Guv praises Fumo record as Vince bows out

IT WAS UNUSUAL to see uniformed police checking reporters' credentials at the Convention Center conference room yesterday where state Sen. Vince Fumo would announce his retirement.

Even more unusual was seeing Fumo back out of a fight.

Saying he wouldn't ask citizens for their votes "while there is a cloud hanging over my head," Fumo announced he would withdraw from his re-election battle and end his 30-year Senate career in January.

Fumo goes on trial in September, facing a 139-count corruption indictment. He said he had agreed to serve the remainder of his term at the "insistence" of Gov. Rendell, who joined Fumo to praise his record yesterday.

"Probably no living individual has had a more positive impact on the lives our most vulnerable Philadelphians over the long course of time than Senator Fumo has," Rendell said.

Even Fumo's critics have acknowledged that his political skills and mastery of state government have yielded benefits for Philadelphia and his district.

But Fumo's reach extends far beyond the Senate. His influence and alliances ripple through city and state government, as well as the judiciary, businesses, community groups and nonprofit agencies.

He has gotten results for himself and his constituents, and made colorful waves doing it.

Enter "Fumo" and "outburst" into a database of Daily News and Inquirer stories, and you get 27 hits.

Among the more memorable was a 1993 exchange in which Fumo told Republican State Sen. Robert Jubelirer to "shut up," to which Jubelirer replied, "Get a psychiatrist."

"Why don't you, and why don't you get a divorce lawyer while you're at it?" Fumo shot back.

Fumo is study in many contrasts.

He's a supporter of gay rights who had to apologize for calling a Republican leader a "faggot." He's a member of the ACLU and the NRA. He's a man of wealth and expensive tastes who has proven himself skilled in rowhouse ward fights.

He's a lawyer, a real-estate broker, an electrician, a pilot and now a gentleman farmer. He's also a member of Mensa, the society for highly intelligent people, and one of the keys to his success is his habit of hiring and keeping talented staff.

Communications consultant Ken Snyder recalled that he first met Fumo in 2000, after Snyder was fired by Mayor John Street after working for his successful 1999 election campaign.

Fumo had backed rival Marty Weinberg in the Democratic primary, and Snyder had frequently dealt snappy quotes criticizing Fumo.

"He called me as soon as Street fired me and we met at his house," Snyder recalls. "He said, 'You know what? You kicked me in the balls for four straight months. I want to hire you.' "

The quality of Fumo's Harrisburg staff has kept him an indispensible player in Harrisburg over the past year, despite his indictment on corruption charges.

The current case against Fumo isn't his first brush with corruption charges.

A 1978 vote-fraud charge was dropped, but Fumo and two co-defendants were convicted by a federal jury of ghost-payroll charges in 1980.

Fumo was re-elected to the Senate 10 days after his conviction, and the following spring a judge vacated the conviction.

Fumo steadily built his power in the Senate and by 1985 was the leading Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, a position he used to expand his influence.

Former state House Speaker Bob O'Donnell said Fumo has been fearlessly creative in addressing issues, from SEPTA funding to the city's 1991 financial crisis.

"He has a healthy disregard for the world as he finds it," O'Donnell said yesterday. "Like all great leaders and entrepreneurs, he doesn't carefully calculate the odds and lay back, and that enables him to get in there and change things."

It might be Fumo's talent for innovation that led him into the unusual arrangement that has ended his career and could send him to prison.

In 1998 Fumo used the leverage of a Peco Energy rate case to get the utility to give $17 million to Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, a South Philadelphia nonprofit agency largely run by Fumo staff and allies.

A grand-jury investigation led to charges that Fumo used the organization's cash to benefit himself and his friends.

"We're all complex people," Rendell said yesterday. "Nobody is 100 percent good and nobody is 100 percent bad. We see that every day . . . when you total up the score [of Fumo's career], the balance tips dramatically in favor of Vince Fumo." *