Bringing Down
The Illinois legislature turned to impeachment after
years at loggerheads with the defiant governor.
By John Patterson
W
hen federal agents showed up at
the front door of Governor Rod
Blagojevich’s Chicago bungalow
to arrest him on conspiracy charges
early one morning last December, they
handed Illinois lawmakers the excuse they’d
long sought to launch an impeachment investigation.
“It was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. Once that happened,” says Illinois
Senator Terry Link, a Democrat from the
suburbs north of Chicago, “it was very easy
for us to do what we did.”
For most of the country, the governor’s
high-profile arrest might have been the
first they heard of his troubles. The charges
included trying to pad his campaign fund
by attempting to sell off President Barack
Obama’s U.S. Senate seat, demanding a
John Patterson covers the Illinois legislature for the Daily
Herald in suburban Chicago.
38
campaign contribution from a children’s
hospital executive in return for state funding,
and even trying to force the firing of Chicago
Tribune writers.
But in Illinois, the political and legal clashes
surrounding Blagojevich’s tenure had taken
on a life of their own. They offer insights
into the Capitol climate and the perspective
of lawmakers as they launched the first-ever
impeachment of an Illinois governor.
The impeachment might have come earlier but for the governor’s astute maneuvering through the political infighting of Illinois
politics. Despite ignoring the findings of
auditors, refusing to abide by administra-
Senator
Terry Link
Illinois
tive orders and brushing off accusations of
corruption, Blagojevich was able to avoid
serious consequences until the political landscape changed.
“There were certainly many lawmakers
who felt the governor abused and misused
his executive authority,” says Representative
Barbara Flynn Currie, a Chicago Democrat
and chairwoman of the impeachment investigation committee. “But I don’t think for
most lawmakers those charges, those comRight, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich
leaves federal court in April.
ASSOCIATED PRESS/M. SPENCER GREEN
Representative
Barbara Flynn
Currie
Illinois
state legislatures JULY/AUGUST 2009
Blagojevich
JULY/AUGUST 2009 state legislatures
39
“The phone calls I was getting, the e-mails I
was getting, the messages I was getting in my
district were all: ‘Get it done. Throw him out.’
There was very much a lynch mob mentality.
—BARBARA FLYNN CURRIE
plaints, those issues had risen to the level of
impeachment.”
THE CONSTANT CONTRARIAN
Over the course of six years, Blagojevich
alienated fellow Democrats, reneged on
promises, ridiculed lawmakers, challenged
their authority, and when things didn’t go his
way, ignored them and did what he wanted.
He routinely ordered them back to Springfield and kept them there, demanding they
approve his proposals. While lawmakers
spent their summers trapped downstate,
Blagojevich stayed at home in Chicago, and
on the rare occasions he did venture to the
Capitol, he’d fly home on a state plane every
afternoon rather than stay at the nearby Executive Mansion.
He compared Michael Madigan, chairman
of the Illinois Democratic Party and speaker
of the Illinois House, to Ho Chi Minh, questioned his credentials as a Democrat and
accused him of being part of a “right-wing
Republican effort to take health care away
from children and take meals away from
senior citizens.”
A striking example of the disconnect
played out at the 2008 Democratic National
Convention in Denver. As Illinois Democrats
witnessed Obama accept the historic nomination, Blagojevich flew back to Illinois and
chose that moment to announce hundreds
of layoffs and the closing of two dozen state
parks and historic sites to trim state spending.
Blagojevich often sought to assert his
office as above others and accountable only
to voters.
When state auditors issued a scathing
report detailing how Blagojevich cast aside
contracting laws in steering millions to politically connected firms, the governor sloughed
off the findings, calling the audit a “prize
fight between accountants.”
His nationally publicized plan to buy vac40
cines from Europe when a flu scare emerged
went awry because he never got federal permission to import the shots. Illinois taxpayers
couuld end up eating the $2.6 million price
tag.
In late 2007, with the future of the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program uncertain, Blagojevich declared an emergency to
preserve state coverage for families making
up to 185 percent of the federal poverty level.
But in the same emergency rule he expanded
state coverage to parents and caretakers making up to 400 percent of the federal poverty
level. An administrative panel responsible for
making sure policies match the laws that created them, suspended Blagojevich’s orders,
saying no emergency existed that warranted
the 400 percent expansion.
He ignored that decision and told his health
care agency to keep enrolling families.
The same panel then nixed his final proposal as well, saying there was no authority
to launch a health care expansion lawmakers
never approved let alone funded. Another
court case ensued.
CORRUPTION ACCUSATIONS
Aside from the political and ego battles,
scandal swirled. Blagojevich’s former political adviser Antoin “Tony” Rezko was convicted of soliciting bribes from those wanting
a share of state pension investment business. Blagojevich’s close friend and unofficial gambling policy adviser, Chris Kelly,
pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud for hiding
illegal gambling debt with business income
and was sentenced to 37 months in prison.
Meanwhile there were growing questions
about Blagojevich’s wife’s real estate commissions and exactly why his 7-year-old
daughter got a $1,500 birthday check from
the governor’s former campaign treasurer
only days before the former treasurer’s wife
got a state job. Even the governor acknowledged being brought in for questioning by
federal agents.
Why wasn’t he impeached sooner?
“Those were issues that were out there
and were of major concern to many lawmakers, but were not, I think, the kinds of issues
that attracted a lot of public discussion and
debate,” says Currie. “Even within the lawmaker community there were many who
believed that the fact that the governor was
offering health care to more people was more
important than how he did it.”
There was also a political component.
Through most of this, Blagojevich had a key
ally—Illinois Senate President Emil Jones
Jr., a Chicago Democrat. Time and again
Jones and Blagojevich joined together to
put pressure on Madigan and Illinois House
members. As long as Jones was in control,
few expected a Senate impeachment trial to
ever convene.
But in August 2008, Jones announced his
retirement at the end of the year. Emerging
as the new leader was John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat who enjoyed a healthy political relationship with Madigan and the House
leadership.
And it was against this evolving political
landscape that the FBI delivered a wake-up
call to the Blagojevich residence the morning
of Dec. 9.
UNEXPLORED TERRITORY
Madigan gave Blagojevich a week to
resign. When he didn’t, the House assembled
a panel to explore impeachment. Soon after,
the 118-member House voted 113-0 to formally launch that investigation.
Representative
Senator
Jim Durkin
Don Harmon
Illinois
Illinois
state legislatures JULY/AUGUST 2009
The Illinois Constitution offers no guidance on what is an impeachable offense. It
simply gives the House sole power to investigate an impeachment case and, by majority
vote, send a case to the Senate. The House’s
role is akin to that of a grand jury. In the Senate, the chief justice of the Illinois Supreme
Court presides over the trial. Removing a
governor requires a two-thirds vote in the
59-member chamber.
How and why lawmakers make the case is
up to them.
“I think everybody had their own personal feelings that this governor had to be
removed. We’re human. We read these outrageous accusations,” says Representative
Jim Durkin, the top Republican on the House
investigative panel.
“That’s why the committee went through
this painstaking process to make sure we
weren’t acting out of personal animosity. The
constitution says we could have impeached
him the first day we met. We went above and
beyond,” he says.
Similarly, Currie, who chaired the investigative panel, said the focus was on protecting
the governor’s rights, given the overwhelming public sentiment against him.
“We were not just in a ‘throw-the-bastardout’ mode. Saying that, the context clearly
was people wanted him gone,” she says.
“The phone calls I was getting, the e-mails I
was getting, the messages I was getting in my
district were all: ‘Get it done. Throw him out.’
There was very much a lynch mob mentality.
“But I thought it was important that we
took very seriously the due process rights of
this individual. We were not intending to be
a verdict first, trial later,” she says. “We were
not ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ ”
The governor’s legal team disagreed.
Famed Chicago defense lawyer Edward Genson handled the case, but this was unlike anything he’d ever seen in criminal courtrooms.
Impeachment is more a political than legal
venue, and Genson and colleague Sam Adam
Jr., often found themselves frustrated.
During one day’s proceedings delving
into Blagojevich’s health care expansion,
Adam attempted to cast aside hours of testimony and turn the focus from violations
of procedures and rules to how many people
benefited from Blagojevich’s efforts. “How
many brother and sister Illinois citizens’ lives
were saved?” he asked Blagojevich’s health
care team.
Lawmakers shut him down.
“We’re not that kind of jury,” Currie
informed him.
THE IMPEACHMENT
The investigative committee ultimately
put together a lone, sweeping abuse of power
charge against Blagojevich and sent it along
to the full House on a unanimous vote.
The Illinois House voted 114-1 with one
member voting “present” to send the case to
the Senate for a trial. But there was a catch.
This all occurred as the 95th Illinois General
Assembly was ending. When the 96th General Assembly was sworn in, the old House
wouldn’t be allowed to send an impeachment
case to the new Senate for a trial, and there
wasn’t enough time for both to act.
So the House impeached Blagojevich
twice. The first vote was Jan. 9. The second
occurred Jan. 14, just after lawmakers took
the ceremonial oath of office. This time, the
vote was 117-1 with new member Deborah
Mell casting the lone objection. Mell is a
Chicago Democrat and Blagojevich’s sisterin-law.
That same day, members of the Illinois
Senate took their oaths of office in a ceremony made awkward by the state Constitution’s requirement that Blagojevich preside
over it.
Within a few days, those senators convened
the Senate trial with rules modeled on the
impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.
“Our primary concern was developing fair
rules that could stand as precedent down the
road if we were ever forced to return to a
similar matter, but more immediately could
Senator
Senator
Dan Duffy
James Meeks
Illinois
Illinois
JULY/AUGUST 2009 state legislatures
stand for the notion that the Senate was going
to conduct a fair proceeding,” says Senator
Don Harmon, a suburban Chicago Democrat
who helped assemble the process.
The highlight of the four-day Senate trial
was when the U.S. Attorney’s Office released
excerpts from its wiretaps that caught the
governor in the midst of his alleged shakedown efforts. The only tape federal prosecutors turned over for use dealt with an alleged
attempt to get a $100,000 campaign contribution from a horseracing figure in exchange
for the governor signing a law beneficial to
that industry.
The excerpt featured a top Blagojevich
aide explaining how he’d got in the “face” of
the track official. “OK, good,” Blagojevich
is heard saying.
To this point, Blagojevich had refused to
participate in the process and had avoided
testifying under oath or facing any questions
from lawmakers. Finally, on the eve of the
Senate vote, he made a final statement, but
remained defiant.
“I want to apologize to you for what
happened, but I can’t because I didn’t do
anything wrong,” he said during a nearly
50-minute speech.
He left, flew home on the state plane and
was back in Chicago by the time the vote
occurred.
The final Senate tally was unanimous,
59-0 to remove him from office and 59-0
to bar him from ever seeking public office
again in the state. Blagojevich claimed “the
fix was in.”
Many senators used their closing remarks
to speak of the dark day in Illinois and how
sad this was.
One freshman Republican, making his
first floor speech, chided veteran lawmakers, especially the Democrats, for enabling
Blagojevich.
“How is it that the majority in this chamber, the same people who have presented this
case reflecting years of corruption, are the
same people who have praised the governor
by giving him three pay raises over the past
two years?” asked Senator Dan Duffy.
But some said the vote proved the system
of checks and balances will ultimately quell
any grab for power.
“We have this thing called impeachment,”
offered Senator James Meeks, a Chicago
Democrat, “and it’s bleepin’ golden and
we’ve used it the right way.”
41