“There is so much more coming it is
breathtaking,” an almost always reliable source said recently when
asked about the recent flood of news stories about alleged corruption
within Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration. That source wasn’t the only one making this
prediction. Plenty of others are saying that the Chicago Tribune is sitting on a
large pile of explosives. Unlike 1998, when the Tribune mostly sat by while other
media outlets ran stories about George Ryan’s alleged corruption, the
paper is clearly trying to stay out front on this Blagojevich thing. As you
may have seen, the Trib published several more stories over the long July 4 holiday
weekend and then published follow-ups for days. The Associated Press also seems eager to become the
outlet of record for stories on state corruption. The AP may have even
published more stories to date than the Tribune about the Blagojevich administration’s
allegedly shady hiring practices. The AP, like the Tribune, seemed to hang back a little in 1998, when a few outlets
were diligently trying to track down stories about George Ryan’s
corruption. Things are much different now, of course, but there is another
big dissimilarity between this year and 1998. Back then, the sitting U.S.
attorney all but cleared George Ryan shortly before the election,
announcing that Ryan wasn’t a target of any federal investigation.
Patrick Fitzgerald proved again several days ago that he is a different
sort of guy. Fitzgerald has already essentially labeled
Blagojevich “Official A” in a federal plea agreement — a
very good indication that Blagojevich is on his radar screen. Then,
recently, Fitzgerald allowed the public release of a letter he had sent to
Attorney General Lisa Madigan that contained some explosive information
about his ongoing investigations. As you almost certainly know by now, Fitzgerald wrote
to Madigan of “very serious allegations of endemic hiring
fraud” within the Blagojevich administration. Fitzgerald alluded to
allegations about fraudulent hiring records and claimed that
“multiple state agencies and departments” have been implicated.
At least one insider has reportedly told friends that
he expects to be indicted before the election, but right now that’s
all just pure speculation. In the past, federal prosecutors have tried to
avoid doing anything that might tip an election one way or another.
Fitzgerald obviously isn’t concerned about what his investigation
might do to Blagojevich’s electoral chances, and that has made him
the most important person in the governor’s race. Despite all of his
campaign cash and political acumen, Blagojevich may ultimately have no
control over his own destiny. I am a little surprised, however, that the
governor’s people didn’t take their usual shot at Republican
opponent Judy Baar Topinka after a recent Tribune report surfaced. When the Trib revealed that the human-resources director at the
Illinois Department of Employment Security was deemed unqualified and that
certain questionable hires were made there, the governor harped on the fact
that it was his own inspector general who had uncovered the alleged
wrongdoing. He has since declared that he is ecstatic over all of
the negative headlines because it somehow proves that he and his
investigators are doing a great job of ferreting out corruption. “The
headlines are great,” he told stunned reporters last week. Despite the fact that almost nobody believes it, the
inspector-general angle is one of the only avenues the governor had, but he
left another one wide open. The Department of Employment Security hiring
director in question was eventually hired by Treasurer Topinka’s
office. Topinka’s people did have some defenses at the ready,
including the fact that they had done a state-police background check and
that the Blagojevich administration allowed the person to resign rather
than fire her. But a reasonable defense by the other side has never stopped
the governor’s attack machine before. You would think that Blagojevich would try to pivot
on this and blame Topinka for continuing the “culture of
corruption” while he was trying to clean it up. Maybe he’s off
his game — or maybe his campaign is just saving the hit for their TV
ads.
This article appears in Jul 6-12, 2006.
