'Wall Street Marine' Eyes House Seat

After its recent surprise victory for Democrat Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts, the GOP may be licking its chops at the prospect of capturing a North Carolina congressional seat that's been mostly in Democrat hands since 1871.

Three Republicans are vying for the nomination to run for the seat and all three are military vets --- but only one has the kind of star power that comes with a personal story that extends from Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan to the fast-money world of Wall Street, and includes film-making, a best-selling book, an appearance on "The Daily Show" and charges of murdering two Iraqi civilians.

But before the GOP gets too excited about seeing former Marine 1st Lt. Ilario Pantano take a seat in Congress, it had better face up to the fact that the former infantry officer isn't your typical Red stater.

He believes Republicans are as responsible as Democrats for the country's economic problems. Though he served willingly and proudly in Operation Iraqi Freedom, he doubted the Bush administration's justification for the war and criticizes the competence of its execution.

Nor should anyone expect him, should he be the next congressman from North Carolina's 7th District --- held by Democrat Mike McIntyre since 1997 --- to support expensive defense programs simply because they're defense programs.

"If you think the largest piece of the federal budget is not fraught with fraud, waste and abuse, you're smoking crack," he said. "And I am going in there with a butcher's knife, and we are gong to get to the bottom of some things." This will include going after the practice of senior congressmen directing billion-dollar programs into their districts for jobs when the military goes without critical resources.

"I am not a typical Republican," Pantano told Military.com in a Feb. 3 telephone interview. "In fact, I think the Republicans have done a lot of things that disgusted me, that have disgusted the American people over the last couple of years. And the Republicans absolutely deserved the comeuppance they've gotten.

"And just because there have been some successes in Massachusetts and elsewhere is absolutely not carte blanche to return to … tone deafness to the American people."

Pantano describes himself as "more of a populist than the average Republican" because he has a two elementary school-aged kids and a 72-year-old immigrant father who still goes to work every day.

"I am not the average rich white guy Republican. I am not that guy," he said.

Pantano has been many things. Raised in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City, his father was a tour guide and his mother a literary agent for Blanche C. Gregory Inc. He got into the Horace Mann prep school --- "one of the toniest private schools in the world," he points out --- with classmates such as Rupert Murdoch's son, James.

But while school chums went on to college and then to cushy corporate offices, Pantano joined the Marine Corps as an enlisted grunt and saw combat in the Persian Gulf War.

After leaving the Corps in 1993, he went to New York University and earned an economics degree. Wall Street beckoned, and he worked as a trader for Goldman Sachs, a name now synonymous with the high-stakes investment and market schemes that brought the U.S. economy to the brink of a new depression.

"I left that world. I was trading companies like Enron," he said, referring to the giant Texas-based energy company that manipulated the markets and cooked its books to hide losses before its ultimate collapse in 2001. "I left that world because I felt it was morally bankrupt."

From Goldman Sachs, he linked up with some other Horace Mann alums to form The Shooting Gallery, a film company, and after that he started his own business --- Filter Media --- a consulting firm on emerging technologies, he told New York Magazine for a May 2005 article.

But his interest in business collapsed along with the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, and he returned to the Marine Corps, this time going in as an officer.

April 2004 found him leading a platoon in Mahmudiya, Iraq, where he had in custody two Iraqis he suspected were involved in anti-coalition activities. According to various accounts, Marines had already searched the men's car and found no weapons. But when weapons were found in a nearby house, Pantano wanted the car stripped down for another search.

Then the shooting started. When it was over, both Iraqis were dead. Pantano said he killed them in self defense. Marine prosecutors called it murder and roughly a year later he faced an Article 32 hearing on the charges. But when witness testimony fell apart from inconsistencies and autopsies on the Iraqis' exhumed bodies supported Pantano's version of events, the charges were dismissed.

With the legal storm over, Pantano left the Corps and penned his autobiography, "Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy."

"My experience has colored and defined and shaped who I am," he said, when asked if the murder charges he faced will play a part in the campaign. "And there is no question it's going to be an issue. All my life experience is going to be an issue. … They speak to my character."

And Pantano believes he can turn those blemishes in his record into strengths at the voting booth.

"I went out to do a dirty job for my country and in the process I got jammed up," he said. "I never broke with my Corps. I never broke with my country. I never said I was a victim. I took responsibility. I did what I did. I killed men in combat and if you don't like it, don't send men to war."