I would suggest to her to go to her University Library and use the Lexis Nexxus search engine to get access to the US House and US Senate Comittee reports.

There have been several Committee's over the last 70 years dealing with corruption, and you can find stories of intimidation in there as well.

I have read several of the Kefauver reports and some of those politicians were scared as hell, and threatened.

As Lilo suggested, I think the Chicago Outfit was more into intimidation than the NY guys. There was a governor in Missouri that was elected with Mob influence that you can read about as well. Other candidates were told not to run via intimidation.