WASHINGTON INSIGHT

RAIDS STAMPED OUT: Smarting from bad publicity, the U.S. Postal Service has stopped raiding businesses to check up on their use of Federal Express and other commercial overnight delivery services. . . . A little-known provision of postal law permits delivery companies to transport only “urgent material,” and the Postal Service has the power to protect its monopoly by deciding what constitutes “urgent.” In the last five years, postal inspectors have marched into 41 businesses and collected more than $1 million in “postage due” from companies that allegedly sent non-urgent mail by express service. When Atlanta-based Equifax Inc. and other raided companies protested against “bullying tactics,” Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) pressed legislation to ban the audits. . . . That and a flurry of news reports prompted Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon Jr. to call a halt. “It’s very bad for us from a public relations standpoint,” he told a Senate panel. . . . But the controversy is still bubbling: The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is probing private mailers’ impact on Postal Service revenue.

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LEARNING FROM JERSEY: As they look ahead to the 1994 campaign, Democratic strategists are looking back at what they believe was an important lesson from last November’s New Jersey gubernatorial election. One reason for incumbent Democrat James J. Florio’s defeat was the relatively low turnout of black voters, which Democrats attribute in good measure to lackluster registration and get-out-the-vote efforts in inner-city wards. In some precincts, the black vote was off by as much as 10% from Florio’s 1989 victory. “The rule to remember is that, in a close election, you can’t afford to take black votes for granted,” said Don Sweitzer, the Democratic Party’s political director. . . . Democrats downplay claims that Republican consultant Edward J. Rollins paid off black ministers to suppress the black vote. The real problem, analysts said, was that Florio focused his campaign more on winning back middle-class white voters infuriated by his tax hikes than on courting minorities.

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COUP BREWING? Growing Democratic grumbling threatens House Banking Committee Chairman Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.), who could face the sort of coup that in 1974 dethroned the panel’s last peppery populist, the late Wright Patman of Texas. Gonzalez’s heavy-handed attack on Rep. Jim Leach, the Iowa Republican who has been demanding hearings on the Whitewater controversy, “was merely symptomatic of an old man who takes on high-profile issues but is totally inept at focusing his committee on critical economic policies,” said a top aide to House Democratic leaders. . . . An eccentric loner, Gonzalez won high praise from Democrats for probing the savings and loan scandal and the U.S.-aided arms buildup of Iraq. But his banking panel did little work on the makeup of financial institutions as the nation reeled through four years of economic chaos. . . . “He’ll face a strong challenge at the (Democratic) caucus” in December, a colleague predicted.

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DOUBLE TALK: To the world, M. Larry Lawrence, the new U.S. emissary to Switzerland who hosted President Clinton on his Southern California vacation, will be known as Mr. Ambassador. But longtime friends plan to stick with a nickname recalling the “Catch-22” character Major Major. It’s Larry Larry.