Golden (50 page)

That evening, after the meeting, Blagojevich was at home, digesting what had happened in a pair of calls with Greenlee. Balanoff and Stern weren't pushing him, Blagojevich said, and seemed most interested in him not
appointing Jesse Jackson Jr. The drive for Jarrett had not been that explicit, and Blagojevich wasn't that impressed. The pair had been coy about why they were there and suggested they weren't speaking for Obama.

“And if they treat me without, you know, any real, that they, they don't have any great interest in the Senate seat and they're not gonna offer anything of any value, then I might just take it. You know what I'm saying, Bob?” Blagojevich said.

If impeachment proceedings against him became a reality, the governor would be kicking himself for naming some senator and leaving himself no advocates in Illinois. Blagojevich and Greenlee agreed, it was better that the knock on Blagojevich be that he appointed himself a senator than that he was impeached. The media was getting behind the idea of Blagojevich's removal. Greenlee hung up to look up a
Tribune
editorial and called right back. The paper had in fact said it was time to have an Illinois House committee study impeachment. Blagojevich could be heard on the call leaving his conversation with Greenlee for a moment to tell Patti what his aide was saying. The
Tribune
had thrown a line in about studying impeachment in an endorsement of Michael Madigan.

“Tell him to hold up that fucking Cubs shit,” Patti said angrily. “Fuck them. Fuck them! Why should you do anything for those assholes? Sam Zell. What kind of bullshit is that?”

Patti was telling her husband he should forget about an arrangement he was trying to set up with the Tribune Company, which still owned the Cubs, offering state assistance for the renovation of Wrigley Field. Maybe Patti was right, Greenlee said, Tribune Company owner Sam Zell would say he had nothing to do with the editorial board, but maybe he should be told to step in if he wanted to get the Cubs thing done.

“Or just fire ‘em. He owns the paper. I mean what would, ah, William, William Randolph Hearst do?” Patti asked. “Say, ‘Oh, I can't interfere with my editorial board?'”

The governor said someone should pool every negative thing the paper had written about him and then go to Tribune Company officials with it. Harris could do that. Zell could be told the paper's editorial decision was making it hard for him to make the kinds of decisions he needed to, Blagojevich said. Someone should tell Zell to get rid of those people.

There were many factors that needed to go into his Senate choice, he told another adviser, Doug Scofield, a short time later. Scofield was a political consultant for, among others, the SEIU and was passing back-channel
messages to Blagojevich's staff on what Balanoff had been hearing. Blagojevich launched into a rant with Scofield as well, saying the Senate seat was too valuable to give away or give away on some vague promise of fund-raising support down the road from Obama supporters. It needed to be way more concrete than that.

“It could be, you know, billions of dollars for the State of Illinois and deal with my budget and some sort of mechanism to ensure the Democrats protect me and don't impeach me. I don't know how you do that, but it's got to be something like that, you know? The fucking idea that I fucking should give this fucker a US Senator and he has got Tony Rezko up his ass more than me. Fuck them. Fuck them,” Blagojevich said of Obama.

“Fucking Tony, you know, don't get me started. I wear the jacket because fucking, you know, I trusted Tony and he fucking, you know, he went off and did his thing in my administration, OK? But I didn't ask him to fucking buy me a house. After the news got out that there were issues about him, after the word got out that there were issues about him, you know we made adjustments. Hear what I am saying?”

Blagojevich told Scofield he had clearly stated he had a political deal with the Madigans as a possibility, and Scofield agreed Balanoff would probably take that back to the incoming president. The governor was wondering how to follow up with Balanoff or whether to just call David Axelrod. His preference, Blagojevich said, was to wait and let them come to him. Rahm had opened up a channel, too. Overall, he was in the catbird seat.

“Not everybody gets … to have a one-vote US Senate election.”

The next morning was Election Day, and Blagojevich read a report on the
Politico
website reporting that he had met with Stern and Balanoff about Obama's choice to replace him. Blagojevich was somewhat encouraged because he figured the leak had come from Stern, suggesting Stern actually was visiting him on Obama's behalf. His calls early that morning were a whirlwind of speculation about how he might be approached and how he could play his hand. The options were numerous, and Blagojevich was eager to see things play out. The governor wouldn't come to know it until later, but Balanoff would get a direct call from Obama on Jarrett that day, and Balanoff would reach back out to Blagojevich for yet another meeting. The Health and Human Services post was still foremost on Blagojevich's mind, and he kept coming back to it even though he told Greenlee in a call that morning that he figured the request would be laughed at and then dismissed because of Blagojevich's Rezko connection.

“Fuck you. Rezko didn't stop you from being president,” Blagojevich said. There should be a list of possible things he could get for the seat, he said to Greenlee, just don't write it down. Maybe he could be ambassador to Canada? Greenlee should look up who past ambassadors had been and what their qualifications were. Look at Germany. Look at England. Look at France. Look at Italy.

When Blagojevich got on the phone with Harris that morning, he likened the coming negotiations to a sports agent wheeling and dealing.

“My free agent wants to play for the Cowboys, he wants to play for the Eagles. OK. How much you offering, Obama?” Blagojevich said. “What are you offering Madigan? You know what, we can always go to the, we can always go the Forty-Niners with Emil, you know what I mean? We can always end up there. Or me.”

And the reality was sinking in that he really could send himself. Agents caught him on phone calls with Patti, discussing how much senators make. Everyone was trying to guess the election's outcome by reading into reports on turnout at the polls. The winds were blowing for Obama.

“So all of this, I didn't let you down, did I? I feel like I let you down,” Blagojevich said, his own presidential dream bubbling to the surface again.

“Oh, forget it,” Patti said. “Are you crazy?”

“There was no room to run. There was no room to move,” Blagojevich answered. “I couldn't do it. Right?”

“Yeah. Don't worry. Don't worry.”

A little while later, in another call, Patti had decided Blagojevich should pursue an ambassadorship to India. That was the best choice. Their daughters would find it very enriching. “How are the running routes around there?” Blagojevich asked, as Patti was on a computer looking up the embassy. And speaking of their daughter Amy, Patti's sister had said she should go that night to Obama's rally in Grant Park after the vote.

“Like it's history,” she said.

“Yeah, so what,” her husband answered.

Obama's apparent election was making Blagojevich very unhappy, and in calls captured and uncaptured, he was spending more time with the thought of just sending himself to the Senate, on to something new in his career that would give him more of an upward trajectory. The advisers who were telling him that was a bad idea were starting to catch the bull's horns. Scofield was one who often said that was a bad idea, and Blagojevich told Greenlee in a call that he was getting sick of it. Scofield's constant naysaying
was getting highly annoying. He had told Scofield how he really felt, he told Greenlee.

“Then, you know, now is the time for me to put my fucking children and my wife first, for a change,” Blagojevich remembered telling Scofield. Fuck all of the consultants who had told him to choose a career path at his family's expense. To say Blagojevich was getting wound up would be a major understatement.

“And then I, I started venting, you know, part of my vent was, ‘Yeah, and what have I gotten for—? Oh, the people are gonna fucking be mad and the fucking newspapers are gonna rip me for this? OK? I fucking busted my ass and pissed people off and gave your grandmother a free fucking ride on a bus. OK? I gave your fucking baby a chance to have health care. I fought every one of those assholes including every special interest out there, who can make my life easier and better, because they wanna raise taxes on you and I won't. I, I fight them and keep them from doing it. And what do I get for that? Only 13 percent of you all out there think I'm doing a good job. So fuck all of you.'”

Barack Obama won the election that day, becoming the nation's first African American president. He held a historic rally in Chicago's Grant Park as millions watched on television. Blagojevich was there, shaking hands and putting a good face on things. He spent time at a party thrown by Emil Jones at a hotel across the street and hung out near Obama's stage. Among those he ran into were the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who wanted to talk with him about his son, and Tom Balanoff, who told Blagojevich he needed to see him again.

The next morning, Blagojevich was back on the phone with Greenlee, talking again about ambassadorships he could get for the seat but also talking about the public face being put on the search. There would be a 1:00 P
M
press conference where Blagojevich would discuss his supposed process for finding a worthy senator. And he talked to Harris about calling a special election to replace Emanuel in the Fifth Congressional District. Obama had asked Emanuel the night before to be his chief of staff, was what the media was reporting. One other thing Harris should know, Blagojevich said, was that Balanoff was coming in again to talk about the Senate appointment.

“He was very explicit with me. ‘I talked to Barack about the Senate seat. Can I come and see you? Can I do it tomorrow?'” Blagojevich told Harris. “I said, ‘Sure.'”

The governor wanted advice on how to make his approach when he had Balanoff to himself again. Harris said it was likely Balanoff would say
Obama had Jarrett as a preference, but the presidentelect didn't want it to be known publicly that he was asking that someone be chosen for him.

“Hold it, let's talk about this now. So do I say, how bad does he want it? I don't think so,” Blagojevich said, trying to play out how an exchange might go. “Maybe I say instead, I, I say, ‘Listen, he's the presidentelect, he obviously has a lot of weight. You know, with, with his intere-, his interests in what he would like. You know, I, I, I, I clearly, I definitely respect that, and, and certainly value it.'”

But the message back for Obama would be that Blagojevich had other pressures as well. Emil Jones, an old Obama mentor, thought he might get the seat, Blagojevich said he would say, and there was Lisa Madigan. He had Mike Madigan screwing him, and he was under federal scrutiny because of his and Obama's mutual friend Tony Rezko. Blagojevich should say he had to give serious consideration to a Madigan play, Harris advised. The real trick was subtly bringing up the other end—the possibility that Blagojevich could find a place in Obama's administration. One way would be to say that the new senator, Jarrett, and Blagojevich could go to Washington together and repeat the kind of health programs Blagojevich had pushed in Illinois on a national scale. The question was whether to specifically say he wanted to be secretary of health and human services.

That's where it would be difficult. Maybe ease into it, Harris said. “How do we take care of the presidentelect's wishes while at the same time taking care of the people of Illinois?”

“Yeah. And, and, and my, and me, do I say me?” Blagojevich asked.

“Right, by, by keeping me strong,” Harris answered.

“But I don't want that,” Blagojevich said. “I'm not looking for that. I'd like to get out, the fuck outta here.”

The objective was to get a good gig in Washington, Blagojevich said. He was being left behind in Illinois while everyone else was seemingly about to make history. And if he didn't appoint Lisa Madigan, her father would make his political life even more hellish. So, he could appoint Jarrett, and the two of them would leave town together.

Well, if that was his mind, then Blagojevich should go ahead and lay that out there in the meeting, Harris said.

Blagojevich said he knew getting something like UN ambassador was extremely unlikely. How much would Rezko be in Obama's mind before agreeing to any kind of job for Blagojevich? the governor wondered. Obama had to be nervous about Rezko. There was a story that Blagojevich had
heard that he believed, he told Harris. Rezko had given $25,000 cash to a man named Bruce Washington, who came from the Cook County political organization of John Stroger but had been working for Blagojevich.