Golden (24 page)

Blagojevich's answer to “indiscretions” was to hit the road, once again barnstorming across Illinois to campaign and raise more money. He also chose to worry about more important things, such as his hair. The candidate constantly brushed it and was always in need of his black, oval hairbrush. It became so ubiquitous that Wyma, Scofield, and others in the campaign had a nickname for it—“the football”—a play on the codename presidents used for the briefcase containing the US government's nuclear launch codes. It was
that
important. In Blagojevich's case, he needed a brush so often, his staff kept nearly a dozen “footballs” stashed in his SUV, in the campaign office, and around the state.

Left out of the boys club, though, was Mell, who continued to feel slighted about being replaced by Blagojevich's new team, especially the brash Kelly. Mell had grown to dislike Kelly, viewing him not only as a threat for Blagojevich's attentions but also as a bad influence.

Kelly fed Blagojevich's ego, and they had grown so close they were becoming nearly inseparable. Kelly even purchased expensive Montblanc pens as gifts, telling Blagojevich that once he was governor he could use them for bill signings. Blagojevich kept losing the pens, and Kelly just kept buying more. The Kelly and Blagojevich families would eventually vacation together, traveling to Bermuda and Mexico.

It all left Mell with a growing bitterness and anger. “Fuck him,” Mell said more than once when people asked him about Kelly.

Petrovic sensed the factions and his feelings were confirmed when Mell's assistant, Mary Hahne, called him out of the blue and asked him to meet the alderman at his office.

“Sit down,” Mell said firmly when Petrovic arrived. Mell and Petrovic weren't close but also had shared a mutual respect for each other. Mell didn't waste any time getting to the point.

“I'm going to tell you something that you should never forget,” he told Petrovic. “My sonin-law will never do anything for anyone unless it's in his self-interest.”

Petrovic looked confused. Mell asked, “Do you understand what I just said?” Petrovic said no, in fact, he didn't. Mell just repeated what he had said: “My sonin-law will never do anything for anyone unless it's in his self-interest.” And that was it. End of meeting. Petrovic walked out of the offices on Kedzie and stepped into his car where he sat for twenty minutes.

“I decided then to always keep distance between myself and Rod,” he recalled years later.

As Blagojevich had problems behind the scenes, Jim Ryan's difficulties were evident for the whole state to see.

A Labor Day poll conducted by the
Tribune
showed Ryan down by 17 points, though he did slightly better when it was made clear to respondents that he was not George Ryan. That factoid only spurred a tit-for-tat between the Ryans. Curry and Pearman liked to see the fire in their candidate, though they wished it was aimed more at Blagojevich.

During one press conference, Jim Ryan was set to reraise the questions laid out in the six-year-old
Tribune
story about Blagojevich representing legal clients suing the city while moonlighting on Mell's city payroll. As part of the event, staffers brought along an oversized version of the famous 1987 photo of Mell standing atop his desk during the debate to pick Mayor Harold Washington's successor.

Ryan said he wouldn't use it. It was sinking to Blagojevich's level and had nothing to do with the campaign. Pearman and Curry were flabbergasted. This is the campaign theme, they said. This is an election about reforming state government. We have to remind people about this every chance we get.

“I don't care what you guys say about this,” Ryan said.

Curry placed the photo next to the podium anyhow without Ryan knowing. He told campaign staffers he'd take the heat later. When Ryan walked into the room, he looked over at the photo and grimaced. And then he proceeded to ignore it until a reporter pointed to it and asked him what he was trying to say by having it standing there next to him. Ryan stammered for a second.

“I have questions in my mind of whether he is going to be able to say no to the person to whom he owes his political career,” he dryly explained. “I think [Mell] will have a lot of influence over my opponent.”

The next day, Mell was wreaking his own havoc within the Blagojevich camp.

Following Madigan's “indiscretions” comments, Mell had been hearing whispers about Ryan's campaign spreading rumors and reporters chasing other tips that involved some deep, dark secrets in Blagojevich's past. Some dealt with possible extramarital affairs or dalliances in Springfield; others had to do with Blagojevich's alleged bookmaking with mob associates. Mell had had enough. While driving downtown to the posh East Bank Club, he called in to the popular “Don and Roma” program on WLS-AM radio station and let loose.

“One of the stories was that he visited a house of ill repute and that I went down and ripped up the papers,” Mell said. “That is one of the whispering campaigns I heard. Can you imagine that happening in the city of Chicago? That is the kind of gutter stuff that is being put out there by the opposition!”

Mell rambled on about how disgraceful the whole thing was and how it was upsetting him and his daughter. “Knowing Rod Blagojevich and knowing what he thinks of my daughter, I guarantee there are no indiscretions,” he said. “He'd have it from my daughter. Patti is a very strong-willed young lady.”

Before Mell had hung up the phone, he realized the call was a mistake. A lot of the rumors had been out there, but none had been published because they had not been substantiated. Now that Mell had opened his mouth, the mysterious “indiscretions” would be impossible to ignore. Boarding a plane in Springfield, Blagojevich got a call from Mell at the same time Scofield was getting a call from
Sun-Times
political reporter Scott Fornek.

“You might want to know that I was on the radio today,” Mell told Blagojevich. He explained he was trying to help, trying to show how dirty Ryan's people were being. “But I might have screwed up.”

Blagojevich hung up the phone and exploded. “Fucking Mell! Fucking Mell! Are you kidding me? Fucking Mell!”

Scofield tried to talk Fornek and other reporters who had gotten wind of the story out of picking it up. But by the end of the day, the best he could do was portray Mell as a frustrated parent defending his family. Mell promised to keep his mouth shut until Election Day. But the next day Scofield sent a
top aide in the campaign's press shop, Billy Weinberg, to shadow Mell at city hall to make sure he held his tongue.

While Ryan's people were ecstatic about Mell's gaffe, they hadn't gotten far enough on the mob bookmaking story. John Pearman had been trying for months to find any solid connections on the rumors, even once approaching Abbinanti and spending four days going through archived court files in a remote warehouse. Even years later, Abbinanti maintained the rumor was not true.

O'Rourke, the former FBI agent turned private detective, found others who heard the Blagojevich-bookie rumors, but nobody had any paperwork proving what Cooley was saying. Everybody only had indirect knowledge of it.

The
Tribune
had heard the same rumors and was running into the same problems confirming the story. With the paper apparently not going to run a story, Curry and Pearman got desperate and shared what little they had with other reporters all over town. After meeting with a reporter at the
Sun-Times
for hours, Curry and Pearman left with completely opposite ideas of how things went. Pearman thought there was a chance the newspaper might publish something. Curry didn't.

“Well, this fucking campaign is over,” an exhausted and aggravated Pearman responded.

Adding to Pearman's frustration was the fact that it was clear by now the state's insiders and moneyed interests—those who cared more about themselves than political philosophy—were falling in line behind Blagojevich. Among them was William Cellini, who on paper was a longtime Republican but was just as well-known as the state's ultimate insider.

And he and Ryan hadn't gotten along. As attorney general, Ryan had killed a proposed settlement of a deal that would have bailed out a Cellini hotel project in Springfield, and Cellini apparently had not forgotten. In the last month of the campaign, he quietly held a fundraiser for Blagojevich in suburban DuPage County just miles from Ryan's house.

Most in attendance at Cellini's money event were members of the Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Association, whose members knew him because of his long association with the powerful Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association. It was smart politics. And playing footsie with the Democrats
was not entirely new territory for Cellini. As a Cellini insider once said: “It assured stability, no matter who was in office.”

Still, it looked bad. If it got out that a man like Cellini was hosting a fundraiser for Blagojevich just weeks before Election Day, people would ask questions and think maybe all that talk of reform and renewal coming from Blagojevich's mouth was just campaign rhetoric. So after the event Chris Kelly approached Kelly Glynn, the finance director for Friends of Blagojevich. Through a computer database, Glynn kept tabs on the campaign's “bundlers,” the top men and women who got all the individual donors together to donate to the campaign. Kelly directed Glynn to muddy up the record of the fundraiser. Instead of calling it a Cellini event, it was listed as Rezko-DeLeo-Roadbuilders, referring to Rezko, the roadbuilder attendees, and State Senator James DeLeo, a Northwest Side Democratic powerbroker.

Meanwhile on Ryan's side, Stuart Levine was doing well but not well enough. One day, he gathered a small group of men and women inside a private room on the second floor of Harry Caray's restaurant to pressure them to give to Ryan. “We can't wait any more! We just can't,” he implored. “The time is now.”

At the outset of the election season, Blagojevich and Ryan had agreed to four debates. The first two hadn't generated many sparks, and the third was headed in the same direction when Blagojevich leaned in from his seat at WTTW-TV's studios and decided to change the subject.