[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                             COELHO IS BACK

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                         HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, August 19, 1994

  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, this is the epitome of a scandalous 
appointment. Have we forgotten why Coelho sneaked out of town on June 
15, 1989?
  Please, my colleagues, read and absorb this John J. Pitney article, 
and please read between the lines.
  Pitney left out Vernon S&L and Columbia S&L. Sleeze supreme.

                   [From the LA Times, Aug. 16, 1994]

                  Democrats, Bring Back Their Hit Man

                        (By John J. Pitney, Jr.)

       In his inaugural address, President Clinton said that 
     Washington had become ``a place of intrigue and 
     calculation,'' where influential people and special interests 
     maneuver for position. ``Let us resolve to reform our 
     politics,'' he proclaimed, ``so that power and privilege no 
     longer shout down the voice of the people.''
       America recently got a sign of how far the Clinton 
     presidency has strayed from those noble sentiments. On orders 
     from Leon Panetta, White House chief of staff, Democratic 
     National Chairman David Wilhelm has relinquished much of his 
     authority to a new ``special adviser''; former congressman 
     Tony Coelho of California. Power, privilege and cutthroat 
     politics--for Coelho, they're not a problem but a way of 
     life.
       As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign 
     Committee during the 1980s, Coelho had a simple creed, which 
     he summed up in a speech to a lobbying group: Special 
     interest is not a nasty word.'' As a Democratic colleague 
     once said, Coelho gained ``a reputation as the guy who sucked 
     up all the PAC money in the world.'' He may have exaggerated, 
     but only a little. Coelho aggressively solicited special-
     interest money by making bald references to his party's 
     power.
       ``Business has to deal with us whether they want to or 
     not,'' he once said. On another occasion, he offered: ``We're 
     going to be in the majority for a very long time, so it 
     doesn't make good business sense to give to Republicans.''
       In a 1986 article, journalist Gregg Easterbrook put it 
     another way: ``If that pitch sounds like a mixture of 
     protection racket (nice little multinational you have there; 
     too bad if anything should happen to it) and an offer to play 
     ball, that's exactly how it was intended to sound.'' Books 
     such as ``Honest Graft'' and ``The Big Fix'' detail how the 
     savings-and-loan industry, among others, used its privileged 
     access to shape regulatory legislation during the 1980s.
       Coelho's attitudes toward privilege also colored his view 
     of justice. In 1981, he wrote a letter on congressional 
     stationery seeking a lighter sentence for a campaign donor's 
     son who had been convicted of a brutal murder. In 1989, he 
     ardently defended a congressional aide whose criminal past 
     had been uncovered by the Washington Post. Years earlier, 
     according to the news account, the aide had assaulted a woman 
     with a hammer and knife, but served only 27 months in prison. 
     Though the aide had since risen to the top of the Capitol 
     staff world, he never offered his victim any financial 
     assistance. ``Rightly or wrongly,'' Coelho said, the aide 
     ``owed his debt to society, not to this young woman.''
       It would be strange if Coelho emerged as party spokesman on 
     crime victims' rights.
       That probably won't happen, since Coelho always viewed 
     public policy as a means to political victory, not an end in 
     itself. ``He comes out of the California school of 
     politics,'' one Democratic aide said, ``media and a lot of 
     flash.'' As Coelho himself told columnist James Kilpatrick in 
     1984: ``The issues are not that important to people. Issues 
     will take care of themselves.''
       As the House Democrats' campaign chief, Coelho subordinated 
     ideas to attacks:
       ``My job is to be the hit man.'' In 1982, he tried to 
     frighten elderly Americans into believing that Republicans 
     would take away Social Security. He candidly admitted: ``If 
     the psychology of fear is reversed, then people will listen 
     to the Republican message.''
       Coelho also attacked GOP ethics, but he eventually 
     encountered ethical problems of his own. During the 1980s, a 
     troubled savings-and-loan paid for a number of dockside 
     cruises and parties for Coelho, who used the events to 
     entertain rich political donors. When the arrangement was 
     exposed, the campaign committee and Coelho's own reelection 
     fund reimbursed the S&L. In 1989, the press revealed that an 
     executive of another troubled thrift had bought Coelho a 
     $100,000 junk bond and that Coelho repaid the executive with 
     money partly borrowed from the S&L. By failing to disclose 
     the loan, Coelho had apparently violated House rules and 
     opened himself to withering criticism. Under fire, he 
     resigned from Congress.
       Only after his resignation did Coelho reveal the true depth 
     of his cynicism. At the 1988 Democratic convention, he had 
     thundered: ``When the titans of Wall Street were looting the 
     small investors on Main Street, where was George Bush?'' 
     Coelho pledged that his party would fight ``the corporate 
     cannibals on Wall Street.'' So what did he do after leaving 
     the Hill?
       He became a New York investment banker.

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