Michael Myers (politician)

In December 1970 Michael Joseph Sullivan, his cousin who later served as an election judge while incarcerated, killed a construction worker during a union dispute and it was revealed in 1974 by The Philadelphia Inquirer that Myers was in possession of the gun while lobbying against Philadelphia's gun registration law.[2][3] In August 1975 the state house voted 176 to 1 in favor of removing Representative Leonard Sweeney after he was sentenced to three years for his involvement in a phony accident organization with Myers as the only nay.[4]

In 1975 the state legislature was voting on an appropriations bill to allocate $23 million for Philadelphia's United States Bicentennial celebrations, but was defeated on October 15. The bill was brought up for another vote by Myers who was told by Appropriations Committee Chairman Stephen Wojdak to send it back to the Appropriations Committee, but Myers stated that the bill had enough support to pass and put it up for a vote. The bill was defeated with 107 to 88 voting to reject it.[5]

On July 2, 1976, he was given the Democratic nomination to run in the special election to fill the first congressional district seat following William A. Barrett's death.[1] In 1979 Representative Ronald M. Mottl proposed a constitutional amendment that would ban forced busing and Myers supported the amendment.[6][7]

In 1979 he got into a fight with a security guard and a 19-year-old female cashier in an elevator leading from the rooftop lounge of a Quality Inn motel in Arlington, Virginia, punching and kicking them. Myers became combative after they told him to turn down the music at a party he was having in the motel, shouting, "I'm a congressman: we don't have to be quiet." He was subsequently charged with assault and battery,[8] and eventually pleaded no contest to a charge of disorderly conduct three months later. He received a six-month suspended sentence.[9][10]

Myers was involved in the Abscam scandal in 1980. Myers was videotaped accepting a bribe of USD$50,000 from undercover FBI agents on August 22, 1979.[11] On that tape, Myers is recorded saying that "money talks in this business and bullshit walks."[12] Myers was expelled from the House of Representatives on October 2, 1980, by a vote of 376 to 30, becoming the first member of the House to be expelled since 1861. Myers was convicted of bribery and conspiracy and sentenced to three years in prison in 1981.[13]

Myers was defeated by Thomas M. Foglietta in the 1980 election.