Campbell Leaving Senate--and Criticism--Behind

With sweat running down his neck and his jaw working a wad of gum, Sen. William Campbell stormed the committee room during the closing days of the legislative session, chasing down his colleagues and pleading for their support.

Officially, Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights) was scouring the crucial Assembly Ways and Means Committee for the one last vote he needed to resurrect his most controversial measure of the year--a $1.4-million tax break for a Contra Costa County millionaire who was donating his classic car collection to UC Berkeley.

Unofficially, however, the stakes were much higher for the senator, who represents Whittier, La Mirada, La Habra Heights and portions of Orange County. Campbell, 54, “Hacienda Fats” to his friends, was buttonholing his colleagues for votes with the argument that his reputation was on the line.

“He convinced me . . . based on the appeal to his honor,” said Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who gave Campbell the vote he needed after she publicly railed against the bill, which was criticized as a tax break for a rich man. “The press was calling him a crook. The vindication for him was not to run away from it but to keep on going.”

It’s been a tough time lately for Bill Campbell’s honor. Whether that played a role in his decision Thursday to quit the Legislature in January to become president of the California Manufacturers Assn. is not clear. But some political insiders said that Campbell, who was first elected to the Assembly in 1966 and became a senator in 1976, was tired of being under attack for the last two or three years.

Campbell has been criticized for carrying special interest legislation and making tens of thousands of dollars for himself, his family and his staff through speaking engagements and special functions sponsored and promoted by his office. Those activities have been scrutinized by the state Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), the state attorney general’s office and the federal Small Business Administration (SBA).

The focus of some of this scrutiny has been Jerome M. Haleva, Campbell’s longtime top aide, close friend, landlord, legislative tactician, political fund-raiser and alter ego. An intense, mustachioed behind-the-scenes operative, Haleva, 43, is among the highest paid Sacramento staffers and virtually the dean of legislative aides, almost a 41st member of the 40-member Senate. Once Campbell leaves the Legislature, Haleva is expected to leave the Senate staff and take up lobbying himself.

Together and apart, Campbell and Haleva have made the kind of headlines that have given the senator’s reputation a drubbing. These include:

* Campbell’s sponsorship of the bill tailored to give a large tax break to one person--Kenneth Behring, multimillionaire owner of the Seattle Seahawks and a Contra Costa developer. Despite intense publicity and public criticism from his colleagues, Campbell and UC officials scraped up barely enough votes to slip the measure through in the waning hours of the legislative session. It was signed into law by Gov. George Deukmejian on Oct. 2.

Campbell said he worked on behalf of Behring because it was “good government” to secure such a valuable donation for the UC system. He emphasized that Behring has never given him a political contribution.

* Reports about how Campbell’s wife, Margene, Haleva and a former top aide, Karen L. Smith, have made $452,500 from annual nonprofit conferences for women first organized seven years ago on government time by Campbell’s staff. As of this year, Campbell no longer is associated with the conference, which at its height attracted 14,000 women. The attorney general’s office is investigating payments made to his wife for her job as a consultant to the 1987 conference.

* Several instances in which Campbell or Haleva have failed to disclose gifts or outside income. In one case, Haleva failed to report $15,000 he received as director of the women’s conference in 1986. And this year, both men failed to disclose a gift of free limousine service supplied by a New Orleans businessman and contributor who asked Campbell for a favor.

* Accepting $46,900 last year for speaking engagements. Campbell, quick-witted and glib, consistently has been among the highest paid speakers in the Legislature. While defending his income from speeches, which more than doubles his annual $40,816 Senate salary, Campbell said recently he understood uneasiness about the practice. Reformers have attacked honorariums as a bold way for special interests to circumvent contribution laws and put money directly in legislators’ pockets. Last summer, Campbell voted with his colleagues to put a measure on the ballot to ban honorariums.

* Intervention last year by Haleva on state contracts for two campaign contributors. One of the contributors, Frank Eugene Raper, had earlier lent Haleva $20,000 at below-market interest rates to purchase a home. Raper is a close friend of Campbell and managed one of his campaigns.

By Campbell’s own interpretation, his reputation already had become somewhat muddied when he was brought into the investigation several years ago of fireworks manufacturer W. Patrick Moriarty. While never accused of anything illegal, Campbell carried legislation on behalf of Moriarty, a friend and constituent, to prohibit cities and counties from outlawing so-called “safe and sane” fireworks.

The bill--approved by the Legislature but vetoed by then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.--became the focus of a wide-ranging investigation of corruption in the Capitol. Moriarty eventually went to prison after pleading guilty to bribing public officials and public corruptions charges in connection with a poker casino he owned in Commerce.

In a recent interview with The Times, Campbell defended himself against criticism, saying he was a skilled legislator who looks out for the best interests of his district. In Los Angeles County, his district also includes Hacienda Heights, Rowland Heights, the City of Industry, Walnut, Diamond Bar and West Covina.

“I’m still my own agent,” Campbell said. “My responsibility is not to anyone who contributes to me. My responsibility is to the people of the 31st Senatorial District. . . .

“If I can’t provide adequate representation and honest representation to people of that district, then I ought to get out of here.”

Yet even colleagues who expressed a great deal of affection for Campbell said they had begun to wonder about his judgment, especially in a era of heightened sensitivity to ethics. They were particularly concerned about the women’s conferences--a sore point with the senator that he refused to discuss.

“Bill does things that I wouldn’t do,” said Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside), a veteran legislator who also is a close friend.

“I don’t think I should be in a position where I’m setting up things where I, in effect, make money under the guise of a governmental operation,” said Craven, who added that a women’s conference he sponsored in his district lost money. “To me, it runs contrary of my concept of what I should be doing.”

Campbell, who said he was hurt by these and other comments by his colleagues, attempted to explain what he characterized as “an unfair assessment.”

“I’m a very happy person,” Campbell said, “and I think there’s a feeling that if you enjoy what you are doing, and you are getting a lot (more) happiness out of it than other people seem to be getting out of it, then maybe there’s a hidden agenda somewhere, maybe you know something that other people don’t know.”

Campbell said he believes he was unfairly tainted as author of the Moriarty fireworks bill.

“(Moriarty) was one of my constituents,” said Campbell. “He came to me with a problem, we attempted to resolve the problem. But everybody kind of looks beyond that and they look and they say, well, something was wrong on that issue.”

Campbell said recently he saw nothing wrong with helping out his friends, of which he has many inside and outside the Legislature. He has been able to easily work with members of the opposite party and counts among his best pals both Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Ken Maddy (R-Fresno) and Democrats such as Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles).

Many people have stories about Campbell’s legendary love of food--going for multiples of desserts, scarfing down 24-ounce steaks, sneaking hamburgers under the conference table before lunch. Now he’s on a liquid crash diet and exercise regimen in which he walks two miles a day with 25-pound weights strapped to his body.

“Hacienda Fats,” a nickname that amuses him as much as anyone, also is extremely funny, poking fun mostly at himself. He was in rare form Thursday when the question of his weight came up at the press conference to announce his resignation.

“In the last 10 years, I have lost 1,853 pounds . . . for a net gain of 38,” he said to a crowd of journalists roaring with laughter. He added: “Let me say this about stress--I’ve handled stress reasonably well . . . by eating.”

But in private, Campbell admits that his ability to amuse is sometimes to his detriment.

“Because of my sense of humor, sometimes I’m not taken as seriously as I probably ought to be,” Campbell said. “But it’s my nature and there’s nothing I’m going to do to change that (but) I’m going to curb it at times.”

Having served in the Legislature for all but two of the last 23 years, Campbell is skillful in the political process and has built up many friendships that help grease the wheels of lawmaking.

Campbell counts among his major legislative accomplishments streamlining the state’s response during disasters such as last week’s Bay Area earthquake. He sponsored legislation in the last two years that allows the governor to spend disaster relief money without first calling an expensive and time-consuming special session of the Legislature.

He also was a key negotiator in the new transportation proposal that goes before voters in June. The proposal would raise gasoline taxes to help pay for new highways and transit systems.

First elected to the Assembly in 1966, Campbell quit in 1972 and made an unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Out of public office, Campbell set up shop in Sacramento as a lobbyist before winning reelection to the Assembly in 1974.

It was during that year that Campbell first hooked up with Haleva, who was working for an Assembly Democrat and who had arranged for a small number of legislators, including Campbell, to travel to the Soviet Union. Shortly thereafter, Campbell insisted that Haleva be hired as staff to a new committee on fire and emergency services of which Campbell was to be chairman.

“Those two guys, they live together, they eat together, they vacation together. It’s incredible. I don’t understand it fully,” says Assembly Speaker Brown, who calls Haleva “probably the super staff guy in the Legislature” with “more chutzpah than the Lord.”

In 1986, when Campbell took the plunge and ran for statewide office, Haleva took a leave of absence to run his boss’s quixotic and expensive campaign for state controller. A $400,000 debt remains from that ill-fated effort, according to campaign reports this year.

The loss also embittered Haleva, who believes his boss has been given short shrift in the political world, said one confidante who asked not to be identified. While Haleva’s Senate annual salary has grown from $26,136 to $100,680, not counting outside income he makes as a political consultant to Campbell and others, Campbell’s salary has topped out at just over $40,000 plus whatever he makes in honorariums.

“Jerry legitimately feels that Bill is entitled to some benefit,” said the confidante. “Not illegal benefit, but some benefit from being in that office because he does not get paid very much and never particularly had anything.”

Whether this had led to indiscretions or not, the two men’s political style left many with the impression that they were out for themselves.

Said one senator about Campbell: “He loves to travel, he loves the good life, and so does Jerry Haleva. Both Jerry and Bill have cultivated this life style and they’ve got to find a way to pay for it.”

That impression was reinforced by recent stories about how Campbell and Haleva benefited financially from the women’s conference and personally intervened with state agencies on behalf of Campbell’s contributors.

Records for the women’s conferences show that Haleva has earned $15,000 and Campbell aide Karen L. Smith $72,500 for the meetings between 1984 and 1987. In addition, a consulting firm formed by Campbell’s wife and Smith was paid $365,000 for setting up the 1987 and 1988 conferences.

When the controversy over the payments erupted last year, Campbell said he saw nothing wrong with his wife collecting money as a consultant from an event sponsored by his office.

“I don’t see it as a problem, in all honesty,” Campbell told The Times. “The question is, ‘Could anybody else do that?’ I don’t know the answer to that, but why should I change a successful conference merely because the people responsible for the conference happen to work for me or be married to me?”

“When you say, ‘Do I profit from it?’ indirectly, yes, I do profit from it,” Campbell continued. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But why the attack on Karen and Margene?”

Since then, however, Campbell has steadfastly declined comment on the conferences or to say whether he intends to repay $43,000 to the SBA as the agency has requested. The SBA said Campbell violated an oral agreement on how much Smith would be paid.

In more recent months, Campbell and Haleva were criticized for trying to help out Raper, a neighbor, longtime friend and former campaign chairman for Campbell. Raper, owner of United Packaging Corp. of Industry, also loaned Campbell $100,000 for his state controller race, which was repaid.

Acting on behalf of Campbell, Haleva called procurement officials on behalf of United Packaging as it faced disqualification on a $1.6-million contract to supply all of the state’s garbage bags. Although the firm was lowest bidder, it could not promise delivery within the six-week deadline demanded by the state and was in danger of losing the business.

Following Haleva’s call, however, procurement officials rewrote the bid specifications allowing for the longer delivery time. United Packaging eventually was awarded the contract.

Haleva’s phone call on behalf of Raper came 16 months after Raper loaned the aide $20,000 at a below-market interest rate.

Haleva also pressured the office of state architect to go easy on Asbestos Environmental Controls Inc. of New Orleans, which faced disqualification on thousands of dollars worth of state contracts because it lacked the proper certification for the work. Following Haleva’s telephone calls, the architect decided to hold off on the disqualification long enough to allow the New Orleans firm to file its papers with the state.

Meanwhile, the firm had donated $27,000 to Campbell in 1987 and 1988. The company’s president also provided free limousine service for the senator and his aide during the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans--a gift that both Haleva and Campbell failed to disclose until after the news stories.

Speaking about phone calls on behalf of Raper’s United Packaging Corp., Campbell said, “What did we do? Gene Raper is a good friend of mine. He has been the chairman of my campaign. We do things together. We go to dinner together. We socialize together. I don’t deny that.

“Just because he’s a friend of mine, why shouldn’t I be able to help him?” Campbell said. “You’re saying that anybody who’s a friend of mine, I can’t intercede if I believe government is doing him wrong.”

He added: “I don’t want to disenfranchise somebody just because he contributes to my campaign.”