Robert J. Mrazek

Robert Jan Mrazek (born November 6, 1945) is a politician from New York. He was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the 3rd Congressonal District on Long Island for most of the 1980s.

Mrazek was born in Newport, Rhode Island, but grew up in Huntington, New York. He graduated from Cornell University in 1967. In 1968, he entered the United States Navy and served in the Vietnam War. However, he was discharged following a training injury. After returning home, he served for two years as an aide to Senator Vance Hartke, and in 1971, he left this job to start a small antique business.

Mrazek was voted into the Suffolk County, New York Legislature in 1975 and served until he was elected as a Democrat to the 98th United States Congress, defeating one term Republican incumbent John LeBoutillier. Mrazek served in the House from 1983 until 1993. In 1992, he was one of the Representatives most prominently implicated in the House banking scandal, or "Rubbergate". He gave up his seat to challenge Republican Al D'Amato for his seat in the U.S. Senate, but Mrazek withdrew from the Democratic primary election. Several other powerful Democrats were also running, including Geraldine Ferraro, Al Sharpton, and Robert Abrams (who went on to lose to D'Amato by .5%).

Mrazek is also the author of three novels, "Stonewall's Gold: A Novel of the Civil War", "Unholy Fire: A Novel of the Civil War", and, most recently, "The Deadly Embrace: A Novel of World War II". In 2000, Stonewall's Gold won the Michael Shaara Prize as the best Civil War novel of the year. In 2007, Deadly Embrace won the W.Y. Boyd Prize for Excellence in Military Fiction from the American Library Association.

While in Congress, he coauthored the law that saved the Manassas battlefield from being bulldozed for a shopping center. He also authored the Tongass Timber Reform Act, the Amerasian Homecoming Act and the National Film Preservation Act of 1988.

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