Former Illinois Republican Congressman Tom Railsback, who represented the Quad Cities for 16 years, has died. He was 87.
Railback died Monday in Mesa, Arizona, where he had lived in a nursing home in recent years.
First elected in 1966, he helped draw up articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon in 1974. He was then the second ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee when it conducted the impeachment inquiry into Nixon. Railsback credited Nixon with getting him elected to Congress by campaigning for him in 1966.
From Moline, he earned degrees from Grinnell College and the Northwestern University law school. Railsback was defeated for re-election in the Republican primary in 1982 by Ken McMillan, who went on to lose in the general election to Democrat Lane Evans.
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