It is interesting that suddenly the national media has become aware of the "cesspool" of Chicago politics that the Chicago press has been writing about for decades. The national media conveniently ignored that part of the Obama story during the presidential campaign.
During the campaign, for example, there was at best "mild" interest in Tony Rezko, now convicted of 16 counts of political corruption, who raised $250,000 for Obama and chipped in a few hundred thousand more to make it possible for him to buy his mansion in Hyde Park.
But Rezko was also a major fundraiser for Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was known to be under federal investigation when Rezko helped Obama buy his house.
Rezko, among other things, was a slumlord who built "affordable" housing in Obama's south side of Chicago with grants from the state which state senator Obama helped him get and with grants from a foundation chaired by Obama. In the Blagojevich criminal complaint there are many charges dealing with Chicagoland corruption in addition to the charge of trying to sell the Obama U.S. Senate seat. Kickbacks and campaign contributions as payoffs for such things as affordable housing grants, construction and service contracts and patronage jobs are what keeps the machine in power, according to many reports over the years by the Chicago media.
And Chicagoland politicians will in a few days be in charge of the White House -- and, hopefully, not running the country Chicago-style.
Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, referred to by some as Crook County, one of the most heavily Democratic counties in the nation. Almost half of all if the residents of Illinois live in Cook County. The political power in the country resides in the mayor of Chicago Richard M. Daley, the son of a previous mayor Richard J. Daley. (whose police put down the riots at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention). Mayor Richard M. Daley will complete 20 years as the leader of the Chicagoland Democratic Machine in office this coming April. (The county has a separate chief executive who "listens" to the mayor; when the opportunity arose to replace the longtime county boss with a reformer, Obama supported the "family" and went with the boss's son Todd Stroger.)
The Democratic machine is legendary for its history of corruption. As the local media has reported time and again, patronage, kickbacks and payoffs keep the machine in office and allow it to call the shots for politicians seeking office in the county and state and Congress -- ten of Illinois' 17 districts are wholly or partly in Cook County .
Why was it that Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois state senate was uncontested? In his South Side district Republicans are a rare species, so it's the Democratic primary that counts. Obama had three opponents file for the office, one of whom was the long-term incumbent. Obama challenged the signatures of all of them and the Daley machine reviewing board threw all three of them off the ballot. Ever hear of three candidates in one election being disqualified for "bad" signatures? Clearly, the machine had identified Obama as a "comer" and somebody it could do business with. Obama returned the favor and never challenged the Daley machine, even when some reformers dared to mount a campaign and pleaded for his support. (When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate seat, in an amazing turn of fate, both his Democratic opponent in the primary and his Republican opponent in the final were forced to resign from the races because somehow their sealed divorce papers became public during the campaigns.) Obama supported Blagojevich in his gubernatorial campaign in 2006 despite news he was under federal investigation for corruption.
Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was an aide to Mayor Daley and was awarded the congressional seat that became vacant when Rod Blagojevich became Governor of Illinois. More ominously, he was at President Clinton's side when he forced Israel to offer Yasser Arafat virtually all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem imperiling Israel's security; fortunately for Israel, Arafat said no, showing he had no intention of supporting the continued existence of Israel. During the two and a half years between his Clinton service and taking over the Blagojevich seat he worked for an investment banker in Chicago and magically raked in $16 million for his services. The nation was in recession most of that time (1999-2002).
Obama's chief strategist in the White House will be David Axelrod, who served Mayor Daley for years as a political strategist. (He did the same for Eliot Spitzer in his gubernatorial election.) Axelrod was the chief strategist for the Obama campaign and is credited by many with keeping Obama a mystery man, successfully hiding Obama's history (e.g., records of birth, college and law school days) from media and public scrutiny. Right up to the election the question hung in the air: "Who is Barack Obama?" It still does. Political fundraising is a high art in Chicago, What hand did Axelrod have in fraudulently disabling the usual identification features of the online credit system to allow the Obama campaign to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in untraceable funds?
Governor Blagojevich also prospered within the Daley Democratic machine because of his family political connections. He first held public office in Chicago, then in Cook County and then took over the Congressional seat formerly held for many years by Dan Rostenkowski, who was in prison for mail fraud. Rahm Emanuel succeeded him in the Rostenkowski seat. Emanuel is wise not to answer any questions about his conversations with Governor Blagojevich about the successor to the Obama U.S. Senate seat, since it appears the taping of the governor's phones has been going on for several years.
None of this story is new. All the pieces have appeared in the Chicago media or reports by investigative researchers ignored or dismissed out of hand as irrelevant by the national media at one time or another. One of the exasperated local columnists John Kass did a piece for the Chicago Sun-Times last November which gives one the flavor of Chicago and at least his disgust with the national media's failure to do its job.
Chicagoland politicians and their consultants are certainly experienced in skating over and around thin ice through years of practice. That skill now resides in the White House with the Chicagoland troika. "That's not the Tony Rezko I knew," is a recent famous example.
