Influence Checked

CALIFORNIA From his plush apartment in Sacramento's Hotel Senator across the street from the State Capitol, mountainous (300 Ib.) Arthur H. Samish, 56, has directed one of the most effective lobbying operations of modern times. "I'm the governor of the legislature; to hell with the governor of California," good-humored "Artie" Samish liked to say. When Earl Warren was governor, he agreed, saying, "On matters that affect his clients, Artie unquestionably has more power than the governor."

Artie's clients from time to time have included some of California's beer, liquor, cigarette, motor bus, trucking and railroad companies; some race tracks, banks and mortgage firms. Samish was once credited with "owning" 30 of the state's 80 legislators, with electing a California attorney general and a mayor of San Francisco, and with dictating the selection of several state assembly speakers and the entire membership of the two legislative committees which concern him most. His efforts seem to have paid off: California has no state cigarette tax and no other state has a lower liquor or beer tax. Artie used his clients' slush funds, e.g., $150,000 a year from the brewers alone, for campaign advertising on behalf of his legislative candidates. Sometimes he backed two or more candidates in the same race just to make sure he was riding a winner.

Lobbyist Samish was seldom seen in the Capitol itself. He kept voluminously informed through an intelligence network, made up of stenographers, clerks, politicians, businessmen, gamblers, gangsters and high state officials. Sometimes Artie mischievously dropped in at a legislative committee meeting in which he had no direct interest. Thereafter he was likely to get the credit for anything the committee might accomplish.

Since the day Artie Samish made his first million, at 32, commissions and contingent fees have steadily swelled his personal affluence. But a major setback came in 1951 when the Kefauver committee called nationwide attention to his activities. Last month a federal court convicted Samish of income-tax evasion. The charge: failing to pay $71,878 in taxes on a $120,000 commission from the Biow Co., a New York advertising agency. The money, payment for Samish's services in landing the Schenley Distillers' account, was remitted in checks drawn to ex-prize fighters, bookies, friends and relatives of Samish, and even to fictitious persons. Last week Federal Judge Oliver D. Hamlin imposed a fine of $40,000 and a three-year jail term on Artie Samish. Still pending: the Government's claim against him for $908,983 in back taxes and penalties.

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