Federal investigators didn’t make it
easy for Gov. Rod Blagojevich last week. On his big day, when he tried to turn around
his political fortunes with All Kids, a major new public-health
policy initiative formally unveiled in front of a joint session of
the General Assembly with most of the state’s media in
attendance, the feds dropped yet another subpoena.
This time, it was the Illinois Department of
Transportation’s turn. Prosecutors demanded hiring records
going back three years. The Chicago
Tribune disclosed the day before
the governor’s speech that the feds had widened their probe
of the Department of Children and Family Services with a fresh
subpoena of hiring records and that federal prosecutors had sent an
unusual letter claiming that “the government is conducting a
grand jury investigation regarding allegations of criminal
wrongdoing of Victor Roberson, Robin Staggers and Joe Cini in
relation to public corruption.”
Cini, the governor’s patronage chief,
came out of Chicago Ald. Dick Mell’s ward organization. Cini
is highly regarded by many insiders but despised by at least some
current and former state-agency personnel directors for allegedly
pressuring them on questionable hiring. Roberson is one of
Cini’s top aides. Staggers is a patronage person assigned to
DCFS. Staggers and two of her aides have reportedly been placed on
administrative leave. The disclosure of that federal letter went
off like a bomb at the statehouse. Though falling short of being an actual
“target letter” — when the government informs
someone that he or she is the target of an investigation — it
was close enough for many. The feds rarely tip their hand, but for
whatever reason they have seemed unusually willing to show their
cards when it comes to this governor. It wasn’t that long
ago, remember, that the feds did everything but name Blagojevich
and his two top fundraisers, Chris Kelly and Tony Rezko, in
negotiated guilty pleas related to a corruption investigation of
the teachers’ pension fund. The IDOT subpoena demanded hiring records
dating back to several months before the governor took office, as
did the DCFS subpoena. It’s possible that investigators are
attempting to compare patronage procedures between the Blagojevich
and George Ryan administrations. By most accounts, Blagojevich delivered one of
the best speeches of his career last week, omitting his often inane
jokes and focusing on the task at hand, promoting himself as a champion
of health-care rights for all. But his message was stepped on by the
feds, showing once again how difficult it will be to right his
upside-down poll numbers. The governor appears to be hoping that All
Kids, which would subsidize health care for thousands of
middle-class children who are now going without, will persuade
voters to give him another look. After almost a solid year of
unremitting bad publicity and resulting low poll numbers, the
governor needs to wave something big and flashy in front of
voters’ eyes to make them think that maybe he’s not so
bad after all — or is, at least, worthy of reconsideration. Then again, a poll conducted by the Tribune earlier
this month found that just 22 percent of voters said that the
governor had lived up to his promise to clean up government, and 57
percent of independents believed Blagojevich “had not
fulfilled his commitment to clean up corruption and
cronyism.”
A disturbingly large 52 percent of
independent voters said that Blagojevich was “motivated by
personal interests,” and 44 percent of all voters agreed.
Subsequent media disclosures that 10 percent of Gov. and Mrs.
Blagojevich’s total gross household income last year came
from political insider Tony Rezko will probably only reinforce that
belief. Pushing programs such as All Kids may indeed
help the governor make some progress with voters. But the people
I’ve talked to on both sides of the aisle who have analyzed
polling data and monitored focus groups universally agree that
voters feel betrayed by a self-described reformer who doesn’t
reform. So even if the governor gets a second look, he will
eventually have to begin addressing this very real problem. Insiders say that the governor is reluctant
to dump or even distance himself from the politically connected
insiders who helped get him elected and who have since raised
mountains of cash for his campaign fund and, in Rezko’s case,
even helped pad his family’s personal bank account. Until he
makes a complete break with those people, it will be impossible to
start convincing voters that this governor is clean.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2005.
