(Rahm) Emanuel's own Ethics Storm

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) is about to learn what it's like when people who live in glass houses begin throwing stones at their neighbors.

As a former Clinton White House aide and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Emanuel believes Democrats can win back the Congress by throwing as much mud as they can dig up at their Republican opponents. He is a bare-knuckle politician who relishes the hand-to-hand political combat so many of his colleagues abhor.

The constant attacks on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) are part of his strategy, and Emanuel has no intention of stopping with DeLay. He believes he and his compatriots in and out of Congress can, with a little help from the media, convince voters that Republicans are congenitally crooked abusers of power who ought to be sent packing.

The problem he's faced, however, is that neither he nor his friends have been able to come up with a smoking gun in DeLay's case and that most of those he has recruited to wage the ethics war come to the battle with problems of their own.

DeLay's Democratic counterpart, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), for example, has at the very least been involved in a couple episodes identical to those included in Emanuel's indictment of DeLay and has, in addition, actually had to pay a fine for her involvement in an illegal fundraising scheme.

Moreover, other Democrats on the House ethics committee have similar problems and may themselves end up facing charges similar to those Emanuel uses to condemn the Republican leader. And last week, developments in Illinois put Emanuel himself in what must be an uncomfortable position, for the man clearly has "some 'splainin to do."

Chicago hasn't changed much over the years. Mayor Richard Daley may be smoother than his dad, but the machine Daley inherited from him works pretty much as it did in the good old days. Anyone who doubts that need only glance through the indictments being handed down as a result of an ongoing federal investigation of the city's water department.

The department, through a fellow who has run the place ever since young Daley took office, has been operated as a "racketeering enterprise," according to federal investigators. It seems that over the years the folks appointed by hizzoner have been enriching themselves and their friends while running the department as a quasi-political committee only incidentally responsible for delivering water to Chicago's citizens.

Department officials have since the '90s been extorting money from anyone and everyone doing business with them, skimming a little for themselves and channeling the rest to political campaigns viewed with favor by the mayor and his machine. In addition to millions of dollars in cash contributions, it seems that a shadow division of the department was set up to organize city workers and send them out to help certain politicians.

Department officials running this operation would receive word from on high as to which campaigns to help and then swing into action. The deputy head of the department who has been indicted, along with a half-dozen of his cronies, tells prosecutors that, once word came down, he would call his boys together (on city time and in their Water Department offices), devise a campaign plan and fan out to mobilize their employee army.

Last week, investigators revealed the boys from the Water Department were heavily involved in Mr. Clean's 2002 primary. That is important because Emanuel may be sitting in Congress today only because of the illegal contributions and help he received from the Daley machine back then.

Anyone who thinks that's a stretch should ponder the situation young Emanuel was facing back then. He was one of eight Democrats fighting for his party's nomination in a district the Democratic nominee was almost certain to win. It was a bitter primary that he finally won by only 11,058 votes. His major advantages were money and the support of the Daley machine. Still, he was forced to spend nearly $2 million and put hundreds of "volunteer" workers onto the streets of his district.

Emanuel denies any knowledge of all that. One assumes he must have just thought his message was really resonating with water department workers as they streamed in to help.

So the man the Democrats have chosen to fight the ethics war was himself elected only as a result of the machinations of a corrupt machine that he must have known was operating on his behalf, and he, like those he attacks, will be forced over and over again to argue that he just didn't know what was going on around him.

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, is a managing associate with Carmen Group, a D.C.-based governmental-affairs firm (www.carmengrouplobbying.com).

I was the guy that lost to Rahm in the general election.
I can personally tell you the extent to which city workers worked on his campaign..on and off company time.
I also can't tell you how many people took me aside and complained about how much they had had "shaken down" by the Chicago City Dem's. And Rahm was the main bag man. I can also personally vouch for his take no prisoners approach...Even though he was clearly ahead in the polls he got a "smear" effort going against me: 1. He claimed a Jewish lawyer who I paid to review my candidacy petition signatures (required in Chicago) was a racist. (That was rich.)
2. The Chicago Tribune was handed a story by his guys that I had been arrested for drunk driving in another state. Of course when they realized it was someone else with a similar name they didn't run the story....

You may wonder why I engaged in the Quixotic effort to run as a Republican in a Blue city...and now that I am $90,000 in debt and the FEC is hounding me for $750 for a late filing penalty AFTER the election..I am wondering that myself.
But at least I tried.....
Mark Augusti

CHICAGO - The names of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and U.S. Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-5) appeared for the first time in federal documents relating to Chicago’s Hired Truck Program scandal.

Mayor Daley and the Daley family political base’s 11th Ward Democratic organization were recipients of “coerced” campaign contributions, according to the plea agreement of former city Water Department Director of Finance and Administration Gerald Wesolowski. (attached as .pdf document)

Congressman Emanuel, elected in 2002, was the recipient of Water Department employee campaign “volunteers,” presumably in his successful primary campaign against State Rep. Nancy Kaszak (D-Chicago).

snip

According to the plea agreement, Water Department employees and other city employees were recruited for political work in violation of the Shakman Decree (1969) which forbids the hiring and firing of non-policy making city employees for political reasons. According to the plea agreement, Donald Tomczak, the former First Deputy Commissioner of Mayor Richard Daley’s Water Department, "rewarded certain members of his political organization...with raises, promotions and overtime, in return for their participation in Tomczak directed political activities."

Wesolowski, 46, who was indicted on 15 counts ranging including racketeering, bribery, mail fraud, and obstruction of justice agreed to plead guilty one count of mail fraud and to cooperate in the government’s case.

Wesolowski was one of the bagmen for Tomczak, a co-defendant in the indictment. He is the 6th person to plead guilty in Hired Truck probe to date, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The count to which Wesolowski plead guilty was participation in the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity. At least two illegal acts must be proven. The Feds and the defendant agreed upon mail fraud and bribery in violation of state law.

“Companies provide cash, campaign contributions and other things to of value for the benefit of Tomczak, defendant and third parties associated with Tomczak,” according to the plea agreement, “with defendant knowing that such benefits were provided with the intent to influence and reward Tomczak and defendant in the performance of official acts related to the Hired Truck Program.“

The “benefits” included money, gifts and campaign contributions to “political campaigns with which Tomczak and other high-ranking government officials were associated.”

Besides soliciting campaign contributions, however, Tomczak’s assistants mobilized “over 100 individuals”--most department employees--to pass out campaign literature on behalf of political campaigns “determined by City Officials and communicated to Tomczak.”

Once the candidate’s name had come down from higher-ups, Tomczak would conduct a planning meeting with 5-10 employees, who were “political coordinators,” on the taxpayer’s dime.

According to the plea agreement, candidates receiving support via this criminal enterprise were “Jeff Tomczak, mayoral candidate Richard Daley, judicial candidate Amy Bertani, United States congressional candidate Rahm Emanuel and others.” There is also a reference to an unnamed “Candidate A” with reference to fund raising.

According the the plea agreement, Wesolowski “was...aware that Tomczak authorized raises and/or promotions to one or more tradesmen in return for their work to personally benefit Tomczak.”

Truck companies like Cayla and Garfield received regular hired truck work after Wesolowski began receiving cash payments from Michael Harjung, according to the plea agreement. The price is said to have been $75 per truck per week of work, $60,000 in total over a four-year period. This money went to Tomczak, so says the plea agreement.

snip

Co-defendant John Cannatello, identified as a chief operator of GNA, is also fingered as one who paid bribes to get his trucks city work. Wesolowski admits taking bribe money to Tomczak’s Chicago home for Cannatello.

Wesolowski also admitted receiving “envelopes of cash” from co-defendants Roger McMahon and Flenory Barnes. Also on the list of those giving Wesolowski items of value is co-defendant Joseph Ignoffo and several other unidentified truckers.

Besides the Mayor Daley's 11th Ward organization, the plea agreement specifically mentions the 2002 Will County State’s Attorney’s campaign of Donald Tomczak’s son Jeff as recipients of coerced campaign contributions.

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