Golden (26 page)

Behind the stage, Blagojevich began to celebrate with Kelly, Monk, Petrovic, Scofield, Wyma, and Wilhelm. He had raised nearly $23.5 million from July 1, 2001. Ryan raised a little more than $14 million.

Back at the Hilton, at nine o'clock, Ryan campaign manager Carter Hendren, Hodas, and Steve Culliton had seen enough from the war room. They marched upstairs to Ryan's suite with a printout of results. He was getting crushed by more than 20 points. The two areas where Ryan was doing best—the suburbs and downstate—had the fewest precincts reporting, so undoubtedly it would get closer before night's end. But not enough to close the gap, they told him.

“Well, that's it,” Ryan said. By 9:19 pm, he was on the phone with Blagojevich, wishing him luck and congratulations. Minutes later, Levine introduced Ryan to the lackluster crowd, and Ryan conceded. More than 1.8 million Illinois residents voted for Blagojevich—252,000 more than for Ryan.

Over at Finkl steel, it was a far different scene.

“My heart is full tonight,” Blagojevich yelled to the screaming spectators, adding in an Elvis impression that same heart was filled with “nothing but a whole bunch a hunka-hunka burnin' love for each one of you!”

The dozens on stage with him celebrated wildly, including the state's new lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn. Blagojevich disliked Quinn, but the two had becoming running mates in March when Quinn won the separate nomination in the lieutenant governor's race, an odd coincidence given his early role in helping launch Mell's career.

The next morning—after only an hour of sleep—Blagojevich was back at it, shaking hands, signing autographs, and hugging anybody who wanted a hug at the Jefferson Park El stop. As hundreds filed past on their way to work, Blagojevich said those were the people he would fight for as governor. He'd help them reach their piece of the American dream just like they had helped him reach his last night.

When one person stopped and called him “Governor,” Blagojevich turned with a smile. “You can call me Rod. I'm here to stay!”

Lights blazed, music blared, and dozens of staffers, supporters, and fundraisers jammed inside the house on the corner of Richmond and Sunnyside. So many people arrived that night in 2002, the front door was in almost perpetual motion as politicians and lawyers, downtown businesspeople and suburban union leaders, eased past bystanders and partygoers taking a break outside as they walked up the home's concrete steps to pay their respects.

Inside, the hosts—Illinois's governor-elect and first lady—greeted their guests graciously. The couple was euphoric. Almost everyone who was a player in Illinois, it seemed, was there to honor the winning couple and celebrate the coming-of-age of Rod Blagojevich, Illinois's fortieth governor.

The always affable Blagojevich proudly put his home on display, showing off the piano in the front room, the kitchen in the back, and especially the library he had spent so much time and energy renovating. Two men who didn't need the tour stood close by. Blagojevich showed them off as well. Chris Kelly and Tony Rezko had handed Rod Blagojevich the keys to the governor's office through their fund-raising and loyalty, and Blagojevich was making sure those who didn't know it before knew it now.

The always hoarse-voiced and boisterous Kelly was even more gravelly as he spoke but was also cordial and kind. Rezko stayed to form. Quiet and flawlessly dressed and groomed as always, Rezko lingered around Blagojevich's home and stayed away from chit-chat. When introduced to strangers, he acted awkwardly. He attempted at one point to apparently try to
ingratiate himself with a Blagojevich donor he had never met by explaining that even though he was from the Middle East, he was a Christian.

Days later, as Blagojevich and his campaign began the work of forming a transition team before the January inauguration, Kelly and Rezko were at his side once again.

Blagojevich's team rented meeting and office space in a modern skyscraper across the street from the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago. Airy and made extensively of glass, the Thompson Center houses state agencies and board offices—including the governor's on the sixteenth floor. It features a massive atrium that allows visitors to see a cross-section of every floor, designed by architect Helmut Jahn to symbolize how Illinois government is “open” and transparent, something longtime insiders love to joke about given the state's sordid reputation. State employees hate the building, complaining the atrium is a massive waste of square footage and that the windows leak. Some Democrats also complain the building was named after a Republican, the former governor who got it built in 1985.

But Blagojevich wasn't one of them. In fact, Blagojevich named Jim Thompson the cochairman of his transition team. On the surface, Thompson seemed an odd choice since Blagojevich had just spent eight months hammering the living hell out of every member of the GOP he could find, blaming the party for plaguing Illinois with corruption and insider deals. But Blagojevich, who teamed Thompson up with liberal labor leader Margaret Blackshere, said bringing Thompson in showed he was already reaching across the aisle. He also said he planned to tap the expertise of the onetime governor who spent fourteen years in office about how best to establish a “firewall” between his campaign fund-raising operation and his state government administration. He wanted to ensure politics never interfered with governing.

Thompson, the former US attorney, won election in 1976 by using his reputation as a corruption-buster. But after taking office, he became well known for successfully raising funds from state contractors. He even devised a new type of patronage—dubbed “pinstripe patronage”—that awarded no-bid contracts to politically connected consultants, lawyers, and bond dealers who received large fees for their work and ended up being top GOP contributors. While the fees never involved a stated quid pro quo,
since that would be illegal, the state's political establishment was in awe of Thompson's political acumen, nicknaming him Big Jim.

In no small part because of Thompson's shrewdness, the GOP had dominated the governor's suite ever since. As a result, state government jobs were almost exclusively filled with Republicans, from executive assistants in the Department of Employment Security to the head of every agency in the state. One large task for those on Blagojevich's transition team was to start finding people for all those state jobs to replace the Republicans Blagojevich was going to get rid of.

Blagojevich made a public display of naming people high-up on his transition team. Wilhelm, Ronen, Monk, and Scofield all had roles. He even named Roland Burris as a vice chairman of a board of advisers. Kelly and Rezko barely got a mention publicly, but their influence was vast. Internally, few were surprised to see Kelly still around. He had played a huge role fund-raising and had bonded personally with Blagojevich, but many were caught off guard by Rezko's involvement since his role during the campaign was muted relative to Kelly's.

During an early transition team meeting in mid-November, more than a dozen staffers, aides, and advisers sat around a large conference room table discussing strategy and hiring when Rezko uncharacteristically took it over and ran it. Some in the room didn't even know who he was. Soon enough, it became clear that the wishes of Tony Rezko and Chris Kelly were being taken very seriously by Blagojevich.

Nowhere was their influence more evident than in stacking the state payroll. Everybody close to Blagojevich had a say—Wilhelm, DeLeo, Jay Hoffman. Blagojevich himself, who had promised state jobs to even strangers he met on the campaign trail, made sure childhood friend Dan Stefanski got a post with the Illinois Department of Transportation and Bamani Obadele a job with the Department of Children and Family Services. His babysitter, a Mell family friend named Betty Bukraba, would get appointed to a $21,000 a year post on the state Civil Service Commission. John Gianulis, who had helped secure the primary win downstate, got a plum post overseeing hiring. Even Blair Hull got his exwife a job heading up the state's film office.

But Rezko's and Kelly's people were clearly jumping to the top of all the lists. Jack Hartman, a city official who Kelly knew from his days doing roofing work, became head of the tollway. Jack Lavin, who was Rezko's chief financial officer, became head of the state agency that doles out hundreds of millions of dollars in state grants.

And even more than in the high-end jobs, both men were cramming associates into low-level posts all over state government. A few were even qualified. But they all answered to either Kelly or Rezko because they knew who got them their jobs in the first place. They were like sleeper cells, put in position to bide their time for whenever a favor needed to be called in.

At the time, though, few within the administration saw it that way. They were just grateful at least somebody in the room knew some Democrats who wanted to work in government.

Mell was also tossing out names, and many were getting hired, a signal that the icy relationship between him and Blagojevich was at least temporarily thawed.

Several people who eventually joined the administration volunteered early on to help with the transition. One man Wilhelm recommended— John Filan—was described as a fiscal guru. He was a managing partner of the consulting and accounting firm FPT&W, and Wilhelm promised he would help Blagojevich balance the budget.

Another member of the transition team, who also seemed to come from nowhere, was Rajinder Bedi. An aggressive up-and-comer who ran an Indian newspaper that served Chicago's close-knit Indian community on the North Side, Bedi received a post in a state trade office. But his real job was after his state duties were completed for the day when he was supposed to build up community support for Blagojevich and compel wealthy Indian doctors and businesspeople to give Blagojevich campaign donations.

It wasn't that difficult a task. Blagojevich viewed the Indian community as an untapped political resource, and the Indian men and women saw a newly powerful man they wanted access to. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. And Blagojevich's story of a city kid who fought his way to success played well with many of the first-generation Indians and Pakistanis who owned the shops crowded on Devon Avenue.

Bedi worked with Brian Daly, another Blagojevich ambassador who had gotten to know many of the richest Indian business leaders in Chicago. An ex-marine who used to be an aide to US Senator Edward Kennedy, Daly joined Blagojevich's congressional staff and came to Chicago when Blagojevich ran for governor. He organized fundraisers and passed messages between leaders in the Indian community and Blagojevich.

As Democrats lined up at the trough of state government jobs, those closest to Blagojevich were deciding their future as well. At the outset of the campaign, Wyma made it clear he had no intention of joining the administration, and Blagojevich never really pressured him to take a post as a senior adviser. It seemed obvious that Wyma, with his clear connections to the governor, was going to make a good living as a lobbyist. So too was Petrovic, who knew he stood to make good money despite his reservations about Blagojevich, Kelly, and others in the inner circle.