The King of Steeltown is an offbeat, sometimes humorous inside look at Chicago-style machine politics in a rust-belt city (East Chicago, Indiana) struggling with the decline of the steel industry. The film focuses on the 1999 re-election campaign of Robert A. Pastrick, mayor for three decades a dominant political force since he launched his career in the early 1950s. Described as the last of America’s political bosses, Pastrick is portrayed as an old-style pol who skillfully retains control of this gritty multiracial industrial community with a well-oiled political machine, an elecion year multi-million dollar works program, and a clinical display of old fashion retail politics.