The Four Horsemen of the Chicago Way
By LisaB on May 20, 2009 at 2:30 PM in Current Affairs
Chicago Magazine published a story today about interconnections among four “leading players in the Illinois Democratic Party.” Who? Rod Blagojevich, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Barack Obama. It suggests relationships among the four men are closer than any is likely to admit. Although written as a primer on the Chicago connections among these men, there are a few interesting bits.
Axelrod helped Blagojevich in his bid for the Fifth US Representative seat but declined to help when Blagojevich ran for governor. Friends who were sometimes testy with each other, Blagojevich was rather hurt when Axelrod didn’t join his campaign.
Supposedly, Blagojevich suggested Emanuel run for his now-empty congressional seat, although it appears Blagojevich suggested the same to others. Later, Blagojevich offered to trade endorsements with Emanuel. That never happened.
Over time, Emanuel struck up a friendly relationship with a close Blagojevich associate, the lobbyist John Wyma, once Blagojevich’s congressional chief of staff. Besides lobbying for clients such as AT&T, Harrah’s, and Kraft, Wyma was a prodigious Democratic fundraiser. In December, the Associated Press reported that Wyma’s clients had contributed more than $100,000 to Emanuel’s congressional campaigns and causes and $445,000 to Blagojevich’s gubernatorial races.
In January, the Sun-Times reported that Emanuel called Wyma in the days after the presidential election with a message for Blagojevich: Obama would not offer anything but “appreciation” in return for the appointment of an Obama favorite to the vacated Senate seat. It is unclear why Emanuel contacted Wyma rather than Blagojevich or the governor’s chief of staff, John Harris. At the time, unbeknownst to Blagojevich, Wyma had turned against him, secretly providing information to federal investigators about the governor’s alleged pay-to-play schemes.
(Did Emanuel know Wyma was doing this and use him as a conduit for just that reason?)
The relationship between Emanuel and Wyma could turn out to be a crucial missing link to knowing the full extent of Emanuel’s role in Blago-gate. As the third Blagojevich aide puts it: “Wyma was the bridge between Rod and Rahm.” (Repeated calls to Wyma were not returned.)
Obama’s relationship with Blagojevich is nothing if not complicated. However, the article offers some interesting tidbits.
Privately, Blagojevich considered Obama an overeducated elitist, a symbol of his neighborhood. “There are two places that you don’t want to be from if you wanted to curry favor with Rod Blagojevich—the North Shore or Hyde Park,” says Giangreco. “He despised people from either place.”
On the other hand, on the few occasions when their paths crossed, Obama came away impressed with Blagojevich’s political skills—his talent for churning out charm, his memory for names and faces. At the time, Obama was still trying to find his political groove. He was often stiff and wonkish, and he was uncomfortable with the folksy grip-and-grin style of politics that Blagojevich could do in his sleep. “Rod’s style did influence Barack’s style, because he saw the importance of one-on-one retail campaigning,” says Dan Shomon, Obama’s Springfield aide. “Nobody could work a room like Rod. [Obama] saw that and mentioned it . . . and over time his style changed.”
Obama noted, for example, how Blagojevich used humor to overcome the handicap of a difficult name. Early on in his U.S. Senate race in 2004, Obama would often refer to himself as “the skinny guy with a funny name,” and he told his audiences: “There are some who might say that somebody named Barack Obama can’t be elected senator in the state of Illinois. They’re probably the same folks who said that a guy named Rod Blagojevich couldn’t be elected governor of the state of Illinois.”
So, Mr. Natural got a few tips from Blagojevich? Classic.
Like Emanuel, Obama often approached the governor through a third party.
Obama also drew on his political patron, senate president Emil Jones Jr., arguably the most powerful black politician in Illinois at the time. After the Democrats swept into power and Jones took the reins of the state senate, Obama went to see him. “He said to me, ‘You got a lot of power now,’” recalls Jones. “I said to Barack, ‘What kind of power do you think I have?’ He said, ‘You have the power to make a United States senator.’ And I said, ‘That sounds good. Do you know of anybody I can make?’ He said, ‘Me.’”
Jones threw his support to Obama for the Senate race, and since Jones and the governor were politically close, the senate president became the proxy between Blagojevich and Obama. With Jones’s help, Obama found real success for the two years that he was in the state legislature and Blagojevich was governor. During that time, Obama sponsored nearly 800 bills and Blagojevich signed more than 280 into law, by the Tribune’s count. By contrast, Obama’s biographer, David Mendell, says that Obama introduced, or had a hand in sponsoring, 116 bills in his first three years in Springfield, and 25 were signed into law.
Another friend or patron in common was Tony Rezko. Along with raising money for both Blagojevich and Obama and helping set Obama up with his Hyde Park mortgage, Rezko was involved in many “pay to play” schemes involving Blagojevich.
As rumors of influence peddling in Springfield congealed around Blagojevich, Obama’s halo was forming. When Blagojevich turned his eyes to a potential presidential run, Obama made the Democratic Convention speech of holy writ.
Blagojevich watched the speech from the floor of the Fleet Center. At a backstage reception afterwards, Blagojevich could barely conceal his envy. According to a Democratic insider who asked to remain unnamed, Blagojevich told Obama, “Great speech, Barack.” Then he added, backhandedly, “But, remember, this is as good as it gets.” Obama shot back, “We’ll see.”
The budding rivalry between Blagojevich and Obama was one of the hidden story lines of the 2004 convention. As [former Blagojevich aide] explains it: “If this were a mathematical problem, and you were plotting it out on a chart and you could put a pin in the place where the axes where Rod’s descent hits Barack’s ascent, I would say it would be at the convention in Boston. That’s where Rod was done as a national figure, and for Barack, it was: The sky’s the limit.”
By 2006, things were beginning to look murky for Blagojevich and Obama, now a US Senator, was distancing himself. The author says although publicly Obama was willing to help Blagojevich with his re-election campaign, Blagojevich never asked. By this time, the two men were rivals – and not particularly friendly. However, Obama was willing to support Blagojevich’s campaign because Obama was either: unwilling to make intra-party waves, too busy on the national to be involved in state politics, or simply a stand-up Democratic party guy. Pick one – none would dim the halo much.
John Kass, from the Chicago Tribune, felt differently.
Obama’s critics see his endorsement of Blagojevich as cowardice or, worse, hypocrisy—proof that he is no better than your typical Chicago machine pol. As the Tribune columnist John Kass once put it: “Is Obama corrupt, the way the caricature of Chicago-style corruption is often drawn, with some beefeater alderman reeking of gin, stuffing an envelope into his breast pocket? No . . . but Obama looked the other way in order to prosper and assiduously avoid conflict with the machine to the point of embrace. In this, he offered . . . a glimpse at the real man inside the nice suit, the Chicago Way.”
After the 2008 election, Blagojevich had little left to bargain with and so, famously, tried to use Obama’s now empty senate seat as a chip. Emanuel accepted a position as Obama’s chief of staff; Axelrod accepted a position as “senior advisor” and Blagojevich was ultimately arrested. But he wasn’t out of the game.
Shortly before the start of the December 30th news conference in which Blagojevich would defy and confound the political world by appointing Roland Burris the state’s new junior senator, the governor met with Burris and a small group of aides in the governor’s office in the Thompson Center. They made small talk, discussing logistics for what was surely expected to be a three-ring media circus. Then they prayed.
Throughout, Blagojevich was bouncing with excitement, almost gloating, according to two people who were in the room. “You watch, you watch,” he kept muttering, as if anticipating the trouble he would cause his political enemies—Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, others uncounted. “You watch, you watch. . . .”
Is Blagojevich done making trouble for the now Washington based Axelrod, Emanuel and Obama? Hard to say. Yet, of the four men, Blagojevich is clearly the outsider. His more unrefined, strong-arm tactics and more pedestrian education does not fit with the much smoother Obama and friends (apparently notwithstanding Emanuel’s famous potty mouth). Blagojevich played the game well enough to be elected governor twice. Others steeped in the same political environment were less successful – until Obama came along.
Why is that? And why is this article coming out now? If you remember (I didn’t – had to look it up!) the four horsemen of the Apocalypse brought war, pestilence, famine and death. Wonder what the four horsemen of the Chicago way will bring?????
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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