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Highlands Today Profiles Tom Rooney

May 26th, 2008 at 02:44pm Christopher Rooney

SEBRING — Tom Rooney is almost stereotypically Irish. He’s tall, red-haired, flush-faced, freckled, and built like a lumberjack. Actually, he’s a former tight end, an Army veteran and an attorney. His favorite rockers, according to his Facebook page, are the Dublin group U2.

Rooney, 37, is running for the 16th congressional district seat currently occupied by Tim Mahoney. He was in Highlands County for the 20th time in the past year, on this occasion to attend a rally for sheriff candidate Ron Grimming.

“I’m the only non-politician in the race,” Rooney pointed out. Both his Republican primary opponents are in office: Gayle Harrell is a state representative; Hal Valeche is a Palm Beach Gardens city councilman.

He’s also the only non-millionaire in the race, although he’s a lawyer, and his wife, Tara, is an attorney and a real estate agent. Rooney said he’s still making payments on his Ford F-150 pickup truck, and Tara is still paying off her student loans.

The couple lives in Tequesta, a village on the Loxahatchee River, less than a mile from Jupiter and the Atlantic Ocean, but Rooney said their house is worth far less than $1 million.

Football Family
But Rooney is from a Pittsburgh family of millionaires. The family patriarch was his grandfather, Art Rooney Jr., the 1933 founder of the Pittsburgh Pirates, later renamed the Steelers.

Roll Call referred to him as “Pittsburgh Steelers heir Tom Rooney.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Rooney grinned. “My wife likes that.”

Forbes.com estimates the football team is worth $900 million. But he won’t inherit that much, Tom Rooney informed.

Art Rooney Jr. had five sons, including Dan, the president of the team, and Pat, the No. 4 son, who’s Tom’s father. But Tom Rooney has four brothers, two sisters, and 35 first cousins. Each, presumably, has a shot at some inheritance.

Rooney’s real connection to the Steelers was that he was a waterboy when he was 15.

When Tom was 14, his father moved to Florida to operate Palm Beach Kennel Club. Racing is the other family passion.

Rooney graduated from the Benjamin School, a private academy in North Palm Beach, and earned a spot as a tight end and deep snapper on the Syracuse Orangemen football team. He described major college football as the most exhausting, draining experience of his life, more than Army boot camp.

When the coach asked the freshmen class how many planned to turn pro, they all raised their hands. Except Rooney, who knew how exceptional pro footballers really are. After one year at Syracuse, Rooney transferred to Washington and Jefferson College outside Pittsburgh, where he played football and golf for three years and earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature.

Rooney and Tara met in the University of Miami law school, and both enlisted in the Army to serve in the judge advocate general’s corps. Both left as captains, but not before Rooney was assigned to teach military law at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point.

“Those five semesters were the greatest experience of my life,” Rooney declared. He served three times as a prosecutor: in the Army, with the U.S. attorney’s office in Waco, and for Attorney Gen. Charlie Crist. He currently practices civil law at Kramer, Sopko & Levenstein in Stuart.

Congressional Race
Among Republican candidates, Rooney is the best financed, with $550,000 in contributions through December. The March report is expected to put him above $750,000. About one-fifth of the donations are from Pennsylvania.

“Some people have criticized that,” Rooney said. “But my family is from Pennsylvania. We have long and deep ties there. To not ask them to help me would be a disservice to the campaign, to give myself a fighting chance.”

He estimates Mahoney will raise $4 million, so the campaign will need at least $3 million, if he is the nominee.

The former prosecutor thinks it’s a travesty that the federal government doesn’t deport illegal aliens when they’re arrested for crimes. One of his first acts as a congressman would be sponsor a bill to correct that.

He wouldn’t allow illegal aliens to get a driver’s license, wouldn’t allow them access to health care, but waffles on whether the children of illegals should be allowed to attend schools.

“There you get into the crux of the problem,” Rooney said. Florida schools are overcrowded, but he used to run an orphanage in Palm Beach County, so it goes against his grain to deny education to children.

He won’t blame the problem of 11 million to 20 million illegals in America on Reagan, Bush or Clinton, but he would have the next administration enforce the law, and send illegals currently in this country to the back of the application line.

“I would hate to send people home though, and shut down the economy,” Rooney said.

He acknowledged that George W. Bush’s spending is out of control, but he has pledged not to raise taxes. He would reduce spending to get a grip on the deficit problem.

Some of his West Point students are currently in Iraq, and writing to him about what they face there. His solution there is to draw down forces to a couple of brigades or a division, and let Iraqis and Afghans deal with their own problems.