Contribution Inquiry May Cool Torricelli’s Hot Streak

At Rutgers University in the early 1970s, while other students wore cutoffs and T-shirts, Robert Torricelli dressed in three-piece suits and carried a briefcase.

While other candidates for student government draped banners in dorm halls, Torricelli was elected class president by hiring sound trucks and brass bands.

And before most Americans had heard the word “Watergate,” Torricelli was forced to resign as president of his sophomore class after the university concluded he had engaged in “gross unethical conduct” by sending a spy into his opponent’s camp.

Nearly 30 years later, the New Jersey Democratic senator is in trouble again, but the stakes are considerably higher. This time, the investigators work for the U.S. Justice Department and the Senate’s political balance may hinge on the outcome.

For about three years, a federal probe focusing on campaign contribution abuses appeared to pose no threat to Torricelli. But it’s now clear investigators have set their sights on one of the most gifted--and sometimes self-destructive--politicians of his generation.

The probe seeks to determine whether Torricelli, 49, illegally received cash, watches, rugs, jewelry, a television and Italian suits from a New Jersey businessman, David Chang, who last year pleaded guilty to making $53,700 in illegal political contributions to the senator’s 1996 campaign.

In recent years, Torricelli had done a number of favors for Chang, including taking him to meet officials in South Korea in a bit of international lobbying so brazen that U.S. diplomats later felt compelled to apologize to the South Korean government.

Torricelli, known as “The Torch” on Capitol Hill, has not been charged with any crime and denies any wrongdoing. He said recently he has “never violated any law of any kind.” He added: “I never would have believed that uncorroborated accusations of a man who is . . . awaiting sentencing to federal prison would [be] taken seriously against a U.S. senator.”

But the revelations have wounded him at a time when he should be enjoying his greatest political influence. He played a crucial role in his party’s surprising surge to parity in the Senate. As chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 2000 elections, he set fund-raising records, prodded candidates to enter races they won and helped guide a number of incumbents to victories.

“We wouldn’t have been close to [the Senate’s 50-50 party split] without Bob as chairman,” said Jim Jordan, who worked for Torricelli at the committee.

Torricelli faces reelection next year, and a race that seemed a lock for him now appears uncertain because of the federal probe. Even presumed allies are expressing concern. “Folks are going to want a greater explanation [from Torricelli],” said Thomas Giblin, chairman of New Jersey’s Democratic Party. “I don’t think it would be helpful to have this lingering as he approaches a Democratic primary in 2002.”

The fallout has knocked Torricelli on his heels, an unfamiliar posture for someone trained for politics almost from birth.

He grew up in a politically active family in Franklin Lakes, N.J. His father was an attorney. His mother, a librarian, tutored him about public policy, decorated his room with flags and played recordings for her son of speeches by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Torricelli won the first race he ever entered--for fifth-grade class president--and hasn’t lost since, a streak that carried through each year of high school, all four years at Rutgers, seven terms in the House and one in the Senate.

After college and law school (also at Rutgers), Torricelli was on the staff of Vice President Walter F. Mondale by age 27. In 1982, at age 31, he beat a Republican incumbent for a House seat.

Torricelli quickly displayed a knack for making headlines, whether he was flying to San Salvador to retrieve the corpse of a New Jersey journalist or striking up a romance with Bianca Jagger, ex-wife of the Rolling Stones’ lead singer.

But in his pursuit of publicity, Torricelli left some colleagues dumbfounded. In 1989, he took it upon himself to spearhead the legal defense of House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas), who was about to resign amid allegations he had taken improper gifts from a developer, George Mallick.

In a line of argument that later would strike other lawmakers as troubling and revealing, Torricelli implied that members ought to be more sympathetic to Wright because they too were surrounded by clumsy influence-seekers. “We all know George Mallick,” Torricelli said in a speech before the House Ethics Committee. Several years later, Torricelli met Chang.

An entrepreneur with interests ranging from grain exports to real estate, Chang was seeking help with international business deals. Chang also had money, and Torricelli increasingly saw fund-raising as his path to party prominence.

When Torricelli ran for the Senate seat vacated by Democrat Bill Bradley in 1996, Chang served on his campaign finance committee, and--it turned out later--illegally funneled $53,700 into the campaign through other donors.

But such troubles were on the distant horizon as Torricelli won the Senate race. His career ascendant, he aimed for a party leadership post and continued to lead a conspicuous personal life, dating Patricia Duff after her split from Revlon billionaire Ronald O. Perelman.

He took the helm of the Democratic Senate campaign group after the 1998 elections. While many in Congress consider the assignment a chore, Torricelli took to fund-raising with fervor, raking in a record $86 million. His efforts raised eyebrows within political circles. But his current legal troubles might never have materialized if it weren’t for the fund-raising scandals of the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign.

A Justice Department task force set up to investigate those abuses quickly spread to other 1996 races, including Torricelli’s. To date, seven Torricelli donors have pleaded guilty to making illegal contributions. But the probe didn’t appear to threaten the senator until Chang pleaded guilty last year and began cooperating with prosecutors.

Chang, 57, is a problematic witness. Prosecutors acknowledge he has used multiple passports, multiple Social Security numbers and was married to two women at the same time. He has been accused of witness tampering and making false statements. In one court motion, prosecutors wrote, “David Chang simply cannot be trusted on his word.”

With that in mind, FBI agents have labored to verify Chang’s accusations. They recently searched Torricelli’s house in Englewood, N.J., and combed the upscale shops nearby, collecting records that might show Chang purchased the items he claims to have given Torricelli.

Agents have paid at least three visits to a tailor, Chang Hwan Choi, who says that several years ago Chang took him to take measurements of a man authorities believe was Torricelli. Choi said he made 10 suits that Chang later bought for $400 apiece and claims to have given Torricelli.

But Choi said he told agents he could not be positive the man he measured was Torricelli. Shown a picture of the senator by a Times reporter recently, Choi said he was not sure. After taking a drive to view Torricelli’s house, Choi said he was “70% to 80%” sure that that was where Chang had taken him.

The FBI also has examined Torricelli’s 1996 purchase of a used Mercedes-Benz at Benzel Bush Motorcar Corp. in Englewood. A source familiar with the transaction said Chang came in to make an $8,000 down payment on the vehicle and said the senator would pick it up.

Nervous about the arrangement, dealership managers called Torricelli, who arrived the next day with Chang. The dealership returned Chang’s money, the source said, and Torricelli drove away with the car after putting down $5,000 in cash and paying the balance of the price, about $25,000, with a check from a home equity company.

Federal law prohibits government officials from accepting gifts, except from relatives and friends. Torricelli has gone out of his way to describe Chang as a former friend and said he has not received “illegal” gifts.

The investigation may hinge on whether there were violations of federal bribery statutes--namely, whether prosecutors can prove Chang got anything in return for the alleged gifts.

On that front, investigators are focusing on Torricelli’s efforts to assist Chang in an attempt to buy a South Korean insurance company some years ago. Torricelli wrote letters on Chang’s behalf, then the senator visited top officials in Seoul in July 1999, with Chang in tow. The U.S. Embassy had arranged a briefing for Torricelli with South Korea’s finance minister on “the state of the South Korean economy,” according to a former senior U.S. diplomat. Instead, the diplomat said, Torricelli showed up with Chang and proceeded to press the minister to grant favorable consideration to Chang’s bid.

“This was not the purpose of the meeting as we had understood it,” said the former diplomat, who asked not to be identified.

Torricelli declined to discuss specifics of the investigation. He insists it has not hampered his role in the Senate. Indeed, he is part of a group of Democrats who have been at the center of recent budget talks with the White House.

But the investigation isn’t helping the standing of a politician already unpopular with many in his own party.

Torricelli has a long history of run-ins with colleagues and engaged in a particularly venomous feud with his fellow New Jersey Democrat, former Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg. After the two verbally sparred at a party strategy meeting several years ago, Torricelli approached Lautenberg in front of numerous witnesses and threatened “to change my manhood,” as the retired senator delicately puts it.

During his current troubles, Senate Democrats aren’t rushing to Torricelli’s defense. Asked about the investigation recently, Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) simply replied that Torricelli claims to be innocent “and I have no reason not to believe him.”

Daschle knows that, with both parties vying for Senate control in the 2002 vote, Democrats can ill afford to lose the New Jersey seat.

Torricelli said he isn’t worried about his reelection prospects. “When I walk down the street [in New Jersey], people honk their horns and give thumbs up.”

The only thing voters worry about “is that [I’ll] get disgusted and walk away. I’ll never walk away.”