Paul Cantwell

Cantwell was born September 15, 1927.[2]

Cantwell's mother was active in Indianapolis politics.[3]

Cantwell began working in politics as a political volunteer at the age of fifteen.[3]

Cantwell worked as a masonry contractor, and was a proud advocate for trade unions.[3]

In 1965, he was hired to work as an administrative assistant to United States congressman Andrew Jacobs Jr. in Washington, D.C..[3] He lived with his family in D.C. for a year.[3]

Beginning in 1966, Cantwell served as a Marion County Commissioner.[3] During part of his tenure on the board, he also served on the Metropolitan Thoroughfare Commission.[4] Cantwell was standing with Robert F. Kennedy when he gave his 1968 speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King.[3]

Cantwell began serving on the Indianapolis City-County Council after the city-county consolidation that established the Unigov in 1970.[3] During part of his time in this body, he served as the minority leader.[5][6][7]

In 1975, Cantwell was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit arguing that the legislation creating Unigov denied certain voters the equal protection guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The lawsuit, in part, argued that that this right was violated by the fact that the Unigov legilsation allowed four city-county councilmen elected at-large from the entire Unigov to sit on councils for special police and fire department districts which only served part of the Unigov area.[8][9] The lawsuit sought to have the four at-large council members barred from these boards, which would have had the consequence, with the composition of the council in 1975, of giving Democrats control of these boards.[9] The lawsuit was unsuccessful, with the plaintiffs losing the case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.[8]

Cantwell resigned from the city council to focus on his campaign as the Democratic nominee in the 1979 Indianapolis mayoral election, which ultimately saw him lose to incumbent Republican William H. Hudnut III in what was reported to have been the greatest margin of defeat for a Democratic candidate in an Indianapolis mayoral election in 150 years.[3] The campaign saw Cantwell struggle to raise funds while running against the formidable frontrunner Hadnut, while Hadnut was able to spend a considerable amount on his own campaign.[10] Additionally at the time of the election, Cantwell's son Danny was awaiting trial for murder (he would be acquitted in November 1980).[3] Cantwell argued that the charges were political, and were retribution for his investigations of police corruption.[3]

In 1992, Cantwell was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives district 97.[3][1] On the same night he won this election, his daughter Maria, by then already a member of the Washington House of Representatives, won election to the United States House of Representatives.[3]

In 1994, Cantwell lost reelection, losing to Irene Heffley by 4,782 votes to 4,037 votes amid the year of the "Republican Revolution".[3][11][12]`His daughter also lost her congressional seat that night (she would later, in 2000 be elected to the United States Senate).[3]

In 1997, Cantwell died of lung cancer at the age of 69.[3]