WASHINGTON -- The day the Senate was voting on the impeachment of Bill Clinton, two people widely seen to have been betrayed by him were discussing a future of their own -- one that could thrust them into the national spotlight just as the president faded into retirement.

The pair eating a four-hour lunch that day in the White House residence: the president's wife and the trusted adviser whom he had notoriously fired.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton began to consider a Senate race in New York, former Clinton aide Harold Ickes was the first person she called.

Now the red-haired and rangy Ickes is Clinton's unofficial main man in her unofficial campaign -- a political venture she is considering ever more seriously with regular visits to the state, including one scheduled for Monday.

The two lunch mates have lots in common. Intense political strategists, they share a genuine passion for liberal causes and love a great campaign fight.

And one other thing: unhappy experiences with President Clinton, who is widely seen as having brushed aside the enduring loyalty of each and done them wrong in very public ways.

"Will this be about redemption?" asks longtime Ickes friend Basil Paterson. "Perception-wise, to some people, it will."

The successful Hillary-Harold alliance could be seen as trumping the humiliations of the Clinton years, even offering the opportunity for an odd kind of revenge: Ickes helps the first lady reach for a historic political milestone while her husband awaits history's verdict on his presidency.

What better way to get the last word?

Ickes, 59, rejects the notion that desire for vindication drives him to advise Hillary Clinton. Over fruit salad and tea at Cafe Luna, a restaurant near his Washington office, he points to a far simpler motive: He intimately understands New York politics.

Besides, he says, she asked.

"She's a friend of mine," Ickes said, his New York accent as stiff as a perfect manhattan. He quickly dispenses with the revenge scenario: "You can read all sorts of things into it, but this is not motivated by Ickes having the last laugh in any way, shape or form."

In teaming with Ickes, the first lady is elevating an old friend who learned he was fired by the president when he read it in the Wall Street Journal in November 1996, three days after the re-election that Ickes helped engineer.

For his part, in changing the subject from the Monica Lewinsky affair and guiding Hillary Clinton over New York terrain, Ickes is enhancing the possibility of her personal triumph in a life beyond first lady-dom.

Ickes, who is not paid by Clinton, is everywhere for her.

The two take late-night flights home after his savvily engineered city-suburb-upstate sweeps around New York.

He lashes out in newspapers against likely GOP rival Rudolph W. Giuliani's suggestion that Clinton is a carpetbagger.

He updates lists of roughly 200 New York Democrats for Clinton to consult about her campaign prospects.

He warns her not to take New York voters for granted -- particularly in what polls show is almost a dead heat in a potential race with Giuliani, the mayor of New York.

Ousted without notice

Ickes, who came to the White House in 1994, developed close ties to "Hillaryland" -- as he calls the first lady's domain -- and floated between the his and hers sides of the White House for two years.

In 1996, newly named chief of staff Erskine Bowles refused to work with the famously tempestuous Ickes, and the president promptly axed his friend of nearly 30 years.

In an instant, Ickes -- who had racked up more than $300,000 in legal bills for his alleged role in a variety of Clinton scandals -- was kicked off the president's cloud.

"He's annoyed and she's annoyed and they belong together," concluded one New York Democratic consultant, describing one take on the Hillary-Harold partnership. "It's a perfect relationship because they're both upset with the president of the United States."

Friends say Ickes -- who as a young man took a job as a cowboy -- is simply demonstrating a kind of Lone Ranger loyalty to causes and people that has characterized him for years.

"A friend of mine says Harold Ickes is like Gary Cooper," Paterson said. "He's that lone cowboy in 'High Noon,' standing by himself, four-square for what he believes in."

This time, Ickes is lassoing recalcitrant Democrats. When talk of a Senate campaign started flying and New York politicians began insisting Clinton make up her mind quickly, Ickes turned the tables.

"I said, 'Should she make up her mind without talking to you?' And they would say, 'Oh no, of course not.' " So, they settled down and waited for her call.

Ickes is ready to rumble in New York, having cut his teeth on nasty Upper West Side politics in the 1960s. He works with both stunning brashness (he once bit a fellow campaign staffer in the leg in an argument during a New York mayoral race) and disarming charm ("I was hungry," he says, when asked why).

The fight is in Ickes' genes. The son of Harold LeClair Ickes, a scrappy liberal in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Cabinet, Ickes became a similar guard dog to the Clintons.

As the White House scandal-handler, Ickes worked 18-hour days (while battling narcolepsy), dealing with everything from Whitewater to alleged campaign fund-raising abuses. He continues to receive subpoenas (including one he accepted one morning while still clad in his underwear).

No hard feelings

As for the president, Ickes said he holds no grudges.

"I was unhappy about the way the decision for me to leave the White House was made and the way I was told about it, but look, the president is president of the nation. He can't please everybody," he said.

But Ickes admits he and the first lady share an easier relationship. During the Lewinsky scandal, Ickes called regularly to check on her when other friends felt too awkward to do so. For her part, Clinton was said to be furious when she learned of Ickes' dismissal.

"There were times when I felt closer to her than to the president," Ickes said of the first lady, whom he calls Hillary. He praises -- along with her intellect -- her "wonderful laugh" and "radiant smile."

Ickes has lived out his political ambitions through the Clintons, and his faith is not lost on them.

"In New Hampshire, it was just me and Susan" -- Susan Thomases, an old chum -- "and Harold who believed in us," the first lady once told former White House aide George Stephanopoulos in a tearful rant recounted in his book, "All Too Human." "If we wouldn't have fought, we would never have won."

The first lady's office did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Ickes, in working for the first lady, is not without self-interest. By guiding her with his famed Rolodex, he stands to enhance his own stature in politics and lobbying. He represents New York's City Council and other high-octane interests through his Washington consulting business and still works for a politically connected Long Island law firm.

A Stanford University graduate who received his law degree from Columbia University in 1971, Ickes now lives in the upscale Georgetown neighborhood of Washington with his wife, Laura Handman, a lawyer, and their 13-year-old daughter, Charlotte. Having worked on nearly every level of New York campaign short of dog catcher, his state connections remain solid.

Those relationships have helped Ickes in the past. He led long-shot presidential drives in the state for Democrats Eugene McCarthy, Edward M. Kennedy and Jesse L. Jackson -- and the successful state campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Some local New York races left scars: In one campaign incident in a lieutenant governor's race that he says he can't quite remember, Ickes lost the hearing in his right ear after a run-in involving a screwdriver.

The Ickes campaigns are marked by raging emotion and full-body commitment. "A bite is a bite. It was broken skin," said James Vlasto, a fellow campaigner whose left shin Ickes bit in a confrontation during the 1973 New York mayoral race. "Harold was aggressive."

In a Senate 2000 race, Ickes would be no stranger to Giuliani, after facing him in the 1989 and 1993 New York mayoral races when he worked for David N. Dinkins. In candidate debate negotiations in 1989, Ickes was fierce, pointedly refusing to shake hands with Roger Ailes, Giuliani's media adviser, a campaign worker recalls. He repeatedly threatened to walk out, another worker said, and by the end had secured key concessions from Giuliani's people.

"He's damn good," says Dinkins, whom Ickes helped elect mayor in 1989. "He's so well-wired, he knows the law, he's an excellent debater and he's not intimidated by anybody."

Fiercely loyal

Now he is poised to do the same for Clinton. In the first lady's possible Senate run, Ickes is expressing the tigerish loyalty to his friends that has come to define him.

"I don't make friends easily," said Ickes, his hands ink-stained at the end of a long afternoon. "It's fair to say once I consider you a friend, I'm loyal to you."

That loyalty has led Ickes back to the White House -- albeit the first lady's East Wing instead of Bill Clinton's West Wing -- and started another new chapter in his story.

"The wheel does go round," he said. "Time and time again, you've seen in politics, as in life -- and certainly in this city -- people who are down and out one day who are back on top the next.

"So I don't know what it means to be a survivor. I think that we're here while we're here. Where we'll be five years from now remains to be seen."

Pub Date: 5/19/99