Career
Sawyer was born in Akron, Ohio. After graduating from a local public high school (Sawyer originally had attended the prestigious Western Reserve Academy, but was expelled in his senior year for academic dishonesty), Sawyer received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Akron in 1968, and was a member of the Alpha Phi Chapter of Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity. Later, Sawyer earned a master of arts degree from Akron in 1970.
Sawyer worked as an English teacher and then was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives, where he served from 1977 to 1983. In late 1983, he was elected Mayor of Akron.
In 1984, he bet mustaches with Akron-area Republican Tom Watkins on the outcome of the Mondale/Reagan presidential election; he has been clean-shaven ever since.
After only one term as mayor, he entered the Democratic primary for Ohio's 14th Congressional District, based in Akron, in 1986. The retiring incumbent, eight-term Democrat John F. Seiberling, endorsed Sawyer as his successor, enabling him to win handily despite being in a crowded seven-way primary. He then faced a credible Republican challenger in Summit County District Attorney Lynn Slaby, and won by seven points. He was reelected seven times, only facing serious opposition once, in 1994. That year, Slaby challenged him again and held him to 52 percent of the vote.
The redistricting following the 2000 census eliminated Sawyer's district. Most of Akron was placed in the 13th District, represented by fellow Democrat Sherrod Brown. However, Sawyer's home was placed in the Youngstown-based 17th District. The district had been held by Democrat Jim Traficant until his expulsion from the House in 2002. Traficant tried to run for his old seat as an independent. Traficant's former protégé Tim Ryan also ran for the seat. The new 17th district was much more heavily pro-labor than Sawyer's old district and Sawyer was seen as being insufficiently pro-labor as a result of his support of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In an upset, Sawyer lost the 2002 Democratic primary to Ryan, who went on to win the seat in the general election.
Sawyer ran in the 2006 primary for Ohio's 13th congressional district. He was the front-runner, and endorsed by the major papers, but lost to Betty Sutton in a six-way race. The Ohio AFL-CIO, pointing to Sawyer's stand on NAFTA, endorsed Sutton.
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