Disarray Feared as Rival White House Camps Emerge

Eight months after President Clinton installed a strong White House chief of staff, a new power center is emerging that some aides and Democratic allies fear could undermine the President’s ability to deliver a consistent message once again.

At its head is Harold M. Ickes, who as deputy chief of staff for political affairs commands an operation that is rapidly increasing in importance with the approach of the 1996 presidential campaign year. Installed 13 months ago, Ickes’ influence has grown steadily since last fall’s midterm election, when some political advisers fell from favor in the eyes of the President and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Ickes’ growing influence was evident again Thursday, when the White House chose as its new political director an aide with strong political and personal ties to him. The official, Douglas B. Sosnick, is a well-regarded political veteran who has worked in the White House congressional affairs office and for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The appointment added another piece to a White House political apparatus that has been built to Ickes’ specifications. At his urging, the White House in January chose Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd as general chairman and Donald Fowler as day-to-day chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Some Democrats challenged the choice of Dodd in particular as a threat to Clinton’s centrist agenda.

Many well-situated Democrats think that Ickes will be similarly prominent in choosing the chairman of Clinton’s reelection committee, when that job is filled in the spring.

“At every step of the way, Harold’s becoming stronger,” said one Democrat close to the Clinton political operation.

Ickes and Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta, who is more moderate than his liberal deputy, already have disagreed on policy issues, ranging from the need for further deficit reduction to the choice of party chairman. Although they have avoided an open rift, some aides have fretted that the two men are developing separate viewpoints and fiefdoms that could signal sharper conflicts ahead.

Others said that, at the very least, the emergence of these two powerful camps threatens to turn the senior staff again into a cacophony of conflicting voices--replicating the precise situation that Panetta was brought in to remedy.

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Conflicting advice from many powerful and independent aides has been blamed for the White House lack of focus during much of the Administration.

At least a few top Democrats are worried that Ickes’ rise poses a direct threat to Panetta’s control. The New York labor lawyer has known the Clintons since the early 1970s--far longer than Panetta--and won their gratitude for his work in the 1992 political campaign and the transition.

Once expected to take the chief of staff job himself, Ickes has an open channel to both the Clintons and is said to have an especially strong rapport with Mrs. Clinton, who remains influential in policy matters. In one sign of the Clintons’ high esteem for Ickes, he was given oversight of politics, health care reform and the handling of the Whitewater controversy within three weeks of his arrival in January, 1994. His rise was unaffected by the Administration’s setbacks in those undertakings.

Now, Ickes is often the first official to see the President in the morning and the last to see him at night.

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One senior Democrat asserted that Panetta already may have ceded too much authority to his subordinate, not fully appreciating how central the political sphere is becoming as the presidential campaign year approaches. Panetta acquiesced to the selection of Dodd as DNC general chairman, this top Democrat said, even though his first choice was Rep. Robert G. Torricelli, a more moderate lawmaker from New Jersey.

“Leon’s been allowing Harold to win these battles, because they weren’t that important to him,” this Democrat said. “What he may not realize is that by the end of the year, they will be everything.”

Barry Toiv, a senior aide to Panetta, dismissed as “ridiculous” the suggestion that Ickes was independently installing political officials.

“These were joint recommendations that were made to the President,” he said. While Ickes “obviously has a lot of responsibility for politics” it is a chief of staff’s role to delegate, he said.

Ickes’ power over the political sphere expanded after the elections, when Tony Coelho, a former California member of the House Democratic leadership, scaled back the top advisory role to the White House that he had held during the election campaign.

Coelho, now a New York investment banker, was pushed by Panetta to take that job. But “he and Harold never saw eye to eye,” according to a Democrat who was close to both of them.

Dodd, Fowler, Sosnick and Ickes have strong ties to each other and to the liberal wing of the Demcratic Party, including such figures as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Sosnick was Dodd’s chief of staff.

Ickes had been thinking of giving the top reelection job to Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, who is well connected to some of the same circles, including Jackson. “Brown was going to round out the circle,” said one Democrat. But unresolved questions about the ethics of his business dealings now seem to have made that unlikely, he added.

In his current job, Ickes essentially is in charge of all White House operations that involve contact with the outside world: the political, intergovernmental, Cabinet and congressional offices and the “public liaison” operation that maintains contacts with external groups. Erskine Bowles, another deputy chief of staff, handles internal functions.

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While he is overshadowed by Panetta as outside spokesman for the White House, Ickes is valued for his decisiveness and his ability to get work done, often by working behind the scenes. One former top White House aide was fond of calling him, only half in jest, “Harold the Powerful.”

Even some Democratic operatives who find him abrasive believe that his competence is just what Clinton needs at the moment amid the pratfalls of other aides. Indeed, some insiders wonder whether the troubled nomination of surgeon general candidate Henry W. Foster Jr. will encourage the Clintons to give more power to Ickes.

Officially, Ickes works for Panetta. But often their realms function independently of one another.

The two men are sometimes known to compete for the time of subordinates. And each turns to a large group of outside consultants and Democratic veterans for advice. “Leon has his people; Harold has his people,” said one Democratic consultant.

Times staff writers John M. Broder and David Lauter contributed to this story.