WASHINGTON - Joseph E. Mohbat, a former Associated Press reporter who covered the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy and later served as press secretary of the Democratic National Committee before becoming a lawyer in New York, died Aug. 10 of cancer at a hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 73.
Mr. Mohbat came to Washington in the early 1960s and for several years was at the center of the country’s political life as a reporter and later as a Democratic Party official. From 1970 to 1972, Mr. Mohbat was press secretary to the DNC and its chairman, Lawrence F. O’Brien.
Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, Mr. Mohbat was one of the first people to learn of a break-in at DNC headquarters at the Watergate office complex when he was awakened by a call from his secretary. He was interviewed by FBI agents, who also inspected his telephone for potential wiretaps.
He participated in the 1972 presidential campaign from the inside, serving as a spokesman for Democratic candidate George S. McGovern. Mr. Mohbat later filed a claim against the campaign when it was slow to pay his salary.
Mr. Mohbat tried to preserve a measure of journalistic detachment, but he admitted he couldn’t help being moved by Kennedy’s message and presence.
Before Kennedy was fatally shot in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, Mr. Mohbat asked him if he thought about the possibility of assassination.
Joseph Emile Mohbat was born Dec. 18, 1937, in New York City and grew up in Rhode Island. After graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont, he became a newspaper reporter in Galesburg, Ill. He joined the AP in Chicago in 1960 before coming to Washington about two years later. He received the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting in 1968.
In 1966, Mr. Mohbat received a yearlong Nieman fellowship to Harvard University, where he became interested in studying law.
After his stint at the DNC, he worked in public relations and edited newsletters about energy while attending Georgetown University law school at night. He graduated in 1978, then moved to New York a year later.
He had a private law practice for a few years before joining the New York City Law Department in the 1990s. He was a trial lawyer in the Bronx tort unit until two months before his death.
In Clarke’s book, “The Last Campaign,’’ Mr. Mohbat recalled flying into New York’s old Idlewild airport, which had been renamed after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
“It must be quite something to land at an airport named for your brother,’’ Mr. Mohbat said to Robert Kennedy.
“I wish it was still called Idlewild,’’ Kennedy replied.