Golden (90 page)

But the responsibility does not rest on the former governor alone. Just as Republicans had with George Ryan, nearly every Democratic staffer and politician in Illinois backed Blagojevich's bid for higher office, even those
who knew his tremendous flaws and helped hide them from voters. They are all accessories to the shame Blagojevich wrought. When it all collapsed, each of them piled on. Some impeached him, others voted him out of office, and still others pretended they hadn't at some point stood alongside Blagojevich on stage in an effort to ingratiate themselves with him. They too were yearning for power. And still are.

The citizenry is also to blame. None of our leaders is perfect, but questions surrounded Blagojevich for years. Voters either didn't pay attention or ignored those questions and purposely set them aside amid a blur of flashy TV spots and witty one-liners. When glitziness trumps substance in picking a winner at the polls, we all end up losers.

The reminder came again in one other thing Zagel told Blagojevich before changing his life forever. He simply pointed out that throughout both trials, he had often called Blagojevich “governor,” even though nobody else addressed him as such, as he had been impeached and removed from office.

“By protocol you are entitled to that honorific if, for no other reason, you won elections as governor twice,” Zagel said.

“But I also do it because it serves as a reminder to those of us who vote and those of us who don't. It reminds the voters of the maxim: the American people always get precisely the government that they deserve.”

Rod Blagojevich became Prisoner 40892-424 in March 2012, waving to onlookers for a last time as he entered the Federal Correction Institution at Englewood, Colorado, not far from Denver, with the Rocky Mountains as a backdrop.

He left his Chicago home as he so often had during his trials—with a crowd standing outside on the sidewalk waiting to hear him speak. And when he finally did, it was typical Rod, as he told the gathered reporters, neighbors, and curiosity-seekers that his first thought as the state's leader was always to do what was right for people. Even though everyone knew why he was addressing them and where he was going, Blagojevich couldn't bring himself to say the word
prison.

Once again craving the spotlight, he signed autographs on scraps of paper for nearly all who asked, even to the point of ignoring the pleas of eight-year-old Annie Blagojevich, who begged him to stop and come back inside the house. Finally, he retreated.

“I'll see you around,” the former governor said to the press.

In Colorado, he had his final meal outside the prison walls at a local hamburger place, ordering a double patty melt and fries. But his appetite may have been one casualty of the troubling day, as observers said he didn't eat much. Helicopters hovered to catch every step of his journey to incarceration.

Another thing Blagojevich was expected to lose in his long stint behind bars was the deep color of his hair. In the days after the gates locked behind him, his longtime barber was among those to weigh in on his Blagojevich experiences. The ex-governor's famous hair wasn't naturally dark brown, Peter Vodovoz told the press, and it would probably go gray quickly with then fifty-five-year-old Blagojevich having no access to any cosmetic treatment. “He dyes it himself,” Vodovoz said.

A few months after Blagojevich was found guilty, William Cellini stood trial on charges of trying to extort a Blagojevich campaign contribution from Thomas Rosenberg, the Hollywood film producer. Cellini's trial was the last from the Operation Board Games probe. He was convicted in November 2011 but was appealing.

Stuart Levine, who was last working at a suburban mall selling electronic cigarettes, was scheduled to be sentenced in summer of 2012. By then, Patrick Fitzgerald, the longest-serving US attorney in Chicago history, had stepped down from his post.

And not long after Blagojevich entered prison, the last of his former close allies learned their fates from Judge Zagel, who had sentenced Tony Rezko to more than ten years in prison in late 2011 after the convicted fundraiser was never called as a witness.

Lon Monk got the two-year prison term he was expecting in his deal with the government, but John Harris turned out to be the big winner. Zagel sentenced Harris, whose early cooperation had been so crucial and whose testimony so important for prosecutors, to just ten days in prison. The judge said he understood the kind of position Harris had been put in as he tried to deal with Blagojevich as a boss on an hour-to-hour basis. Harris was continuing to try to rebuild his life.

The relatively light punishment for Harris surprised many, including Patti Blagojevich, who wondered aloud “what planet are we on” in a status update on her Facebook page. Her husband was expected to spend several thousand more days than that in the custody of the government.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons listed Blagojevich's expected release date as May 23, 2024.

We'd like to thank staff at Chicago Review Press for their patience and hard work. Susan Betz, who first helped conceive of this book and shepherded it through its first stages, deserves our sincere thanks. We'd also like to thank CRP publisher Cynthia Sherry and especially Lisa Reardon for her deft editing.

We've been honored to work for the
Chicago Tribune
for more than a decade, and we'd like to thank the
Tribune
's editors for encouraging us to do this project, most notably Editor Gerould Kern and Deputy Managing Editor Peter Kendall. Thanks also to editors Ann Marie Lipinski, Jim O'Shea, George de Lama, Hanke Gratteau, and Terry Brown. We'd especially like to thank editors and fellow reporters who worked with us on a daily basis on the Blagojevich story including Jim Webb, Bob Secter, Eric Krol, Matt O'Connor, Ray Long, Rick Pearson, Christi Parsons, David Kidwell, David Mendell, Stacy St. Clair, Annie Sweeney, and Monique Garcia, and photographer Nancy Stone for taking our author photo.

For their exhaustive work back in 1996 documenting Rod Blagojevich and Dick Mell, we'd like to thank former
Tribune
writers Patrick Reardon, Laurie Cohen, Ray Gibson, and Robert Becker.

Thanks to all of those who agreed to be interviewed for this book and to those who supplied material for it. All of them cooperated with the goal of helping us put together the most complete account possible.

From Jeff Coen:

There are times when a writing project becomes a way for a journalist to make peace with a story, and so it was for us with Rod Blagojevich. After covering him for years—a large block of our professional lives to date—it was a chance to put everything we had gathered in one place and stitch together the full arc of the story. It was rewarding for me professionally and was made all the better by being surrounded by friends for the duration of the work.

When I think back on putting this book together, I'll always recall getting to work closely with John Chase. We had become good friends well before this project, and neither of us would have considered taking it on without the other. In addition to it being fun (most of the time), it was a great pleasure to work with a reporter I respect so much.

I also want to give special thanks to the
Tribune
's Bob Secter, who was my partner covering the trial of Tony Rezko in 2008 and both Blagojevich trials. Bob had a rich background as a political reporter and editor and is widely known as one of the paper's better writers. Getting him as a trial partner felt like having an unfair advantage, and many long trial days passed quicker by getting to constantly joke around with him. Likewise, special thanks to the paper's Stacy St. Clair, who often took on the duty of covering the publicity side of the Blagojevich defense machine, including following him to New York. She's another good friend, and she was a living encyclopedia of Blagojevich trivia who was more than handy to have around as the book came together.

Finally, thanks to Doug and Kathy Coen, Jeremy and Denise Coen, Chris Coen, Mike and Sharon Marsalis, and Michael and Megann Marsalis for the constant support. To friends Vince and Laura Cook, another thank-you for the encouragement.

To Meredith and Liam, thank you for tolerating all the time this took on days when we could have been doing other things. Because of you I'm as blessed as anyone can be. And finally, I am most grateful to my wife, Michelle. There's nothing I could say in a million words. But thank you—for everything.

From John Chase:

In the midst of writing this book, my sister made a masterful discovery in the Chase family tree. A great, great uncle we all knew to be just a saloon
keeper, John Joseph Brennan, was actually a Chicago alderman for more than two decades. She uncovered that Brennan was a quintessential Chicago ward boss in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (never a good thing). He did favors almost only for his political friends and was jailed for literally buying votes. The discovery helped me understand something about myself and my long-held love of Chicago's seedy political history: it's apparently in my blood.

I hope I've washed away a few family sins by writing this book, which was produced with the help of so many people it's impossible to list them all. I'd particularly like to thank my coauthor, Jeff Coen, who has been a constant source of calm amid sometimes troubled waters.

I'd also like to thank all those who have helped me along my career in journalism, from the Logansport
Pharos-Tribune
and City News Bureau of Chicago to the
Daily Herald
and
Chicago Tribune.
Many at the
Tribune
are listed above, but I'd particularly like to again thank Jim Webb and Bob Secter for being my direct editors during my six years covering Rod Blagojevich as governor.

Thank you to my friends and family who suffered through missed parties and constant complaining and the loss of my dogs Algren and Daisy and cat Emerson while I was working on this, especially: Rick Sloan, Bob Walsh, Senora Neli, the String, the Cypriot Brotherhood, Doug and Donna Novak, Carey Chase (amateur genealogist), my mom, Theresa Chase, and my late father, John Brennan Chase, who I wish could have seen this.

I'd like to thank my daughter, Josephine, for constantly putting a smile on my face and love in my heart. And I'd mostly like to thank my beautiful wife, Shanna, whose constant support and unending patience guided me through this project. I've got one thing to say to her: the book is done.

Abbinanti, Bobby,
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Abel, David,
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ABN AMRO,
145

Academy for Urban School Leadership,
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Adam, Sam, Jr.,
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,
321
,
323–24
,
329–31
,
335
,
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