Randall Harold “Duke” Cunningham, former 50th Congressional District representative, and Navy flyer who shot down five MiGs over Vietnam and then shot himself in the foot with greed, died Wednesday in a hospital bed in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Cunningham was 83. His family put the news on social media. No cause, no grand statement. Just the way it goes: a man who once wanted the world’s attention went out with a few lines online.
Cunningham, a Republican. represented California’s 50th Congressional District, starting out at Escondido before sort of moving to Ranch Santa Fe. Long story. Not a good one.
Cunningham was born December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, in Los Angeles, which sounds like something a novelist would dream up. His father drove a truck, ran a gas station, and then packed up the family for Missouri, where they opened a dime store.
By the time Randy came out of the University of Missouri with a physical education degree, he looked like the kind of guy who was built for the team photo: square shoulders, jaw jutting forward. He coached swimming outside Chicago until he decided coaching was small time and signed up with the Navy in 1967.
Two tours in Southeast Asia turned him into a name. He climbed into an F-4 Phantom with a back-seater named William P. Driscoll and tore through 170 missions. On May 10, 1972, they went up against North Vietnamese pilots and came back with three enemy planes shot out of the sky. Then a missile found their jet and dumped them into the water.
The helicopter pulled them out and brought them back heroes. The Navy pinned the medals on him — Purple Heart, Silver Stars, Navy Cross — and his legend started to walk on its own. He strutted into Miramar as an instructor at the Navy’s Fighter Weapons School, the one with the nickname Top Gun, and let everyone know he had the credentials for it.
If the story ended there, he’d be another decorated veteran doing the rounds at reunions. But Cunningham had bigger eyes. He liked cameras and microphones. He popped up on CNN to explain wars. And in 1990, Republican Party operatives in San Diego figured this guy could sell in their district: a real war hero, square jaw, no patience for liberals. He ran for Congress, beat the Democrat, and then settled in for a long stay. Six reelections later he was in the club.
He made a career out of outrage. He spit on Democrats from the House floor, once saying the leadership should be “lined up and shot.” He used slurs for gay soldiers and cracked at Barney Frank until he was forced into the standard apology.
He called for the death penalty for drug dealers, but when his son got hauled before a judge in Boston with 400 pounds of marijuana on him, the tough-talking congressman turned into a weeping father begging for mercy.
What really finished Cunningham wasn’t his mouth but his hands. They were always out. He sat on Appropriations and Intelligence, the two places in Washington where the right word could turn into a billion-dollar contract. The defense contractors noticed.
Cunningham in tghe early 1990s, the first of a string of notorious Reoublican criminials representing California’s 50th Congressional District/File
They gave him cash, toys, a Rolls-Royce. They paid his rent on a yacht tied up on the Potomac and let him pretend he was still a fighter pilot on leave. They bought his house in San Diego for a million dollars more than it was worth so he could buy a bigger one. They covered yacht club fees, French furniture, graduation parties. The money moved in so many directions they had to call it something. He called it Top Gun Enterprises. The FBI called it evidence.
By 2005, it was over. The FBI raided. Cunningham stood in court and admitted he was guilty. Tax evasion. Bribery. Conspiracy. He tried to put it plain: “I was not strong enough to face the truth.” The judge gave him more than eight years, one of the longest prison terms ever handed to a member of Congress. He went in wearing a war hero’s record and came out an inmate’s number.
Cunningham walked free in 2013, older, grayer, with fewer people left to cheer him. He remarried a third time. In 2021, Donald Trump tossed him a pardon on his way out of the White House, one last headline for the Duke before he disappeared to Arkansas.
There were stories that he was the model for Tom Cruise in Top Gun. That was never true, though he never exactly corrected people when they asked. His fellow pilots said the cockiness, the grandstanding, the buzzing of control towers — sure, that part fit. But they also knew the other side: the self-promotion, the sense of entitlement, the man who wanted to be a star.
Cunningham spent fifteen years in Congress. He had three marriages. He had three children. He had a son who went to prison, just like him. He had a yacht with a stupid name and a lifestyle built out of other people’s cash. He had a reputation that started as the heroic ace and ended as the corrupt congressman.
When people look back now, they don’t see the medals or the MiGs tumbling out of the sky. They see a man who took bribes in brown envelopes and checks funneled through shell companies, who stuffed antiques into a house paid for by contractors looking for government favors. They see a politician who used his office as a cash register.
And when he died Wednesday, it didn’t come with a parade or a salute. It came with a Facebook post from his family and silence from the city he once represented. The ace from Vietnam ended as another crooked politician, and the obituary reads like a rap sheet.
A chronology of some of the payoffs involved in the more than $2.4 million in bribes that Randy “Duke” Cunningham admitted taking as the congressman for San Diego County’s 50th District.
May 1, 2000: $30,000 check that Cunningham deposited in his personal credit union account in Washington, D.C., and $70,000 check deposited in his personal bank account in San Diego.
Oct. 23, 2000 to March 29, 2001: $11,116.50 in mortgage payments on his yacht, the “Kelly C.”
Nov. 16, 2001: $12,000 purchase of armoires and other furniture.
Dec. 3, 2001: $200,000 wired to an escrow account set up to purchase his Arlington, comVa., condominium.
Dec. 27, 2001: $50,000 deposited in his San Diego personal bank account.
Jan. 24, 2002: $6,632 American Express corporate credit-card purchase of leather sofa and sleigh-style bed.
Feb. 5, 2002: $7,200 purchase of two 19th-century French commodes.
Feb. 27, 2002: $10,000 check deposited into his personal credit union account in Washington, D.C.
April 6, 2002: $13,500 check for purchase of a used Rolls-Royce.
May 4, 2002: $17,889.96 check for repair work on Rolls-Royce.
Aug. 30, 2002: $140,000 check to buy another yacht, the “Duke-Stir.”
Sept. 18, 2002: $20,000 check deposited into his personal credit union account in Washington, D.C.
Sept. 19, 2002: $16,867.13 check for repairs to the “Kelly C.”
Oct. 17, 2002: $2,000 check to transportation company to move the “Kelly C.”
Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham’s party boat, courtesy of congressional crimes/File
Nov. 7, 2002: $7,500 check for yacht club fees.
Nov. 22, 2002: $40,000 check deposited in his personal bank account in San Diego.
Nov. 25, 2002: $1,119.95 American Express corporate credit-card payment for repairs on Rolls-Royce.
Dec. 27, 2002 to May 27, 2005: $58,674.90 in mortgage payments for the “Kelly C.”
Jan. 13, 2003: $3,000 and $30,000 checks deposited into his personal bank accounts in San Diego.
May 8, 2003: California registration of a 1999 GMC Suburban with altered title claiming he paid $18,000 instead of below-market price of $10,000.
May 14, 2003: $8,000 check he deposited into his personal credit union account in Washington, D.C.
June 20-22, 2003: $2,731.33 in checks to a resort for lodging and meals, $1,500 gift certificate used to purchase a set of earrings and $400 for a charm and necklace.
July 28, 2003: $9,200 check for two Laser Shot shooting simulators.
Sept. 14, 2003: $19,025 check he deposited into his personal bank account in San Diego.
Nov. 5-18, 2003: He negotiated the sale of his Del Mar-area home for the inflated price of $1,675,000. The buyer later sold the house for $975,000.
Nov. 25-Dec. 4, 2003: He used proceeds from sale of the Del Mar-area home and a $1.1 million loan to buy a home in Rancho Santa Fe.
Dec. 31, 2003: $115,100 check he deposited into his personal bank account in San Diego.
Feb. 26, 2004: $11,393.56 American Express corporate credit-card payment to a company to move furnishings from his Arlington condominium to Rancho Santa Fe.
May 13, 2004: $525,000 wire payment to pay off second mortgage on Rancho Santa Fe home.
May, 25, 2004: $2,081.30 American Express corporate credit-card payment for daughter’s college graduation party at Washington, D.C., hotel.
June 2004: $6,500 in cash.
June, 17, 2004: $18,000 check to his Top Gun Enterprises, Inc. business.
Aug. 25, 2004: $171,000 and $329,000 checks to Top Gun Enterprises. The money was funneled to another company and used to make $28,237.20 in mortgage payments on the Rancho Santa Fe home.
May 7, 2005: $15,200 check for five Persian rugs.
November 2001 to May 2005: $50,000 to various antiques stores for furnishings.
January 2000 to May 2005: More than $10,000 to various resorts, hotels and restaurants for meals and entertainment.
Be the first to comment on "Notorious 50th Congressional District Rep. — and ‘top gun of greed’ — Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham dead at 83"