Golden (19 page)

Blagojevich's campaign had made the tactical decision that the primary would be won or lost downstate. Blagojevich had gotten the backing of friends from his state representative days, most notably Representative Jay Hoffman, who had roomed with Blagojevich when the two were in the legislature together.

An endorsement from the county chairmen's group, though, would be a boon. But Blagojevich didn't attend, instead allowing Dick Mell to show up in all his ward-boss glory. On the surface, some may have thought Mell and downstate Democrats would be opposites—the slick, big-city politician versus the country boys—but Mell still spoke the universal language of Illinois politics: patronage and power. And during his speech he tempted them
about what the future would look like for all Democrats under a Blagojevich administration.

“He's a Jacksonian Democrat,” Mell told the crowd. “Not necessarily a
Jesse Jackson
Jacksonian, but an
Andrew Jackson
Jacksonian, who said, ‘To the victor remains the spoils.'

“He's a firm believer that, if the opportunity is there for a Democrat to have an opportunity to serve in state government, and he can do the job, [and] he's equal to the Republican, why shouldn't it be the Democrat? I mean, Republicans have done that for, I don't know, twenty, twenty-six years.”

This wasn't Chicago politics, he explained. This was winning politics. “This is what builds parties,” he continued. “It'll help you with your fund-raising. It'll help you build an organization.”

Mell also let slip that Blagojevich was doing so well fund-raising he was going to exceed the campaign's original plan to raise $6 million for the primary.

Blagojevich wasn't pleased when the “Jacksonian” comments hit the
Springfield State Journal-Register,
but it didn't seem to hurt. The group was led by John Gianulis, a grizzled political veteran from the Mississippi River town of Rock Island. Nearly a year earlier, Blagojevich's campaign gave $2,500 to the Rock Island Democratic Party, which Gianulis controlled. When the association took its vote, it backed Blagojevich.

The dynamic between Mell and Blagojevich continued to be one of the more complicated aspects of the campaign. One reason was Blagojevich's increasing reliance on Kelly, including putting him in charge of fund-raising. One day Blagojevich and Mell would act like best friends, and the next they'd be refusing to speak to each other. It had gotten worse since Blagojevich entered Congress; the two men fought about everything from staffers in the congressional office to what gifts Amy received for Christmas. Blagojevich complained Mell acted like he owned him, and Mell complained Rod was an ungrateful jerk.

“The kid can be such a pain in the ass sometimes,” Mell groused, sometimes out in the relative open of the anteroom behind the chambers of Chicago's city hall where aldermen gathered during council meetings. He's got talent but thinks the world owes him everything, Mell said.

Some viewed Mell's venting as jealousy. But others knew Blagojevich was trying to distance himself from Mell. Once again, it was good politics to not look indebted to a ward boss. But personally, it was what Blagojevich wanted. He'd been “State Representative Sonin-Law” and “Congressman Sonin-Law.” He would not be “Governor Sonin-Law.”

On Sunday, August 12, 2001, thousands of men and women jammed inside one of the rusting, hulking structures of the Finkl steel plant.

It would become a familiar setting for Blagojevich's campaign events, underscoring his blue-collar roots and populist agenda. Axelrod had used it when Blagojevich won Congress. Now Wilhelm was using it as Blagojevich announced he was running for governor.

Mell had packed the house with city workers and precinct captains who made up the backbone of the city's political scene, generating an electric atmosphere and a show of force. Four days earlier, Governor Ryan had announced in a much different setting—the courthouse square in Kanka-kee—that he wouldn't be running for reelection.

But, in Ryan, Blagojevich still saw a fantastic political foil that he wasn't going to let go to waste just because he took himself out of the race.

“The Republicans are hiding,” he hollered to the animated crowd. “In Springfield today, the Republicans are running from Governor Ryan's record, but they cannot run and they cannot hide from a twenty-four-year legacy of corruption, mismanagement, and lost opportunities.”

Afterward, Blagojevich was more keyed up than usual, shaking hands and hugging almost everybody he came across.

“This is gonna be fun!” he kept saying, even to some bystanders he didn't know. “Hold on to your hat!”

The field for governor was beginning to set.

On the Republican side, the state's attorney general, Jim Ryan, announced he was running for governor the day after George Ryan announced he wasn't. He was facing a highly conservative state senator from the southwest suburbs, Patrick O'Malley, and George Ryan's lieutenant governor, Corinne Wood, who positioned herself as the female moderate.

Jim Ryan was the immediate frontrunner. He had twice won office statewide and was a proven commodity in Illinois politics. But the situation was hardly perfect.

Archconservatives who controlled a small but loud contingent of party regulars considered Jim Ryan to be closer to the “RINO”—Republican in Name Only—category than theirs. They preferred O'Malley. There was also a spectacularly controversial court case that haunted Ryan's career. Before becoming attorney general, he headed the prosecutor's office in suburban DuPage County. While in that job, Ryan prosecuted a suspect, Rolando Cruz, despite questions about his guilt in the killing of ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. The case got so far that Cruz was twice sentenced to death despite trials that raised questions about police and prosecutors' handling of the case. Cruz was finally found not guilty at a third trial when evidence emerged that lent credence to Cruz's claims. Jim Ryan's biggest problem, though, might have been his simplest—his last name. Even though Jim Ryan and George Ryan weren't related and weren't politically close, they shared the same surname and were members of the same political party.

Working to his advantage, however, was Jim Ryan's history and story. The Cruz case aside, voters had generally found him to be an ethical and solid government official, if not exciting. Personally, he had overcome a series of well-publicized tragedies, including bouts of cancer, his wife's heart attack, and the death of his youngest daughter, Annie. Voters respected him and saw his courage during trying times.

On the Democratic side, Blagojevich's opponents would be Bakalis, who portrayed himself as a reformer focused on education, and Vallas, who on paper was basically a younger, better version of Bakalis. The two men were Greek, had education bona fides, and hadn't raised much money or assembled much in terms of organizations.

A former budget chief for Mayor Daley, Vallas was selected years earlier to head the mayor's high-profile effort to improve Chicago public schools. It worked for a while but Vallas's relationship with Daley soured. Some close to Daley claimed school improvements stalled. Others said Daley wasn't too keen on the forty-eight-year-old Vallas's popularity being the same as or greater than his.

Other candidates were falling by the wayside. Daley's brother, William, decided not to run, after toying with the idea and, in the process, freezing up some critical fund-raising for Vallas. Dan Hynes was going to run for comptroller again, Durbin was going to stay in the Senate, and Dick Devine
was staying state's attorney. Privately, Blagojevich took a lot of the credit, touting his fund-raising for scaring potential opponents off. That left only one more.

A few weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Burris formally announced his candidacy in Centralia, the downstate city where he was born. He repeated his performance later that day on the porch of his home on Chicago's South Side, where Obadele's warning about how Burris would get massive support among blacks was on full display. Flanking him were congressmen Danny Davis and Bobby Rush, along with several state lawmakers, including a tall state senator with big ears who stood in the back-ground—Barack Obama.

Even though it was still months before candidates had to officially file, the Democratic field was set: Blagojevich, Bakalis, Burris, and Vallas. “Two Greeks, a black, and a Serb,” one Blagojevich fundraiser noted.

One African American politician not standing behind Burris was US Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. Some in the media speculated Jackson and his father might end up endorsing Blagojevich, especially considering their friendliness with each other in Congress and their mutual ties from the Yugoslavia trip.

Publicly, Blagojevich downplayed a Jackson endorsement. But privately he coveted it, even having Wilhelm and the younger Jackson meet privately to talk about an endorsement. If the Jacksons backed him, it would almost assure a victory in the primary, he figured. Not only would it undermine Burris, but also it would virtually guarantee the 5 to 7 percent of the black vote Blagojevich estimated he needed to win in March.

Blagojevich decided to sit down with the Jacksons and their close ally James Meeks, who had also been on the Yugoslavia trip and was running for state senate in 2002. The younger Jackson told Blagojevich what he had told Wilhelm: he would strongly consider endorsing him, but he wanted something too.

He asked Blagojevich to back his plan for a third airport in Jackson's congressional district if he won the governor's office. It was a project vitally important to Jackson that he said would bring thousands of jobs to his district. It was also in political purgatory because Mayor Daley wanted an expansion of O'Hare International Airport to be the area's priority. If Jackson had an ally in the governor's office, the airport might get built.

Blagojevich agreed, even at one point calling himself a Peotone Democrat after the village in which the proposed airport would be built.

Jackson suggested Blagojevich should show his support for the black community by setting up a campaign office on Chicago's South Side. Blagojevich aides said the governor was also asked to hire campaign workers loyal to the Jacksons and to put some campaign cash into Seaway National Bank, an institution whose leaders were longtime supporters of Reverend Jackson. The younger Jackson denied requesting Blagojevich make the deposit in exchange for his support.

Wilhelm had wanted an early endorsement, but Jackson held him off. He agreed to endorse Blagojevich but at a later date.

Blagojevich was excited and called Obadele to tell him about the meeting. “Rod, they are going to fuck you,” Obadele told him plainly. “They're full of shit. They aren't going to back you.”