The Nation - News from Sept. 2, 1986

Michael T. Sullivan, a New York Democratic congressional candidate, told the New York Times that he paid investigators $18,000 to secretly record conversations with incumbent Rep. Raymond J. McGrath in hopes of uncovering corruption. According to Sullivan, McGrath bragged during the recorded conversations that he received a watch as a gift from the watch company’s president, discussed how to get around federal campaign finance limits with another representative and used an ethnic slur about Italians, the paper said. An aide to McGrath, Arthur J. DeCelle, told the paper that McGrath had purchased his own watch, and had an innocuous conversation with a fellow Republican about raising campaign money. DeCelle said the slur was not meant derogatorily. McGrath denounced the surveillance as improper and possibly illegal.