June 26th, 2008
Gov. Blagojevich is on a fundraising tear, even as the floor drops out of state government and his popularity rating hovers near record lows.
Gov. Blagojevich has a major fund-raiser in Chicago on Thursday, in a big fund-raising week done with no transparency. On Monday, Blagojevich headlined a fund-raiser at the Hyatt on Wacker aimed at female donors. Labor leader Margaret Blackshere was the m.c.
Increasingly, Blagojevich has used his campaign fund to pay Chicago law firm Winston & Strawnfor legal representation. The feds are probing the governor’s hiring, contracting and fundraising practices, having just won the conviction of Tony Rezko, a top Blagojevich insider.
June 9th, 2008
Sheila Nix, a deputy governor to Gov. Rod Blagojevich, is leaving her $135,000-a-year post to, ahem, spend time with “family.”
“In these positions, you have to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in order to be able to do your job,” Nix said. “Obviously, we spend a lot of time in Springfield and I’m away some. It was really more just a situation where I felt like after four years, it was the right time.”
The governor’s senior staff spend “a lot of time in Springfield”?
C’mon!
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| “Say What?” |
Anyway, Nix’s exit neatly coincides with the conviction last week of Tony Rezko, a Blagojevich insider, on federal corruption charges. And it follows the recent departure of press secretary Rebecca Rausch, who called the governor’s office — the subject of multiple federal probes — “a great working environment.”
Nix dutifully trumpeted the governor as a guy determined to help people.
Nix said she does not believe Blagojevich has changed how he goes about his work because of the trial of Rezko, who was a top fund-raiser for the governor.
“The governor is focused on doing his job,” she said. “That’s what he’s doing, and that’s what he’ll continue to do.”
This is the same governor who enters and departs the Capitol using its lowest-profile door — the one in the rear of the building, next to a trash compacter — during his infrequent visits here. From that door, the governor accesses a basement tunnel, which he uses to get to and from his office.
Now, for the best part. Nix defended Blagojevich’s heavy reliance, early in his administration, on advice from now-convicted Tony Rezko.
“Tony was a successful businessman at that time,” Nix said. “I think the governor’s point of view is, ‘I want to bring new people into state government. I want to have people who understand business.’”
“If you turn back the clock … the idea of getting recommendations from a successful businessperson made some sense,” Nix said.
Yes, Rezko was a successful businessman in Chicago. He was a real estate developer who also owned pizza and Panda Express franchises.
But in political circles, Rezko was well known — even in 2003, when Blagojevich took office — as a prolific fundraiser. He raised gobs and gobs of money for pols like Blagojevich and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois. He understood how to get people with money into the same room, and how to get those people to hand their money over to the pol of his choice. In doing so, Rezko ingratiated himself to those pols.
Rezko raised an estimated $1.4 million for Blagojevich’s campaign fund, according to an FBI agent who testified at Rezko’s trial.
When Blagojevich took office as governor after campaigning on a promise to clean up state government in the wake of Gov. George Ryan’s scandal-tarred administration, he handed control over much of state government directly to Rezko, according to numerous witnesses who testified at Rezko’s trial.
The governor’s patronage chief had breakfast with Rezko on Monday mornings to talk about job openings that Rezko might wish to fill. The governor’s chief of staff reportedly cleared key decisions with Rezko. Rezko hand-picked some state agency directors. He attended the governor’s high-level meetings. He even sat in the room when Susan Lichtenstein interviewed to be the governor’s chief legal counsel.
The notion that Blagojevich yielded to Rezko because he was sincerely determined to include “new people” who “understand business” in the administration of state government — rather than because Rezko packed $1.4 million into his campaign fund — is nothing short of absurd.
March 3rd, 2008
Illinois has heard about “Public Official A” since 2005, the third year of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration.
Back then, the mystery official popped up in plea agreements filed by political insiders who pleaded guilty as part of an alleged kickback scheme. One of those insiders pleading guilty said he heard from another insider, Stuart Levine, that Public Official A was steering state business to firms willing to make political contributions.
Only, Public Official A’s identity wasn’t such a mystery. Media outlets immediately speculated that the unnamed official was none other than Blagojevich, who had won election on a promise to clean up government.
The governor retorted that the allegations pointing at him were “hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay by someone who pled guilty to extortion.”
“No one who is associated with me operates that way,” Blagojevich said at the time. “We do things legally, we do things ethically and we do things right.”
But the indictments and guilty pleas continued as part of the growing federal probe which, increasingly, appeared to focus on activity in the governor’s inner circle. Public Official A kept popping up in documents filed by prosecutors, and Blagojevich kept denying it was him.
Last Monday, a federal judge provided a bit of closure when she said Public Official A, or at least the Public Official A referenced in the case of Blagojevich pal Tony Rezko, is in fact Blagojevich. In an order describing evidence the feds intend to offer during Rezko’s trial, which begins today, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve substituted Blagojevich’s name where prosecutors had used Public Official A.
It’s now unambiguous, among other allegations, that prosecutors contend Blagojevich’s campaign fund stood to benefit from kickbacks Rezko and Levine allegedly tried to extort from firms seeking business with the state.
Blagojevich’s new strategy is the same as the old strategy, with a twist. He still refuses to acknowledge that he is a central character in the federal probe. Only now, he’s acting like he has no idea what anybody is talking about when they ask about his place in the investigation.
“My reaction is it doesn’t matter what letter of the alphabet it is, what was described there doesn’t describe me or how I do things,” he said while touring the state this week.
“I don’t know much about it,” he said.
He added, “That’s a court case and a judicial proceeding that I’m not involved in. I don’t really know much about what’s happening with that particular court case.”
As Southtown Star columnist Phil Kadner observed, Blagojevich, like now-imprisoned George Ryan before him, is just the latest governor “who didn’t know nuttin’”:
The governor contends that he didn’t know anything. He claims that he has nothing to fear from either the Rezko trial or federal investigators.
Like Ryan, he does not comprehend that even without a trial, he stands guilty in the court of public opinion.
Citizens and jurors don’t buy the “I don’t know nuttin’ ” defense.
Blagojevich surrounded himself with people who were willing to trade on his name and, in the process, sell out the state of Illinois.
The word got out to businessmen and elected officials alike that if they wanted something done under the table, there were ways to cut deals with this administration.
Blagojevich, like Ryan, would have people believe that he couldn’t possibly know this was happening and was powerless to stop it.
Rezko’s trial begins Monday. Beyond Levine, the government’s key witness, the feds have indicated they plan to lead to the witness stand a parade of officials who traveled in Blagojevich’s inner circle.
Rezko also ingratiated himself to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, raising money for the rising political star and entering into a kinky land deal that arguably helped Obama and his wife buy their mansion on Chicago South Side. Now that Obama is Democratic frontrunner in the race for president, the national media will be following Rezko’s trial closely.
But as the Tribune noted it its Sunday coverage:
Obama, however, is expected to be a footnote in the trial, Blagojevich and his administration will be a central focus.
Indeed. The feds have indicated they intend to lead a parade of former Blagojevich insiders to the witness stand, beginning with the former director of his campaign fund.
We likely will hear a lot more about how Blagojevich allegedly did business in the weeks to come. We’ll probably also hear the governor tell us just how little he knows.
UPDATE 1
The Sun-Times adds that Blagojevich’s early promises to clean up government now “ring hollow”:
As Rezko’s trial plays out and Blagojevich’s legal problems possibly deepen, he very well could carry the air of a lame duck unable to advance even the most basic things in Springfield, including a budget.
While Blagojevich continues to struggle, Illinoisans can look back to a legacy that was supposed to be different — that of a governor who promised to “change business as usual” as successor to the corrupt George Ryan.
“The people of Illinois expect a new day of integrity, of openness and accountability,” Blagojevich told Illinoisans barely a week into his first term, “and they deserve a government as good and honest as they are.”
The Rezko trial could end up showing how Blagojevich allowed that promise to go unfulfilled.
UPDATE 2
Here’s an update from the AP on jury selection at Rezko’s trial.
February 18th, 2008
You probably already know about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s concrete shoe, Tony Rezko.
Obama and Rezko engaged in a kinky real estate deal — Obama bought a mansion on Chicago’s South Side the same day that Rezko’s wife bought an adjacent lot — that is now all the talk on the presidential campaign trail. There’s even a blog dedicated to Rezko.
We may soon be hearing much more about Obama’s ties to Exelon, ComEd’s parent company, too.
A Baltimore Sun columnist reports:
A bigger question is how Obama’s Exelon links might influence his broader electricity policy at the most critical period for U.S. electricity since the 1930s. Exelon, the Illinois version of Baltimore’s Constellation Energy, is one of the country’s biggest megawatt producers, the largest nuclear plant operator and a huge Obama backer through its executives and employees.
Would a President Obama try to reform interstate electricity markets that have soaked consumers in Maryland and other deregulated states, inadequately invested in the future and unjustifiably enriched Exelon, Constellation and other companies? Or would he maintain the Bush administration’s blind eye toward evidence of wholesale-electricity market failure, irregularity and price gouging?
The columnist goes on to scrutinize Obama’s apparent ties to Exelon. Recommended reading, for sure.
UPDATE 1
Bloomberg and the Tribune have more on the Obama/Rezko land deal.
