Two Strikes on Alioto

Joseph Alioto, son of a Sicilian fishmonger, won fortune as an antitrust lawyer and fame as mayor of San Francisco. Now he wants to run for the California governorship. In recent months, his political ambitions have been dealt two setbacks. First, Look magazine charged that he was involved with Mafia characters, an allegation to which the mayor responded with a $12.5 million libel suit (TIME, Sept. 19, 1969). Now, newspaper exposes report that Alioto apparently split legal fees with the then attorney general of Washington State.

Alioto last week denied any illegality or impropriety and depicted the brouhaha as a Republican plot to kill off his political chances. It began in 1962, when 15 Washington State public utility districts hired State Attorney General John O'Connell and his assistant. George Faler, to manage their antitrust suits against electrical manufacturers accused of price fixing. O'Connell in turn retained Alioto, then a private citizen, to handle the suits in court. Alioto's fee was to be 15% of damages won, up to a limit of $1,000,000. He proved so successful, however, that in 1965 O'Connell, apparently without telling the clients, abolished the fee limit. Alioto eventually was paid about $2,300,000 for collecting damages of $16,095,591. He gave $802,815 of his fees to O'Connell and Faler--for work on the cases, insisted Alioto, not as a referral fee. Later, two of the utility districts complained that they had not been notified of the fee hike, and Alioto refunded around $200,000 to them.

It would be difficult in the best of circumstances for Alioto to win a Democratic primary against Jesse Unruh. Democratic leader in the California assembly and a declared candidate for governor. Besides, it is unlikely that any Democrat can unseat Republican Governor Reagan this year. Now, however, two strikes may be enough to finish Alioto politically, though he still insists otherwise.

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