia complications Thursday at Sinai Hospital. The Pasadena resident was 81. Among his many clients were area newspapers for which he was an advocate for open public meetings and access to public records. Born in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton, he attended St. Dominic's Parochial School and was a 1944 Polytechnic Institute graduate. During World War II, he enlisted in the Army's Air Corps and served in the occupation of Germany.

Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. seems to be everywhere. He and his wife, Kendel, take calls on a weekly radio show. He's exhorting Marylanders to oppose his successor's tax and slots plan - an "insulting, phony piece of junk," he says. He has written a newspaper op-ed piece chastising the new administration. He's talking to college students at Towson University and fills in later this week behind the counter of an Annapolis-area coffee shop. What, exactly, is Bob Ehrlich up to? When he left office 10 months ago, defeated convincingly by Democrat Martin O'Malley, Ehrlich opened a Maryland office for a powerhouse North Carolina law firm.

Mandel's conviction remains an injustice When I served in the House of Delegates - from 1955 to 1959 - Marvin Mandel was chairman of the city legislative delegation. He demonstrated leadership, a keen legal mind and fairness to Republicans as well as Democrats. As governor, Mr. Mandel reorganized state government, which was long overdue, and was widely respected as one of our best governors. In 1975, he was indicted in federal court based on charges that he had personally benefited from the financial success of his close associates at some racetracks as a result of laws he helped enact ("Mandel trial revisited," Oct. 13)

For an afternoon, it was the summer of '77. Jimmy Carter was president. Gas was 62 cents a gallon. "You Light Up My Life" topped the pop charts and Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel and five co-defendants were on trial for an elaborate bribery scheme. Memories of the Mandel trial may have faded in the public consciousness, but yesterday in a packed moot courtroom in downtown Baltimore, they were crystal clear again - thanks to members of Baltimore's Federal Bar Association and the University of Maryland School of Law who assembled many of the still-prominent (and alive)

TOWSON -- A county jury found a former Owings Mills dentist negligent for giving his former lover nitrous oxide for recreational use but stopped short of awarding damages.After deliberating for less than two hours, jurors in the courtroom of Circuit Judge Dana M. Levitz found that Dr. Jules M. Sidle's negligent administration of the gas to Ellen S. Franklin did not cause her injury.Franklin claimed the gas -- an anesthetic -- caused brain damage that led to memory loss.A one-mile stretch of Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore will be closed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. today for a neighborhood festival.

IN THE FIRST flush of a clamorous evening, at the heart of this crowd filling the back room at Mac's Bar on Thursday night on Eastern Avenue in Essex, Shirley Rukowski, 83 years old, sits herself down next to William Donald Schaefer and commences to talk politics. "About this governor's race," she says. "Oh, my," says Schaefer. "Oh, my, yes," says Rukowski, with the full wisdom that comes from 70 years in the trenches of local politics. "What I want to know is, can I write in Marvin Mandel for governor?"

Thirty years after the indictment of Maryland's sitting governor, the lead prosecutor and defense attorney in the trials of former Gov. Marvin Mandel still vehemently disagree. "The one thing that was missing was a crime," Arnold M. Weiner, Mandel's lead defense attorney, said yesterday of the prosecution. He called Mandel's prison time for a conviction later overturned on appeal "a terrible injustice." Barnet D. Skolnik, who spearheaded the case for the government, scoffed at the characterization, saying a "monstrously complex fraud was committed" by a political-machine politician elected twice to the governorship.

Joseph Louis Kosojet, a retired IRS auditor who served on the team that investigated former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and former Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel, died of kidney failure Saturday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson. The Timonium resident was 90. Born to Czech immigrants in the family's Washington Street home in Baltimore, Mr. Kosojet had seven older sisters. He attended St. Wenceslaus Roman Catholic School and enjoyed working as a water boy for his brother-in-law, Samuel "Joe Dundee" Lazzara, a world welterweight boxing champion.