Fumo friend is a principal at firm that benefited

Mayors, governors, presidents. As a top Democratic fund-raiser, Philadelphia attorney Thomas A. Leonard long has had friends in high places.

His relationship with one powerful friend - former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo - goes way back, to the early 1970s, when both were finishing law school at Temple University.

Leonard's name came up in Fumo's fraud trial this week when former Verizon chairman Daniel Whelan testified that the former senator had strong-armed the company to give almost $3 million in legal business to the law firm Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell & Hippel. Leonard is chairman of the firm's litigation committee.

Whelan said the work for Obermayer was part of Fumo's political price for dealing with an effort to break up Verizon's communications businesses in Pennsylvania. Fumo faces no charges in connection with the demand.

Leonard, a former city controller who is known in boardrooms as well as in politics, typically makes himself available to reporters. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment yesterday and Tuesday from The Inquirer.

Martin Weinberg, chairman of the firm and a former mayoral candidate, also did not return calls yesterday.

Philadelphia may be the nation's sixth-largest city, but it is a small world in law, business and politics. Affable, always well-dressed, and still boyish-looking in his 60s, Leonard has been a player on many levels.

He was elected controller in 1979. Four years later, as an independent, he ran a distant third in a three-way race for mayor that Democrat W. Wilson Goode won.

Mary Ellen Balchunis, who worked for Goode in the mayoral contest and at City Hall, remembered Leonard yesterday as a fair fighter.

Now an assistant professor of political science at La Salle University, Balchunis said Leonard had evolved into a political insider respected by friend and foe.

"He's one of those people - a rainmaker, a kingmaker, if you will - who helps support, endorse and finance some of the candidates," she said.

"But I think it's all in an above-board, ethical way," she said. "That's not what I'd say about all politicians, but I can safely say that of him."

Leonard was a top backer of Gov. Rendell's two gubernatorial runs and helped lead Rendell's two successful campaigns for mayor in the 1990s.

In the 1992 and 1996 elections, he was Pennsylvania finance chairman for former President Bill Clinton. He also was vice chairman for finance of the Democratic National Committee.

Last year, like most state Democratic insiders, he backed New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for president. But he became a member of President-elect Barack Obama's team after Obama defeated Clinton in the party nomination battle.

Last month, when Bill Clinton released names of donors to his foundation, Leonard was on the list. He had given $50,000 in 2001.

"I would have to rank Tommy as one of the top four or five people statewide in terms of [Democratic] fund-raising . . . and one of the top 20 or so nationally," said Carl E. Singley, a former Temple law dean.

In the 1999 mayoral race, Singley backed John F. Street in a six-way Democratic primary that Street won. Leonard and Fumo backed their mutual friend, Weinberg.

Fumo and Leonard formerly were associated with the law firm Dilworth, Paxson L.L.C. Whelan said in federal court that Fumo at first had wanted Verizon business to go to that firm. Whelan said he rejected that demand because Fumo would have benefited personally.

Leonard's on-line profile at the Obermayer firm lists him as having served as chairman of the Delaware Valley Real Estate Investment Fund. He has been on the boards of Independence Blue Cross, Hahnemann University Hospital, the World Affairs Council, and CORA Services.

He and housing developer Scott Mazo plan a $25 million office building at 41st and Market Streets.

"Smooth is the word I would use for Tommy - very smart, very polished, very smooth," Singley said. "I have never seen him angry."