10.07.97
By JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal-Bulletin Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- On Dec. 1, 1993, following
reports that he was headed to the White House as a top deputy
to President Clinton, lawyer Harold M. Ickes signed a
$40,000 contract to represent a New Jersey-based arm of the Laborers
International Union.
"I wouldn't have known Harold Ickes
if I tripped over him, but we were told that he'd be our guy in
the White House," recalled David Caivano, one of the union
officials who hired Ickes. "Hey, that was a no-brainer for
us. That was a home run."
Caivano, since forced out in a Justice Department-ordered cleanup of the mob-tainted union, griped
later that Ickes did next to nothing for the New Jersey Laborers.
But Ickes, today's long-awaited witness before
the Senate panel investigating the 1996 campaign-finance
controversy, went on to perform invaluable services for
Arthur A. Coia, 54, general president of the Laborers.
No charges of wrongdoing have sprung from
Ickes's dealings with Coia, and he is unlikely to be questioned
about how he helped the Rhode Island-born union leader
climb the ladder of White House access.
But the story of Coia's relationship with
the Clintons casts light on how campaign donations to Democrats
may relate to White House entree. In Coia's case, as in
the unfolding national fundraising story, Harold Ickes
was the pivot man - one foot in presidential policy-making, one
foot in reelection politics.
Federal prosecutors probed organized-crime
connections in the Laborers Union for years before threatening
to seize the union and oust Coia late in 1994. Instead, he negotiated
an agreement that permitted him to preside over
an in-house cleanup of the union. The Justice Department
held the power to cancel the arrangement for three years, which
expire in February.
Before and after the Justice Department threatened
Coia with racketeering charges in November 1994, Ickes
helped to dispense political favors to Coia, including
an Oval Office meeting with the president in October 1994
and a speech to the union by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
in February 1995.
On Jan. 5, 1995, in a celebrated memo that
Ickes released from his files last winter, Coia was among the
top Democratic contributors touted to Mr. Clinton as deserving
of an overnight stay in the Lincoln bedroom.
"I never got the Lincoln bedroom,"
Coia said in an interview after the memo was released. Coia also
disclaimed knowledge of any legal work by Ickes for his union.
Coia also denied that his extensive Democratic contributions were given in exchange for White House access and influence.
"Those contributions weren't for me,"
but for Laborers rank and file, Coia said.
According to a study by the the Washington-based
Center for Responsive Politics, the Laborers ranked
fourth among union contributors of soft money (unlike "hard"
contributions to individual candidates, so-called soft money
can be given to political parties virtually without limits),
giving $634,588 during the 1996 election cycle, and fourth
in total donations - soft money and hard contributions to candidates
- with about $2.8 million.
The union thus outspent unions several times
its size and ranked among such corporate giants as MCI
in legally unlimited soft-money donations. That was despite the
fact that the union has had financial problems for several years.
Last winter, for example, it cut spending on the government-ordered
cleanup of its organized-crime connections.
Ickes, 58, is named after his late father,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's storied interior secretary,
a hardnosed politico and an early leader in the struggle
for black civil rights.
In his own time, the younger Ickes has become
one of Washington's most flamboyant characters,
famously profane, tight-fisted and ferocious in his advocacy
of liberal causes.
Ickes worked in the West as a cowboy before
going to college at Stanford. He worked in the South as a
civil-rights volunteer - where he was badly enough beaten
by white attackers to lose a kidney - before settling
into a career of politics and law in New York.
Practically since the beginning, Ickes has
carried twin portfolios that suited him neatly for power.
He is an old-school liberal Democrat, who has worked
in the high councils of Democratic presidential campaigns
since Eugene McCarthy's in 1968. And he is a highly paid
labor lawyer for a well-connected Long Island firm.
Jack English, who was Robert F. Kennedy's
New York primary campaign manager in 1968, was so impressed
by Ickes's work for McCarthy that he took the young lawyer into
his firm, now known as Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein.
Ickes has toiled ever since for liberal presidential
candidates, from George McGovern to Jesse
Jackson, building a reputation as a tough negotiator with a head
for details. He also built a political network that includes
a 25- year friendship with Mr. Clinton.
In 1992, candidate Clinton called on Ickes
to steer him through the decisive New York primary, where
he iced the Democratic nomination. Ickes ran President-elect
Clinton's transition team in Little Rock and appeared
headed for the White House as Mr. Clinton's chief of staff.
But the appointment died in an eruption of bad publicity
from Ickes's parallel life in the rough-and- tumble of
organized labor in New York.
Ickes took himself out of the running after
critical press reports about his representation of an allegedly
mob-run New York local of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees.
When a court found there was "no evidence
of criminal misconduct" late in 1993, Ickes secured
the job as deputy chief of staff. He started in January 1994.
Ickes apparently kept taking on law clients
until just before he joined the Clinton White House. His federal
financial disclosures listed the Laborers Union, Caivano's
New Jersey fund and the related New York State political
action committee among his pre-White House clients.
The New York and New Jersey arms were controlled
at the time by David Caivano's father, Samuel J. Caivano,
a longtime Coia associate who would be accused of mob associations
in the Justice Department's 1994 racketeering draft
and ultimately forced out of the union.
In general, Ickes's defense of his legal
career has been simple and blunt: Labor lawyers defend labor
unions. Ickes told congressional investigators last year
that as White House "point man" for organized labor,
he was the natural contact for union leaders such as Coia.
He also told investigators that he did not
contract with the Laborers on his own behalf but rather as
a partner in Meyer, Suozzi.
Ickes, who did not answer requests to be
interviewed for this story, has also told congressional investigators
that he did not recall doing any work for the Laborers.
Coia took over the Laborers less than a month
after Mr. Clinton's inauguration in January 1993, and
started his personal campaign for White House access
right away.
In an interview two years ago, Coia described
how he began by working his way into "big rooms"
where the president greeted "lots of people." With well- timed
political gestures and heavy Democratic campaign contributions,
Coia gradually worked his way into smaller rooms where Mr. Clinton
met with more select groups, Coia has said.
Early this year, Ickes - unceremoniously
fired after Mr. Clinton's reelection last November - released
more than 900 pages of campaign papers that document the
contributions and access of many top donors - Coia included.
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