JUDICIAL STARR OR POLITICAL STARR : WHITEWATER INDEPENDENT COUNSEL SEEN BY SOME AS CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN ACTIVIST.

Byline: Aaron Epstein Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

For Kenneth Winston Starr, it was a moment to savor.

A hard-working Arkansas jury had convicted President Clinton's former business partners in the first Whitewater trial, demonstrating that the much-ridiculed scandal involved real crimes - and actually could infect Clinton's re-election campaign.

Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel whose Republican activism and anti-Clinton clients have generated charges of partisanship, was careful not to gloat or claim personal vindication.

It was, at once, the ideal melding of the two sides of Ken Starr: the judicial man and the political man.

A bright, gracious lawyer and former judge with a reputation for thoroughness and integrity, the judicial Starr rose so rapidly through the Republican firmament that he figured to realize his ultimate goal - the U.S. Supreme Court - before he was 50.

But something political happened on his way to becoming Mr. Justice Starr. President Bush filled a Supreme Court vacancy in 1990 with the less controversial David Souter. Then, in 1992, voters sent Democrat Bill Clinton to the White House, and Starr put his ambition on hold.

Now Starr, who will turn 50 on July 21, is a potential time bomb that will continue to tick away - or go off - during the 1996 presidential race.

Will he be able to persuade one or more defendants to furnish damaging testimony against the Clintons in exchange for leniency? Will coming trials or inquiries into Hillary Rodham Clinton's law-firm billing records ensnare the White House in a Whitewatergate coverup?

And if that were to happen, would Americans perceive it as an fair-minded act by the judicial Starr or as a biased ploy by a less-than-independent prosecutor?

The political Starr has not only contributed to various Republican candidates, but considered a run of his own for the Republican nomination for U.S. senator from Virginia, where he lives with his wife, Alice, and their three children.

He volunteered to help a conservative group's argument that Clinton was not immune from a sexual-harassment suit. He endorsed a Republican candidate in a partisan letter that attacked the president for being involved in ``personal scandals.''

He did legal work for a tobacco company opposed to administration policies and a multimillion-dollar foundation that helped finance the American Spectator, which published an Arkansas state trooper's allegations of womanizing by Clinton while he was governor.

In recent months, Starr has run into flak over his unwillingness to stop his lucrative law practice or at least cut off corporate clients doing business with the government.

Eager to muffle his critics, Starr hired an ethics adviser, former Senate Watergate Committee counsel Samuel Dash, who said Starr might have made mistakes of judgment but did nothing unethical.

But even if he does the independent counsel's job beyond reproach, some observers believe he'll never reach the highest court, even in a Republican administration.

``This job is not well-suited to his long-term career goal,'' said Andrew Schwartzman, executive director of a telecommunications public-interest law firm and an admirer of Starr's legal competence and craftsmanship.``It has dashed any opportunity to get confirmed.

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