Tom Pendergast, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Tom Pendergast

American politician

Date of Birth: 22-Jul-1873

Place of Birth: St. Joseph, Missouri, United States

Date of Death: 26-Jan-1945

Profession: businessperson, politician

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Cancer

Thomas Joseph Pendergast (July 22, 1872 – January 26, 1945), also known as T.J.
Pendergast, was an American political boss who controlled Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri from 1925 to 1939.
Though only briefly holding elected office as an alderman himself, Pendergast, in his capacity as Chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Party, was able to use his large network of family and friends to help elect politicians (through voter fraud in some cases) and hand out government contracts and patronage jobs.
He became wealthy in the process, although his addiction to gambling, especially horse racing, later led to a large accumulation of personal debts.
In 1939, he was convicted of income tax evasion and served 15 months in a Federal prison.
The Pendergast organization helped launch the political career of Harry S.
Truman, a fact that caused Truman's enemies to dub him "The Senator from Pendergast."Two of his biographers have summed up Pendergast's uniqueness: Pendergast may bear comparison to various big-city bosses, but his open alliance with hardened criminals, his cynical subversion of the democratic process, his monarchistic style of living, his increasingly insatiable gambling habit, his grasping for a business empire, and his promotion of Kansas City as a wide-open town with every kind of vice imaginable, combined with his professed compassion for the poor and very real role as city builder, made him bigger than life, difficult to characterize.