For more than a year after the FBI probe went public, Casey stood by his man, keeping him on as chairman of his 2004 state treasurer's race. Casey says he didn't give Feldman a role in his U.S. Senate campaign.

Casey says Feldman's legal woes aren't the reason.

"When you run for federal office, it is a different process, a different system," Casey said.

Feldman has donated just $1,000 in the U.S. Senate race - to Santorum, in 2003. Santorum later gave the money to charity.

An ongoing FBI investigation into the campaign finances of Puerto Rico's governor, Anibal Acevedo Vila, has renewed the controversy around Feldman.

Authorities suspect that tens of thousands of dollars from Philadelphia-area donors in 2002 were "straw contributions" to avoid finance limits. Feldman has said he did only one Vila fund-raiser, and was not involved in any improper contributions.

Some of the checks under scrutiny were raised by Feldman and his business partner, Candido Negron, who was also generous to Casey ($192,000) and Rendell ($75,000) in the 2002 governor's race.

Feldman stopped fund-raising a year ago, and has turned his focus to real estate, among other ventures. He enjoyed being indispensable to candidates, but was wounded by news coverage of the City Hall bug probe, close friends say.

He no longer receives the adoration on display at a 2001 dinner, when a cast of heavyweights - Casey, Street, White, McGreevey, Hafer - paid tribute to him.

From the podium, Street described their close relationship, joking that anybody who could get his wife "to come to an event on a Saturday night - that's a special person. "

Fordham, the mayor's aide, said recently that he couldn't recall the last time Street and Feldman had spoken.