As a dealmaker, Fumo brought the money home

HARRISBURG - In the 1990s, State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo created a secret economic-development fund, fueled by money from New Jersey commuters, that raised tens of millions of dollars for projects in Philadelphia.

Nearly two dozen community organizations, business projects and nonprofits in the city benefited. But so did the preschool his children had attended.

That was the classic Fumo way: Help Philadelphia, but along the way take care of people and projects near and dear to him.

It is, even his staunchest critics acknowledge, a brand of politics that few others in either Philadelphia or Harrisburg could have pulled off so deftly and effectively, year after year, for three decades. Fumo's aggressive, swashbuckling style in many ways harked back to a different era, one in which getting the deal sealed was paramount - no matter how messy.

And in Philadelphia's case, it paid major dividends: Over the years, Fumo boasted, he got a legislature hostile to the city to fork over $8 billion.

"Sen. Fumo has been important to every big Philadelphia project for almost three decades," said former Mayor John F. Street, who rattled off a long list of examples, including the Convention Center and the city's new stadiums.

"It will be a long time before anyone in Harrisburg achieves the kind of prominence and raw power enjoyed by Sen. Fumo," Street added. "In many ways, it's the end of an era in Harrisburg."

The depth and breadth of Fumo's influence was vast and breathtaking.

Over time, he expanded his political sphere to exert control over the election of city judges, City Council members, Democratic City Committee members, and ward leaders. His power base also included a slew of state and city boards, as well as quasi-governmental boards and nonprofits.

And he was the man mayors and governors had to court to guarantee their agenda in the legislature. Until his indictment last February, he was the ranking Democrat on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee - and for years was among the few legislators who handcrafted Pennsylvania's operating budget.

He used that power with a vengeance. For projects large and small, Fumo helped bring the money home. Neighborhood improvements in the Italian Market, new helicopters for city police, a hospice for AIDS patients, a court for women seeking protection from abuse: All won with help from Fumo.

Through a nonprofit, Citizens' Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, he helped raise money to clean streets, revitalize the Passyunk Avenue shopping district, and fund charter schools.

He won the grants in classic Fumo fashion: using political brinkmanship, without apology, to extract huge grants from an electric utility and the agency that operates bridges over the Delaware.

But it was that nonprofit that eventually earned the scrutiny of the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI, and the IRS.

He was indicted in February 2007 on charges of spending more than $2 million from the charity and taxpayers for his own purposes - on everything from political polls to high-end vacuum cleaners for all of his houses. Fumo, prosecutors say, grew addicted to "other people's money." Fumo is fighting the charges.

Love him or hate him, almost everyone in Pennsylvania's political elite agreed: His retirement will be a major blow to the city. "The city is going to suffer," said U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady, a longtime Fumo friend and ally. "Without question, he's the most effective legislator we've ever seen.

"He can talk to the boardroom at GM and to the barroom at Eighth and Christian," said Brady, also chairman of the city Democratic organization.

"It's a huge loss for Philadelphia," added David L. Cohen, a Comcast executive who was chief of staff to Gov. Rendell when he was mayor. Cohen called Fumo "a once-in-a-multiple-generational breed of being able to protect the city's interest. . . . There's no understudy."

If he liked you, say his colleagues, he'd work tirelessly to help. If he didn't, he'd try to crush you.

"Vince could be a bully," said Bob Jubelirer, the former longtime president pro tempore of the state Senate.

Jubelirer recalled yesterday that during a heated debate on the floor in the 1980s, Fumo cocked his fist, prompting other lawmakers to get between the two men.

In 2004, Fumo yelled at Jubelirer while on the Senate floor and, several times, called him a "faggot." He later apologized to the gay community, but not to Jubelirer.

Still, Jubelirer said yesterday, "you can get mad at the guy, but you could never stay mad."

Fumo, he said, is "someone who had a determination and a will, and would go to any length of any kind to get things done that mattered to him."

Senate Minority Leader Bob Mellow (D., Lackawanna) said he was saddened to see Fumo leave a career that "he loved as much as his family."

Mellow said the public, for the most part, knew Fumo only as a smart and brash politician who wanted to "develop a persona that was hard to penetrate."

Most never saw the human side, said Mellow, a close friend and ally of Fumo's for 30 years.

Yesterday, he recalled an episode from more than a decade ago when Fumo was rushed to a Harrisburg emergency room with an impacted colon and didn't have his family there.

Mellow stayed with him the whole night as a depressed Fumo cried on his shoulder.

"It was a tale of two cities," said Mellow. "You wouldn't realize you were dealing with the same person."