Barack Obama’s close ties to players in the murky world of Illinois politics led indirectly to the undoing of Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.
With his campaign for the presidency in full gear this fall, Obama called his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., the Democratic president of the Illinois Senate, to urge passage of an ethics bill, which sought to limit the influence of money in Illinois politics, according to a story in today’s New York Times.
Jones, a street-tough, onetime sewer inspector who had risen to become one of the state’s kingmakers, had opposed the bill - as had Blagojevich, who had already vetoed it.
But after the call from Obama, whom Jones is said to regard as a surrogate son, the powerful politician reversed course and the Illinois Senate subsequently overrode Blagojevich’s veto, voting 55 to 0 to enact the measure into law.
That, in turn, prompted Blagojevich to press state contractors for campaign contributions before the law took effect on Jan. 1, prosecutors said yesterday. After they were tipped off to that, prosecutors got authorization to wiretap Blagojevich’s calls - and began hearing him talk about auctioning Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder.
Prosecutors said there was no indication that Obama or his aides cooperated with Blagojevich - indeed, the governor’s contempt for the president-elect comes across in the stinging, often profane terms in the criminal complaint.
But Obama’s indirect involvement in the sequence of events attests to his strong connections to key players in Illinois politics. While carrying a reformist agenda, he was a pragmatic politician who cultivated an insider’s ties to important parts of the establishment, whether the power brokers in the powerful Cook County Democratic organization, to the state’s leading black politicians like Jones.
He endorsed Blagojevich twice for governor, and received substantial donations from one of Blagojevich’s closest confidantes, Antoin Rezko, a Chicago businessman who was convicted of corruption charges earlier this year. Rezko was one of Obama’s earliest supporters, but after his indictment, Obama returned his donations and distanced himself.
Obama’s political strategist David Axelrod, who will go to Washington with him, also lists Blagojevich on his firm’s website as a client.
Yet Chicago political watchers say Obama was never close to Blagojevich, and the Times reports the gulf between them had only grown after Obama’s intervention in the ethics law.
Blagojevich’s enmity certainly comes across in the conversations excerpted in the criminal complaint. Told at one point that he should simply give the president-elect his choice for senator without expecting payback, Blagojevich is defiant, responding with a string of expletives directed at Obama.
See Muckety’s “>earlier story on Obama’s political education in Chicago.
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