Tenacious Ex-Prosecutor Runs Chicago Mass Transit : Skinner Key Bush Backer in Illinois

Samuel K. Skinner, the fiercely competitive Chicago lawyer tapped by President-elect George Bush on Thursday to become the next transportation secretary, knows well the modes of the trade.

The 50-year-old Skinner runs a railroad in his part-time job as the Chicago-area mass transit chief. He is also a small-plane pilot, a former boat owner and an automobile aficionado whose annual appetite for the newest German sports car has become part of his law office’s lore.

And, in the weeks before the announcement of his appointment, he became the most frequent of fliers, shuttling repeatedly between his home and Washington to talk with Bush and his staff.

But the most important vehicles on Skinner’s road to the Cabinet were campaign buses--the caravans that wheeled Bush along hundreds of miles of highway in a campaign credited with locking up Illinois for Bush in the hotly contested primary and capturing its 24 electoral votes in the general election.

Forged Invaluable Links

Skinner, as Bush’s Illinois campaign director, sat at Bush’s side all the way, a longtime loyalist who forged invaluable links between the vice president and Illinois’ powerful Republican Establishment.

In that effort, as throughout his career, Skinner’s success depended in large part on his ties to Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson, whose early endorsement of Bush in Illinois, delivered at his protege’s behest, eased Skinner’s task considerably.

Thompson, who had preceded Skinner as a corruption-busting U.S. attorney, installed him as head of the Regional Transportation Authority and kept him near the center of the most powerful circle in Illinois politics. And this year, once the election was won, Thompson became Skinner’s most influential champion when the mass transit chief made known his interest in moving on to Washington.

“There is no way I can properly estimate the degree of my debt to Jim Thompson,” Skinner said in a recent interview, “because it is simply beyond calculation.”

But, if he is indebted to his mentor, Skinner is by no means a retiring flunky.

In wooing Thompson for Bush, Skinner “did not hesitate to camp out on the doorstep and beat him down,” said Chicago lawyer Dan Wile, who is close to both men.

“Once he gets his teeth into an assignment,” said another close friend, Gayle Frandsen, “he’s tenacious as hell. He absolutely will not let go.”

So hard-working is Skinner that he carries a cellular phone in his brief case.

He is judgmental to the point of being moralistic and is “not real tolerant of people who stray,” a friend said. To unwind, Skinner plays golf but has few other diversions.

Skinner took his first governmental job, as an assistant U.S. attorney in the late 1960s, after abandoning a promising career as an IBM salesman that won him recognition as 1967’s salesman of the year and paid his way through night law school at De Paul University.

Skinner took a pay cut from $50,000 to $8,500 to become an assistant U.S. attorney, then tore into his new task with fervor that earned him a reputation for ruthlessness and the nickname of “Sam the Hammer.”

His ferocity in obtaining the convictions of politicians, including former Gov. Otto Kerner, was such that defense attorneys still regard him as “the epitome of the overzealous prosecutor,” according to Rob Warden, publisher of the Chicago Lawyer.

Succeeds Thompson in Post

Skinner succeeded Thompson as U.S. attorney in 1974. His stint in the top job was cut short when Democrat Jimmy Carter became President in 1977, leaving Skinner to begin private practice.

In his final months in office, before joining the law firm of Sidley & Austin, Skinner recused himself from participating in his office’s investigation of a Sidley client, the G.D. Searle Corp. That decision was strongly criticized this week by Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio).

His connections to the state capital in Springfield served Skinner financially as well. Working as a lobbyist as well as a lawyer, Skinner sought to influence the governor’s office and the state Legislature for a variety of clients, including hospitals, waste management firms, golfing idol Jack Nicklaus and his old employee, IBM.

Skinner, who was born in Springfield, Ill., is married but has been separated from his wife for the last two years. They have three children, the oldest of whom recently followed in his father’s footsteps by joining the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago as a prosecutor.