Indictment of Lawmakers Another Blow to Arizona : Ethics: Sting follows Mecham, King controversies. Case is one of series involving legislators around nation.

Nine minutes before stuffing what police say was $55,000 in cash into a gym bag, Arizona State Rep. Don Kenney sounded a bit nervous.

“You sure there isn’t a camera?” Kenney asked J. Anthony Vincent, purportedly a deep-pocketed Las Vegas lobbyist seeking legalized casino gambling in Arizona. “ . . . I remember those videotapes of the Abscam trial.”

Kenney, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had greater intuition than he imagined.

Vincent was actually an ex-con named Joseph C. Stedino who was serving as a sting man for the Phoenix Police Department. And, despite Vincent’s repeated denials, a hidden camera was indeed recording the action as Vincent counted and doled out the cash during a nearly two-hour meeting in his posh northeast Phoenix office last April.

In all, more than 200 video and 600 audiotapes of a yearlong series of sordid sessions are at the heart of a 102-count bribery and money-laundering indictment handed up this week against Kenney, six other Arizona state legislators and 10 lobbyists and political activists.

The Maricopa County grand jury action accuses the lawmakers of agreeing--often in B movie-style language--to support casino gambling legislation in return for cash bribes. An accompanying civil racketeering suit seeks more than $2.5 million in damages from 18 defendants, including two additional state legislators.

The sting, dubbed Operation Desert Shame by the Phoenix media, is but the latest in a series of eye-catching episodes that have brought unwanted national attention to Arizona.

In 1988, it was the impeachment and removal from office of conservative Republican Gov. Evan Mecham. Last fall, it was voters’ rejection in referendums of measures establishing a paid state holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Now, nearly one-tenth of the entire Arizona Legislature faces criminal or civil charges.

“We’ve had a lot of bad luck here in the state of Arizona--there’s absolutely no question,” said County Atty. Richard M. Romley, who is prosecuting the current case. “But you can’t turn your back on this . . . . Public corruption is one of the most serious of all accusations.”

And the emerging scandal is only the latest in a nationwide string of stings in which state legislators have been implicated in wrongdoing:

--In South Carolina, nine state lawmakers were indicted late last year after they accepted cash from a federal undercover agent to support a bill to allow parimutuel betting on horse and dog races.

--In California, former Sens. Paul Carpenter and Joseph P. Montoya were sentenced to federal prison last year for crimes that included extorting money to push legislation benefiting companies--bogus companies set up by the FBI.

--Since 1985, 10 New York state legislators, including Assembly Speaker Mel Miller, have been charged with criminal conduct--more than have lost their seats in general elections, according to one watchdog group.

--And, in Texas, House Speaker Gib Lewis was indicted last December on a charge of failing to report a gift from a law firm that holds contracts to collect delinquent taxes.

“Over the last few years, the public has been building up a negative perception of politicians in general, and this reinforces it,” said Tommy Neal, a policy associate for the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures.

Some experts on legal ethics, such as UCLA School of Law Prof. Daniel Lowenstein, say the scandals may stem from staggering increases in the cost of running for state office.

“Legislative candidates now feel the same pressure to raise campaign funds as has been true for people in Congress,” Lowenstein said.

Thomas Puccio, who prosecuted the seminal Abscam case--which brought down a U.S. senator, six congressmen and the mayor of Camden, N. J., a decade ago--takes a different tack.

“Corruption in state and local and federal government is something that’s always with us,” said Puccio, now a private New York attorney. “(But) the state may not have been policed as much (in the past).

“The federal government has now passed on a lot of its (investigative) techniques to state and local governments, and they employ these procedures.

“It’s sort of become a little like McDonald’s--a franchise. It’s done all over the place now, and it’s a very successful technique.”

In the Abscam probe, lawmakers, including New Jersey Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr., were taken in by hustler Mel Weinberg, who posed for the FBI as, of all things, an Arab businessman.

The Arizona case has brought to the forefront the glib, good-looking Stedino, a onetime Las Vegas TV personality who was sentenced to a year in federal prison in 1984 after pleading guilty to a scam involving $150,000 in stolen traveler’s checks.

Initially, Stedino, who had been a police informant in Nevada, was hired by the Phoenix police to assist in an undercover investigation of gambling scams in Phoenix-area bars. But Stedino quickly learned, authorities say, that state legislators would be willing to support legalized casino gambling in Arizona in exchange for cash.

“At first, I was very skeptical, but the evidence kept accumulating,” 10-year Phoenix Police Chief Ruben Ortega said. “We had come upon a system of corruptiveness that we felt could not be ignored.”

In meetings with lawmakers in a third-floor office of a glass-and-granite office building kitty-corner from the Ritz-Carlton Phoenix, Stedino portrayed himself as Vincent, a Vegas hustler with mob ties, who planned to open a casino in Arizona if gambling were legalized.

During the April meeting with Kenney, court documents state, Vincent agreed to give the lawmaker $55,000 in cash in exchange for his vote and sponsorship of casino gambling legislation. “I understand that exactly,” Kenney is quoted as responding.

In the following months, operatives, including Kenney, who was labeled the “quarterback” of the scheme, steered additional lawmakers to Vincent.

Of the legislators indicted, three, including Kenney, are Republicans. The other four, including state Sen. Carolyn Walker, are Democrats.

Majority Whip Walker, who cast what turned out to be the deciding vote on Mecham’s impeachment almost three years ago, met with Vincent on Sept. 18. Court documents state that she accepted $15,000 after telling the sting man, “We all have our prices.”

In another meeting that month, state Sen. Jesus (Chuy) Higuera, chairman of the Senate Government Committee, asked Vincent for the shrimp and fax machine concessions at the casino he would eventually open.

The next month, in another session recorded on video, state Rep. Bobby Raymond told Vincent that there was “not an issue in the world that he gives (an expletive) about,” according to the indictment. Later, Raymond informed the sting man that his favorite line was: “What’s in it for me?”

The scope of the indictments and the graphic content of the fuzzy color videotapes have left Arizona reeling.

Leaders of the state Senate and House have called for the creation of ethics committees. And most of the legislators named in the criminal and civil actions have stepped down, at least temporarily, from their leadership posts.

Last Thursday night, the local CBS-TV affiliate broadcast more than 90 minutes of the videotapes, showing meetings between Vincent and legislators, including Kenney, Walker and Raymond.

And even Mecham, the pariah of Arizona politics, is back in the news, telling reporters that the indictments are “a small tip of a small little piece of ice in a great big pond of corruption.”

Arraignments are scheduled for Valentine’s Day, but already one defendant, lobbyist Richard Scheffel, has pleaded guilty to bribery conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

County Atty. Romley said that the investigation is continuing, and insiders say the scandal could eventually taint several additional leading Arizona state lawmakers.

The indictments and the videotapes have stirred negative reaction from several Arizona law professors and officers of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The job of the police should be to discourage crime, not create it,” said Louis Rhodes, executive director of Arizona’s ACLU chapter, at a Phoenix press conference.

However, Ortega strongly defends the investigation, noting that it did not start out as an effort to target lawmakers. Moreover, Ortega emphasized, Vincent was carefully monitored to avoid accusations of entrapment: He made no initial contacts of his own with the legislators and made no initial monetary offers to them.

“All comments or requests or demands for monies or goods would initially come from the suspect himself or herself,” Ortega said. “And that was exactly what happened with every one of them.”

Both Ortega and Romley say they had many sleepless nights during the investigation, worrying, in particular, about whether cash given to the legislators might help them win elections they would otherwise have lost.

“There is a possibility (that happened), absolutely,” Romley acknowledged in an interview with The Times.

“That is one of the difficult issues I had to address. I knew that, and, you know, it’s kind of a Catch-22 situation. If you don’t give them the money, even though all indications are they want to take a bribe, well, they could still win and be in office for 10 years. Or, if you give them the bribe, you go forward and you aggressively pursue it and you convict them and they’re barred from office for life.”

“There’s one bottom line,” Romley added. “I mean we can play all the games we want. But I’m going to show the tapes (in court). And the tapes will speak for themselves.

“They don’t lie.”