Chicago Straight -Connecting the dots: Blago, Obama, Emanuel and Axelrod

Chicago Magazine ^ | June 2009 Issue | David Bernstein

[STARWISE]

The arrest of Governor Rod Blagojevich in December cast a shadowy light on the relationships among four leading players in the Illinois Democratic Party—Blagojevich, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod.

The new president and his two aides would like to minimize their dealings with the disgraced ex-governor. But the record tells a more complex story By David Bernstein

(page 1 of 4)

In the days following his arrest on corruption charges last December 9th, Governor Rod Blagojevich did his best to appear busy.

He visited his 16th-floor suite at the Thompson Center, once even showing up in a jogging outfit. He signed bills, issued press releases, expunged criminal records. And he hardly wasted an opportunity to sling mud at other local Democrats, taking particular delight in sullying the veneer of President-elect Barack Obama and his Chicago team headed for the White House.

“Give me a chance to call in witnesses like Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, who said there was nothing inappropriate in his conversations with me,” Blagojevich said on NBC’s Today show, during one in a round of interviews he gave in the weeks before he was ousted from office.

“Give me a chance to bring in Valerie Jarrett,” now a White House senior adviser. When Greta Van Susteren of Fox News asked if he would try to call Obama as a defense witness, the governor replied, “I would not rule anything in or rule anything out.”

“His whole thing was—dirty everybody up, show that everybody’s just as dirty as him,” says one former aide to Blagojevich. “He never wanted to go down alone.”

Whether the ex-governor succeeds in soiling others will be determined in the coming months, as federal prosecutors press their case against him.

An indictment handed down in April charged Blagojevich and a small circle of aides and colleagues with wide-ranging corruption, including the notorious effort to personally profit from filling Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat. More charges may follow as the investigation continues.

At this writing, U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald had said nothing to implicate Obama or his aides in wrongdoing. Still, with at least 40 references to Obama and his associates in the original 76-page criminal complaint, the scandal has cast a shadowy light on the connections between Blagojevich, Obama, and Emanuel, whose careers often overlapped, and who all drew on the skills of David Axelrod, the architect of Obama’s Senate and presidential campaigns and now a White House senior adviser.

Understandably, the Obama camp has tried to downplay the connections, most notably with a report by the future White House counsel Greg Craig asserting that no one on the president-elect’s staff, including Obama, had “inappropriate discussions” with the governor about deals for the Senate seat.

But the Craig report focused exclusively on Blagojevich’s alleged wheeling and dealing around the seat, and beyond that time frame, the interplay of Blagojevich, Obama, Emanuel, and Axelrod goes deep into the recent history of Illinois politics.

None of those four principals would talk for this article, but interviews with three dozen sources and an examination of the record tell a complex story spun within a world where relationships are nuanced and, in some cases, baffling. For years, these four talented and ambitious men worked with and around each other.

There are indications that Obama and Axelrod were wary of Blagojevich, though they never publicly broke with him.

Until the arrest, Emanuel stayed in close contact with the governor—perhaps closer and longer than the Craig report indicated. As Blagojevich’s career tumbled, his jealousy of Obama grew. In all, the mix of alliances, deals, and resentments makes up a potent brew that could yet stain the White House.

* * *

“I come out of the alleys of Chicago politics,” Blagojevich told a New York Times reporter on the January day he was removed from office. “That’s a tough place. The politics there is not motivated by idealism or high purpose. It’s nuts and bolts, and you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

Growing up in a small rented apartment near Cicero and Armitage on Chicago’s Northwest Side, Blagojevich was always something of a street-savvy operator, and politics was the great equalizer, the best chance for the son of a steelworker and a CTA ticket clerk to become a big shot.

He saw his opening one night in March 1988, at a fundraiser for Alderman Dick Mell at Zum Deutschen Eck, the old German restaurant in Lake View. Bruce DuMont, the veteran radio host, recalls that Blagojevich, then 31, introduced himself and made small talk before asking, “Mr. DuMont, which one is Patti Mell?”

DuMont pointed out the alderman’s 23-year-old daughter. She and Blagojevich married two years later.

Blessed with Alderman Mell’s imprimatur—and more significantly, his money, his connections, and his army of precinct workers—Blagojevich served two terms in the state legislature, then set his sights on the Fifth District congressional seat, which at the time was held by a Republican, Michael Flanagan.

Blagojevich and Mell knew that the alderman’s 33rd Ward operation wouldn’t be enough to carry the much larger congressional district—a jagged, splinter-shaped area that spans miles from the lake to the western suburbs. So, they called David Axelrod.

A former political reporter at the Chicago Tribune, Axelrod left the paper in 1984 to work for Paul Simon’s U.S. Senate campaign, and by the early 1990s he had earned a name as “kingmaker” in local political circles, working for, among others, Harold Washington and Richard M. Daley.

Blagojevich’s primary opponent, Nancy Kaszak, also sought out Axelrod’s services, recalls John Kupper, a partner in Axelrod’s former consulting firm. “We found Rod to be a more attractive and compelling personality,” says Kupper.

Insiders recall the campaign as fun—nonstop sports talk, practical jokes, and Elvis Presley. “There was a lot to like about Rod,” says Peter Giangreco, a top consultant to Blagojevich’s congressional and gubernatorial campaigns. “He had a very ’85 Bears kind of feel about him, a very Chicago kind of thing.”

But along with the fun came conflict. “There was always a strain between Axelrod and Mell, particularly with regard to how money was spent and what the priorities were, what Rod should do,” recalls a second former Blagojevich aide.

(Several of the former aides to Blagojevich, Obama, and Emanuel who were interviewed for this article did not want to be identified by name out of concern for their careers.)

Mell, the old-school ward boss, preached that “yard signs win elections,” and he pushed for more cash for the ground game. Axelrod, the media guru, countered that to get to Congress you needed TV ads.

Meanwhile, Blagojevich and Mell were also at each other’s throats—explosive shouting matches, hanging up on each other’s phone calls, going days, sometimes weeks, without speaking.

“They had a loving relationship, but it was love with knuckles, not with kisses,” says Giangreco. “Rod preferred to have people around him who didn’t call him on his shortcomings. And Dick did nothing but call him on his shortcomings.”

Of Blagojevich’s shortcomings, retail campaigning was certainly not one of them. He was a natural—always smiling, upbeat, and eager to hit the el stops, to shake hands and kiss babies. “Nobody could work a room like Rod—nobody,” says Jan Schakowsky, the Democratic congresswoman who served with Blagojevich in Springfield and Washington.

That talent didn’t escape Axelrod’s practiced eye. A master image-maker, he mines a candidate’s biography for compelling details and then builds a supporting narrative that resonates with the concerns of average voters.

With Blagojevich, Axelrod spun a yarn highlighting the rise from an immigrant family’s blue-collar roots—the storybook American Dream. One memorable Axelrod spot showed various lunch-bucket locals bungling Blagojevich’s tongue-twisting Serbian name, ending with a down-home waitress advising, “Just call him Rod.”

Axelrod was also a fierce protector of his client. He brought in his friend Carol Ronen, a progressive state representative and vocal gay-rights activist, to be campaign manager—a move intended to put a good-government face on Blagojevich, who was seen by many as simply a Machine hack.

And when Axelrod got word that a team at the Tribune was working on an investigative series on Mell (and, by extension, his young protégé, Blagojevich), the ex-Trib reporter complained vociferously.

He argued, as the former city editor Hanke Gratteau recalls today, that the paper was “conducting the equivalent of a proctology exam” on Blagojevich.

When the Tribune finally ran its story—a probing but not particularly hard-hitting portrayal of Mell that extolled Blagojevich as the “perfect candidate” with “good looks a soap opera star would envy”—some inside the newsroom suspected that Axelrod’s aggressive pushback had killed a tougher version.

Gratteau told Crain’s Chicago Business, “The only thing he killed at the Tribune was his good name and reputation.”

Today, she is more circumspect. “From David’s perspective, it seemed like the might of the entire Tribune investigative team had been unleashed against a congressional candidate, just because of his connection to Dick Mell.”

At the time, Axelrod told Crain’s that he was willing to sacrifice his reputation to help his clients.

Privately, he was less sure. “It was after that that Ax sort of felt like he didn’t want to be a part of this anymore,” recalls Giangreco.

“He said to me, ‘You know what—I can’t keep putting my integrity on the line for this guy.’” Still, Axelrod stayed on as Blagojevich won the primary and general election.

* * *

Rest at link

[STARWISE]

At this writing, U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald had said nothing to implicate Obama or his aides in wrongdoing. Still, with at least 40 references to Obama and his associates in the original 76-page criminal complaint, the scandal has cast a shadowy light on the connections between Blagojevich, Obama, and Emanuel, whose careers often overlapped, and who all drew on the skills of David Axelrod, the architect of Obama’s Senate and presidential campaigns and now a White House senior adviser.

Clockwise, from left: Axelrod, Blagojevich, Burris, Emanuel, Rezko, Obama, Mell, and Jones

*snip*

Around the same time that he was allegedly co-managing the Blagojevich Enterprise, Rezko—who had a fondness for politicians—was also helping to fill the campaign coffers of Barack Obama. One of Obama’s earliest supporters and biggest fundraisers, Rezko raised at least $159,000 for Obama over the years, in some cases collecting from the same donors he was hitting up for Blagojevich.

(Obama later donated to various charities an amount equal to the Rezko-tainted contributions.) In one respect, Rezko was even more valuable to Obama than to Blagojevich, providing crucial financial support when Obama was a political nobody. “When you’re an outsider and you’re trying to build relationships and you’re getting ‘No, no, no, no’ all the time—to have somebody come to you and say, ‘I believe in you, I want to help you, I want to raise money’—that’s irresistible,” says Giangreco.

Besides raising money for Obama’s campaigns, Rezko helped place one of Obama’s closest friends, Eric Whitaker, in the job as the state’s public health director. Then a state senator, Obama recommended Whitaker to Rezko, who had an unofficial role picking people for top state jobs in Blagojevich’s administration. During Rezko’s trial, workers in Blagojevich’s patronage office testified that if Rezko wanted somebody hired, it usually got done—quickly.

Rezko remains the most troubling common tie between the president and the disgraced former governor. Obama has repeatedly insisted that Rezko never sought anything except small favors here or there, such as an internship for the son of a business associate.

Assuming that’s true, why did Rezko act like a crook with Blagojevich and not with Obama? One veteran political operative offered this explanation: “Rezko was, basically, forming political sleeper cells. He didn’t know which ones would be useful. He was right about Barack’s promise, not about his usefulness.”

And was Obama simply naïve about Rezko? “Maybe so,” says John Kupper, who worked on Obama’s U.S. Senate and presidential campaigns. “But the fact is: He never asked Barack for anything in return.”

Blagojevich, however, was infuriated that he—and not Obama—was taking most of the political heat for Rezko. Recalls a fourth former Blagojevich aide: “A lot of Rod’s resentment was—‘How come I wear the jacket for Tony?’”

~ ~ ~ ~

God willing, Blago's got top security, and the trial actually does go forward.

[STARWISE]

~~DING DING!

[yldstrk]

the more you stir it, the more it stinks

[stboz]

Don’t forget Her Heinous.

[Tzimisce]

...what Chicago needs is a Royal Flush...

[seekthetruth]

Bump and thanks for the ping!

[Don Corleone]

Whether the ex-governor succeeds in soiling others will be determined in the coming months, as federal prosecutors press their case against him.

As much as possible those "prosecutors will be hand picked by the administration or its friends to see that no questions will be asked that might lead to an unsatisfactory answer. Unsatisfactory to Obama, that is.

[STARWISE]

Blagojevich watched the speech from the floor of the Fleet Center. At a backstage reception afterwards, Blagojevich could barely conceal his envy. According to a Democratic insider who asked to remain unnamed, Blagojevich told Obama, “Great speech, Barack.” Then he added, backhandedly, “But, remember, this is as good as it gets.” Obama shot back, “We’ll see.”

The budding rivalry between Blagojevich and Obama was one of the hidden story lines of the 2004 convention. As Giangreco explains it:

“If this were a mathematical problem, and you were plotting it out on a chart and you could put a pin in the place where the axes where Rod’s descent hits Barack’s ascent, I would say it would be at the convention in Boston. That’s where Rod was done as a national figure, and for Barack, it was: The sky’s the limit.”

~~~

Tick, tock .. I smell a pound of flesh in Blago ....

[al baby]

This makes watergate look like a picknick

[CaribouCrossing]

I hope and pray that their “house of cards” falls down around them.

[STARWISE]

This is verrrry interesting. Also puts MO in a powerful position regarding Jarrett, being a friend and former employee:

###

“Two sources with knowledge of the discussions—one close to Obama and the other to Blagojevich—say Emanuel’s motives were more complicated.

“Rahm wanted her out of the White House,” says the Obama insider. New to Obama’s inner circle, Emanuel had heard the stories from others inside Obama’s campaign that Jarrett could be difficult.

“Emanuel was hoping she’d be senator so he wouldn’t have to share Obama with her in the White House,” the former confidant of Blagojevich says. In the end, Jarrett took herself out of the Senate-seat derby.”

[STARWISE]

~~MUST SEE ... PING!

###

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBqXbLKx4No

~~~~~~~~~

PAY TO PLAY
Words and Music by Matt Farmer

VERSE

All my life I’ve been a workin’ man
On Chicago’s northwest side
Livin’ check to check, never gettin’ ahead
No matter how hard I tried

I had an old friend from the neighborhood
He grew up to do just fine
He couldn’t read or write to save his life
But I guess his boss didn’t mind

Now, I never quite knew what my old friend did
To get that money rollin’ in
But life, I guess, can be pretty good
For a state committeeman

So, one night over beer at the local bar
I said, “How’d you make your dough?”
My friend just grinned a wicked grin
And said, “Here’s all you need to know”

CHORUS

You’ve got to pay-to-play in this town
If you wanna make that deal go down
It’s who you know inside the Big Machine
Just find the man that’s behind the man
And put some money in his hand
That’s how we try to keep our city green

VERSE

Well, the liquor flowed and the stories flew
And my old friend bared his soul
About rigging bids and getting neighbor kids
Good jobs on a ghost payroll

He said he’d be happy to help me out
If there was anything he could do
Like try to arrange a zoning change
Or put me on a movie crew

Well we talked and talked until last call
And I told him I was beat
Then he climbed aboard his hired truck
To see a man about a Senate seat

And late that night as I lay in bed
You know I finally figured it out
My friend didn’t need to read or write
‘Cuz he had himself some clout

CHORUS

You’ve got to pay-to-play in this town
If you wanna make that deal go down
It’s who you know inside the Big Machine
Just find the man that’s behind the man
And put some money in his hand
That’s how we try to keep our city green

CHORUS

You’ve got to pay-to-play in this town
If you wanna make that deal go down
It’s who you know inside the Big Machine
If you wanna stand out
You gotta know who gets the handout
That’s how we try to keep our city green
It’s a daily job to keep our city green

~~~

daily = Daley ? .... LOL

[katiekins1]

God willing, Blago’s got top security, and the trial actually does go forward

Body armor as well. Your Article connects the devious dots clearly.
Thank You. Book marking for future reference.

[freekitty]

Everyone knows, Obama and company stink as much as the ex-gov.

[Calpernia]

bflr

[TigersEye]

btrl

[maggief]

In January, the Sun-Times reported that Emanuel called Wyma in the days after the presidential election with a message for Blagojevich: Obama would not offer anything but “appreciation” in return for the appointment of an Obama favorite to the vacated Senate seat. It is unclear why Emanuel contacted Wyma rather than Blagojevich or the governor’s chief of staff, John Harris. At the time, unbeknownst to Blagojevich, Wyma had turned against him, secretly providing information to federal investigators about the governor’s alleged pay-to-play schemes.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/1393503,CST-NWS-wyma23.article

Emanuel had pal make call to Blago
PROBE | Aide worked with feds, told gov he'd get nothing for Senate: sources

January 23, 2009

EXCERPT

The report, commissioned by Obama after Blagojevich's Dec. 9 arrest, was an account of contacts between Obama’s staff and the governor's office. In response to the message from Wyma, Blagojevich was caught on tape saying: “They're not willing to give me anything except appreciation; [expletive] them.”

In October, Wyma began secretly providing information to the feds about Blagojevich.

In November, Wyma called Blagojevich's staff with the message from Emanuel, sources said. There's no indication that Wyma knew of a probe involving allegations related to the Senate seat. Wyma had provided information to the feds about pay-to-play allegations, according to the criminal complaint.

Wyma’s call on behalf of Emanuel was uncharacteristic, sources said. Before that, it was Emanuel who pushed for a Jarrett appointment.

The revelation that Emanuel allegedly asked an intermediary to contact Blagojevich's camp raises questions about whether Emanuel sought to distance himself from Blagojevich at a time when he has said he was unaware of alleged deal-making by the governor. Wyma’s attorney, Zachary Fardon, would not comment. An Emanuel spokeswoman referred to the Obama report.

[bray]

There is alot more:
http://brayincandy.com/id27.html

Pray for America

[STARWISE]

Good find. Rahm’s up to his eyeballs.

The question: is Fitzy intimidated or
will he pursue ALL the truth AND
does he keep the admin/culprits informed
or is he operating with integrity ?

[Lurker]

Zum Deutschen Eck, the old German restaurant in Lake View.

I used to eat there whenever I could. They had the best German food around. I miss it.