Abscam

Slightly repentant and still the politician, former Mayor Angelo Errichetti returned to Camden yesterday after serving 32 months in a federal reformatory for a 1980 Abscam conviction. "I'm free and clear in every respect," Errichetti said yesterday afternoon, a few hours after he was released from the Federal Prison Camp in Danbury, Conn. He said he would look for work as a "financial consultant, that sort of thing. " Errichetti, 57, was one of South Jersey's most powerful political brokers before he was implicated as a key figure in the Abscam investigation.

Five years ago, Raymond Lederer became the only congressman indicted in the Abscam case to win re-election. And though he subsequently was convicted and sent to prison, Lederer seems about to prove once again that in politics, popular support conquers all. Lederer, released from federal prison in April 1984, is expected to win election to the leadership job of the Philadelphia Democratic Party's 18th Ward in Fishtown. Members of the ward committee say Lederer will be nominated to replace Mario Driggs, the current ward leader, who will be sworn in as a Muncipal judge on Monday.

U.S. District Judge John Fullam, who presided over such notable cases as the Abscam political-corruption probe and the landmark bankruptcy of Penn Central, said Wednesday that he planned to step down. "I plan to retire as of April 15," said Fullam, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. "I will no longer be taking cases," he told The Inquirer, "but I will finish up what I have on my plate. " Asked about his retirement plans, Fullam quipped: "I hope to continue to breathe.

Former City Councilman Harry P. Jannotti, released in September from federal prison after serving a 4 1/2-month term for his Abscam bribery conviction, has been appointed to a $30,800-a-year City Council job. Council President Joseph E. Coleman confirmed yesterday that he had named Jannotti executive director of the Veterans Advisory Commission, a little- known agency under Council control that coordinates city veterans' observances and refers...

City Solicitor Handsel B. Minyard ruled yesterday that the state constitution forbids former City Councilman Harry P. Jannotti from assuming the post of director of the city's Veterans Advisory Council because of his conviction for bribery in the Abscam scandal. After receiving Minyard's decision late yesterday, Council President Joseph E. Coleman, who appointed Jannotti to the $30,865-a-year post early this week, announced he was withdrawing the appointment "in spite of his (Jannotti's)

More than four years after the humiliation of Abscam drove him from City Council, Harry P. Jannotti walked into the city's election office yesterday to recapture the past. With neither the swagger of a Frank Rizzo nor the icy confidence of a Wilson Goode, the 62-year-old tavern owner and felon quietly presented the City Commission with his nominating petitions to run in the Democratic primary for the 7th District Council seat he held from 1969 to 1983. His petitions contained more than 2,600 signatures, nearly 2,000 more than needed.

Exuding the same relaxed, dapper, confident style as when he was South Jersey's biggest political power, Angelo Errichetti returned home to Camden yesterday after serving 32 months in a federal prison. "I feel great. The past is behind me. I'm starting life over," declared the 57-year-old two-term Camden mayor and former state senator. Once considered the most powerful and popular Democrat in the southern half of the state, Errichetti was the first politician hooked by Abscam, the FBI sting that led to 19 convictions, including six congressmen and a U.S. senator.

Raymond F. Lederer is back where he never left: Fishtown politics. The former congressman was unanimously elected 18th Ward Democratic leader last night, returning to the post he had held until a political scandal known as Abscam sent him to jail. Lederer, 47, replaces Mario Driggs, who resigned last month after he was sworn in as a Municipal judge. The party election among committeemen and women of the 18th Ward was over in a matter of minutes. Then it was beer time for Democrats at the Union Republican Club, a private club on Girard Avenue that Lederer said long ago lost its political coloring.

Job security doesn't get much better than being a congressman in South Jersey. Not since 1980, when Republican Chris Smith unseated Democrat Frank Thompson has an incumbent congressman lost a reelection campaign in the four congressional districts that cover the region. It took the Abscam scandal, in which several representatives were ensnared in an FBI sting operation, to bring Thompson down. Indeed, dislodging a congressman anywhere in America is an almost-futile exercise.

An Abscam conspiracy conviction in 1980 was not enough to knock Harry P. Jannotti from the ranks of Democratic ward leaders. It took a ward fight eight years later to do that. Now, after a 10-year absence, Jannotti is back as leader of the 19th Ward in West Kensington. The former City Council member was one of possibly several new leaders to emerge from Democratic elections Monday night in 69 Philadelphia wards. "It's time we started getting the neighborhood back in shape," Jannotti said yesterday from the tavern on York Street that he has owned for nearly half of a century.

Angelo J. Errichetti, 84, a former Camden mayor and state senator who was South Jersey's premier Democratic power broker in the decade before his 1981 bribery conviction in the Abscam scandal, has died after a long illness. He had been living in Ventnor, N.J. During two mayoral terms, starting in 1973, he built a reputation as an unflagging booster for his hometown, where his father, a Neapolitan immigrant, stoked coal at the shipyard to feed seven children. Mr. Errichetti's efforts to revive Camden's moribund economy were said to occupy 12 hours on a typical day, yet he took on a second office simultaneously.

The House Judiciary Committee's rejection of the most recent bill calling for the merit selection of judges caused me to reflect on our system of electing judges in Pennsylvania, and why I have chosen not to put myself through the ordeal that candidates for the state judiciary have to endure in order to take a place on the bench. It also made me think back to a swearing-in of a Common Pleas Court judge I attended in Philadelphia several months ago. The swearing-in was for a successful candidate in last fall's election, an attorney with 25 years' experience in the District Attorney's Office, someone who is bright and honest, and exercises good judgment; in other words, someone who deserves to be on the bench.

Melvin R. "Randy" Primas Jr., 62, the first African American mayor of Camden and a prominent force for decades in the city's economic recovery efforts, died Thursday, March 1. Mr. Primas, who had bone-marrow cancer, lived in Fort Mill, S.C., at the time of his death. A member of a prominent Camden family, Mr. Primas was first elected to City Council at age 23 and was elected mayor at 31. Affable and optimistic in a city beset by crime and poverty, Mr. Primas won the support of residents and business leaders as he tried to redevelop Camden's Delaware River waterfront and restore vitality to the city's neighborhoods.

Melvin R. "Randy" Primas Jr., 62, the first African American mayor of Camden and a prominent force for decades in the city's economic recovery efforts, died Thursday, March 1. Mr. Primas, who had bone-marrow cancer, lived in Fort Mill, S.C., at the time of his death. A member of a prominent Camden family, Mr. Primas was first elected to City Council at age 23 and was elected mayor at 31. Affable and optimistic in a city beset by crime and poverty, Mr. Primas won the support of residents and business leaders as he tried to redevelop Camden's Delaware River waterfront and restore vitality to the city's neighborhoods.

James F. Logue, 88, of Wynnewood, an accountant and decorated World War II veteran, died Wednesday, Nov. 30, of an apparent heart attack at home. Mr. Logue grew up in Southwest Philadelphia, where he delivered newspapers and played the bugle for the Archer-Epler Drum and Bugle Corps. He graduated from West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys in 1941. During World War II, Mr. Logue served in the Army with the 83d "Thunderbolt" Infantry Division. On June 18, 1944, he landed on Omaha Beach.

U.S. District Judge John Fullam, who presided over such notable cases as the Abscam political-corruption probe and the landmark bankruptcy of Penn Central, said Wednesday that he planned to step down. "I plan to retire as of April 15," said Fullam, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. "I will no longer be taking cases," he told The Inquirer, "but I will finish up what I have on my plate. " Asked about his retirement plans, Fullam quipped: "I hope to continue to breathe.

U.S. District Judge John Fullam, who presided over such notable cases as the Abscam political-corruption probe and the landmark bankruptcy of Penn Central, said Wednesday that he planned to step down. "I plan to retire as of April 15," said Fullam, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. "I will no longer be taking cases," he told The Inquirer, "but I will finish up what I have on my plate. " Asked about his retirement plans, Fullam quipped: "I hope to continue to breathe.

Former City Council President George X. Schwartz was a dominating political force in Philadelphia for two decades. Until his conviction in 1980 in the FBI Abscam corruption sting, he wielded power and smoked big cigars with equal flair. Mr. Schwartz, 95, died Friday at home in the William Penn House near Rittenhouse Square. His son, William G. Schwartz, said his father had been hospitalized five weeks ago with pneumonia and fluid in his lungs. As family and friends gather for his funeral today they will remember the legacy of a man who doted on family, constituents, and the city he served as a councilman and ward leader, but also the legacy that ended in one of the nation's more controversial political-corruption investigations.