Snyder, Prosecutors Ponder the Future

Arthur K. Snyder has gone by many titles in his long, fascinating life. He has been a hard-nosed attorney, a colorful Los Angeles city councilman and a notorious political lobbyist.

Now he is considering being a reverent man of the cloth.

And he swears he is not kidding.

Fresh from a state appeals court decision that overturned a conspiracy and money laundering conviction that could have put him behind bars for six months, Snyder said he is seriously considering becoming a Baptist minister.

“I can probably function as a minister today with all the experience I’ve had,” he said in an interview Thursday from his small law offices near downtown.

Snyder said he had a scholarship to attend a Baptist seminary in Berkeley when he was in his 20s, but decided to go to law school.

His polished audacity brought a variety of reactions from his friends and associates, none of whom were shocked. “He’d fit right in with Jerry Falwell, and Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker,” said one disdainful council aide. “No one would know the difference.”

For more than 30 years, Snyder has been a consummate City Hall insider, first as a councilman representing parts of the Eastside and then as a savvy and influential lobbyist.

But his career has been marked by political scandal and personal intrigue. In 1982, Snyder was fined $14,000 by the state Fair Political Practices Commission--a record penalty at the time for local officials--for violating confict-of-interest and financial disclosure laws.

Throughout the years, he was involved in car accidents in city vehicles, faced misdemeanor drunk driving charges and was embroiled in ugly divorce and child custody battles.

Still, Snyder--known to some as “the Artful Dodger”--prevailed as an influential City Hall insider and one of the city’s most successful fund-raisers.

But his career took a stunning turn in 1992, when state and local ethics officials began to investigate charges that he helped Evergreen America Corp., a shipping conglomerate with links to a proposed downtown development, launder $170,000 in illegal donations to City Council members and others.

He was sentenced after pleading guilty to misdemeanor criminal charges, but an appeals court overturned the conviction Wednesday.

Snyder said the five-year case has imposed a terrible toll on his health and forced him to consider a religious calling.

At the height of his career, Snyder employed 13 full-time workers in a 37th-floor office on Bunker Hill that overlooked City Hall and the Eastside. He now works with one part-time employee in a cramped walk-up office on Sunset Boulevard. He types his own legal briefs and answers the phone himself.

“I guess my life starts over again,” he said.

If he doesn’t join the ministry, Snyder said, he will continue to practice law as he did before he became a councilman in 1967.

But he did not rule out some future involvement in Los Angeles politics.

“I’m going to think about it for a while,” he said.

Regardless of their opinion of Snyder, most observers were sure he would be as successful in front of a congregation as he was as a councilman and a lobbyist.

“The great orator that he is, he will keep the collection plates full,” said political consultant Harvey Englander, who worked with Snyder in City Hall for many years.

Other associates said they believe that the corruption case had a profound impact on Snyder.

“Whatever you think of Art, he has been to hell and back,” said Steve Afriat, a lobbyist and former City Hall aide. “Maybe he has found some spirituality.”