Peter W. Rodino Jr., 95, the Democratic New Jersey congressman and House Judiciary Committee chairman who rose from relative obscurity to national prominence while presiding over articles of impeachment that led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, died May 7 of congestive heart failure at his home in West Orange, N.J.
Mr. Rodino, who represented a Newark district from 1949 to 1989, was among those whose reputations were enhanced through television coverage of the impeachment hearings. A dapper man with a slow and deliberate speaking style, he was seen as a calm and nonpartisan presence in one of the country's most politically charged episodes.
In 1972, several men linked to the Nixon White House had broken into the Watergate office complex, where the Democratic National Committee had offices. In February 1974, the House of Representatives voted to allow the Judiciary Committee to review grounds for impeachment of the president and gave the committee unlimited subpoena power -- which it used to obtain Oval Office tapes of Nixon's conversations with aides.
Mr. Rodino spoke before the House that February: "Whatever the result, whatever we learn or conclude, let us now proceed with such care and decency and thoroughness and honor that the vast majority of American people, and their children after them, will say: 'That was the right course. There was no other way.' "
In July 1974, the Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon. The president resigned in August, before the full House voted whether to approve the articles for a Senate trial.
Although Mr. Rodino voted for impeachment, the outcry against him was much more muted than it might have been. He was known for letting all sides contribute to the debate but made it clear he did not want speeches.
Mr. Rodino considered himself a reluctant overseer. "People thought we would impeach Richard Nixon," he said years later. "That was the furthest thing from my mind. I was hopeful, I was prayerful that we wouldn't, that what we would find out was exculpatory."
He added that after he voted for the third article of impeachment, he went to a back room, called his wife and cried. "And I said, 'I hope we've done the right thing.' "
He was a largely untested figure on the national scene when he became Judiciary Committee chairman a year before the impeachment hearings began. He considered it a fluke that he got the chairmanship, which came after the surprise election defeat in 1972 of Emanuel Celler (N.Y.), who seldom had ceded authority in two decades as chairman.
"If fate had been looking for one of the powerhouses of Congress, it wouldn't have picked me," Mr. Rodino said.
The hearings made him all but a household name. His new celebrity helped him fight attempts in his district to unseat him. In the 1980s, he used his Judiciary Committee seniority to contest what he viewed as efforts by the Ronald Reagan administration to limit the reach of civil rights laws as well as movements to ban abortion, allow school prayer and end school busing.
Throughout the 1980s, he faced increasing pressure to retire and yield power to the rising black majority in his district. He decided not to seek reelection in 1988 and was succeeded by Newark city councilman Donald M. Payne (D), who became the state's first African American representative.
