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In early 2006, Gov. Rod Blagojevich faced a firestorm
of criticism from Jewish leaders for his appointment of Louis
Farrakhan’s “minister of protocol” to the Illinois Hate
Crimes Commission. Several Jewish members resigned from the commission in
protest of Sister Claudette Marie Muhammad’s appointment, but
Blagojevich refused to back down and claimed that he didn’t know who
she was when he put her on the commission. A handful of Jewish leaders opposed the mass
resignations from the Hate Crimes Commission. One was Rabbi Philip
Lefkowitz of the Agudas Achim-North Shore Congregation. Lefkowitz claims he
was sharply and repeatedly criticized by other Jewish leaders for opposing
the resignations. The situation had indeed created a gigantic
controversy in Chicago at the time, and tensions were high. Blagojevich,
who had just kicked off his reelection campaign, began desperately seeking
allies as he tried to walk a fine line between angering African-American
allies (several black legislators wanted him to stand firm on the
appointment) and the Jewish community, so he asked some of the more
sympathetic clergy to a meeting in his Chicago office. Lefkowitz attended that meeting with the governor and
other religious leaders to discuss how to deal with the commission
resignations. Before the meeting started, Lefkowitz claims, he was told by
Blagojevich’s Senate floor leader, Carol Ronen, that the governor was
interested in helping with his work and offered to free up $400,000 in
grant money to help him build a nonsectarian community center in Uptown.
Lefkowitz asked for $500,000 and was allegedly told that Ronen would see
what she could do. After the meeting, Blagojevich helped Lefkowitz with
his coat and allegedly said that he wanted to assist with the center
project. Later Blagojevich attended a Passover Seder at the rabbi’s
synagogue and once again promised him and the synagogue president, Steve
Tuck, that he was still committed to the community-center grant. As you may have guessed by now, Lefkowitz never got
the money. The furor over the Hate Crimes Commission eventually died down,
the media moved on to other things, and Lefkowitz received a letter in May
from the governor’s deputy chief of staff informing him that the
state simply didn’t have enough money to help build the facility. Last week Lefkowitz sent a snarky letter to various
Chicago newspapers, asking whether it’s possible “that as with
Pilgrim Baptist Church, the check was sent to ‘the wrong
place.’ ”
Pilgrim Baptist Church, you will recall, was the
African-American church in Chicago that burned down in 2006. Blagojevich
made a big show of pledging a million dollars to help rebuild the church
during the campaign. But for some as yet unexplained reason the money
instead went to a private school at the church. That school took the cash
and then moved far away from Pilgrim’s neighborhood. The church
itself got nothing. All of the school’s new state money, in fact,
was spent to buy an entire floor of a building in Chicago’s Loop from
an FBI mole who was helping the feds get the goods on Tony Rezko, the
governor’s campaign fundraiser and a big-time Chicago real-estate
developer. The school has not yet reopened, and the flap has caused
Blagojevich to find another million dollars to help rebuild the church
complex. As you may know, it gets weirder. The governor has
granted just 67 pardons since taking office, but a rush pardon was put in
place for the school’s director, who claimed on her pardon
application that she feared that she couldn’t operate the school with
a felony on her record. The school also never completed the paperwork to
operate as a nonprofit entity, so that was taken care of as well. The governor’s office has claimed that
Blagojevich didn’t put two and two together when he approved the
woman’s application. Blagojevich himself has blamed a couple of
former staffers for sending the money to the “wrong” place. Whether you believe him or not, Blagojevich is now
apparently saying that the fastest, easiest, most efficient way to get
money out of the state is for the governor to screw up. Rabbi Lefkowitz, take heed.
Rich Miller publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political
newsletter, and thecapitolfaxblog.com.
This article appears in Mar 6-12, 2008.
