The LuLac Edition #3995, January 30th, 2019

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This is a tad late but I wanted to share this with you regarding the exit of 12th District Congressman Tom Marino. Marino’s sudden exit was met with both surprise and contempt. Plus Marino’s vague explanations have done little to have people give him a fair shot. Or even a sendoff. Here’s what Times Shamrock had to say about his tenure and by extension his legacy.

MARINO HELPED SPUR DISUNITY

Rep. Tom Marino’s sudden announcement Thursday that he will resign from Congress, after just winning his fifth term, heralds the close of a political career that began and will end in controversy.
Marino, 66, a Lycoming County Republican, defeated incumbent Democrat Chris Carney amid the tea party surge of 2010, in what was then the heavily Republican 10th Congress.
He fought off a controversy that year over his service and resignation as U.S. attorney, during which he allowed himself to be named as a reference in a casino license application by Dunmore businessmen Louis DeNaples, who had a felony conviction on his record. Marino resigned amid an internal review of that issue and went to work for DeNaples.
In Congress, Marino was part of an extreme right contingent that was ground zero for much of the political polarization that has characterized the capital over the past eight years. He was among the earliest endorsers of Donald Trump and scored an impressive political achievement, as co-chairman of the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania, when Trump narrowly won here in 2016 — a crucial victory that served the president’s majority in the Electoral College.
That stature earned him Trump’s nomination as director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, the “drug czar.” But Marino withdrew after “60 Minutes” and The Washington Post revealed that he aggressively had championed a law that precluded federal agencies from aggressively investigating prescription opioid shipments to mostly rural areas.
Marino was a divisive figure. The reconfigured, sprawling and even more Republican 12th District will be better served by choosing a more moderate successor in a special election.