Squadron's Senate Fund-Raiser: Lots of Staff, Few Electeds

Does this mean Ken Diamondstone is not running again?

Mr. Diamonstone did fairly well against an incumbent, but is wealthy and self-funded. Does this guy (who I never heard of until last week) have money?

Like so many others who claim to be "of the people," this guy is from a wealthy and connected family. Go ahead and Google his father, Howard Squadron, or see his obit from the NYT, excerpts of which are below:

Howard M. Squadron, 75, Influential Lawyer, Dies
Published: December 28, 2001

Howard M. Squadron, who made himself one of the city's powerful lawyers by mixing an active law practice with liberal politics, support for the arts, a keen sense of public relations and ties to influential clients like Rupert Murdoch, died Wednesday night at his home in Riverdale, the Bronx.

Mr. Squadron, the Bronx-born son of a delicatessen counterman, led national Jewish groups and city cultural organizations from the Manhattan law firm where he was the senior partner, Squadron Ellenoff Plesent & Sheinfeld.

In the 1970's and 80's he sometimes seemed to have a pipeline to everyone who mattered, from presidents and mayors to corporate chieftains, important choreographers and the Studio 54 owners Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell.

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For many years he was a leading national spokesmen for American Jews, and was a regular voice in support of Israel on talk show broadcasts like Barry Gray's radio show and David Susskind's television program. From 1978 to 1984 he was president of the American Jewish Congress, a legal rights organization. From 1980 to 1982, he was chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a group of more than 30 religious and secular organizations.

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With a nearly photographic memory and a bulging Rolodex, he was one of those lawyers in New York who knew how to get things done. One client was Irving Schneider, the multimillionaire business partner of Harry Helmsley in Helmsley-Spear Inc., one of the city's largest real estate management companies. Mr. Squadron was an adviser to David N. Dinkins long before Mr. Dinkins became mayor, and he could be seen around the city whispering in the ears of ambassadors and senators.

Donna E. Shalala, the former secretary of health and human services, said in an interview that she relied on Mr. Squadron for advice when she was president of Hunter College for eight years in the 1980's.

''For someone like me who was leading a complicated institution, he was my guide through the complicated ethnic politics of New York,'' Ms. Shalala said. ''He knew New York.''

In his law practice, Mr. Squadron was known as a tough strategist and negotiator representing developers, mortgage brokers and communications companies, including Playboy magazine.

For decades, one of Mr. Squadron's most important clients was Mr. Murdoch's News Corporation. Beginning in 1973, when Mr. Murdoch shifted his focus from his Australian and English newspapers to operations in the United States, Mr. Squadron was his legal counsel in this country.

Mr. Squadron used his New York contacts to help ease Mr. Murdoch's transition in the face of hostility against him as a tabloid-style publisher and a foreigner. He advised Mr. Murdoch during his purchase of The New York Post, New York magazine and other publications.

In a speech several years ago, Mr. Murdoch said Mr. Squadron played an important role in helping the News Corporation become one of the largest media companies in the world.

In the 1980's Mr. Squadron's law firm was embarrassed when one of its clients, Wedtech Corporation, collapsed. Prosecutors accused Wedtech, a Bronx military contractor that had benefited from government contracts steered toward minority-owned businesses, of fraudulent operations.

In court, Mr. Squadron had to respond to testimony by former Wedtech executives who said lawyers at the firm had helped them structure a stock deal that helped the company falsely appear to be minority controlled. In his testimony, Mr. Squadron said he had known nothing of any such plan and had only a ''very vague'' knowledge of the details of Wedtech's stock purchase deal. The case resulted in the convictions of several politicians on influence-peddling charges.

Mr. Squadron relished a fight on behalf of his clients, and they appreciated the practical approach he brought to such confrontations, said Howard J. Rubenstein, a public relations consultant who sometimes worked with Mr. Squadron. ''If you were in a brawl, a legal brawl, you would want him in your corner,'' Mr. Rubenstein said. ''He not only had legal smarts but street smarts.''

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Mr. Squadron was of the generation of young professionals who saw nearly unlimited opportunity after the end of World War II. He was a City College graduate who, at 21, was one of the youngest students in the Columbia Law School class of 1947. Lawyers who worked with him said he always retained the self-confidence of a prodigy who could read Latin and recite poetry he had learned as a child.

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In 1967, his wife of 14 years, the former Lorraine Vlosky, died of an aneurysm, leaving him with their three young children. In 1972, he married Anne Strickland and they had two children. He is survived by his wife; a brother, Arthur; eight grandchildren; and his five children, Bill, of Scarsdale, N.Y., Richard, of Landenberg, Pa., Diane, of Short Hills, N.J., Seth, of Los Angeles, and Daniel, a senior at Yale.

Mr. Squadron could be frank about the value of his contacts, sometimes explaining the importance of a well-placed favor. But he would also remind people that he had come from modest beginnings in the Bronx.