OPINION:
CORRUPT ILLINOIS: PATRONAGE, CRONYISM AND CRIMINALITY
By Thomas J. Gradel and Dick Simpson
Foreword by Jim Edgar
University of Illinois Press, $19.95, 270 pages
Poor Rod Blagojevich. He wanted so badly to be successfully corrupt, but was just too dumb to swing it.
In 2011, as governor of Illinois, there was a once-in-a-political-lifetime opportunity — “[expletive] golden,” as he put it in a much-replayed conversation. (Even minimally intelligent Illinois politicos know never to say anything even remotely damning on the phone or talk to anyone wearing a jacket.) The prize was the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, for sale to the highest bidder.
He had the quid. But he couldn’t get the pro. And for his efforts, from which he was too inept to profit in any tangible way, as well as for multiple counts of fraud, bribery and conspiracy, he’s serving 14 years.
But that’s only the latest example, albeit more bizarre than many, writes Thomas J. Gradel, a media consultant and former gubernatorial staffer, and Dick Simpson, a professor of political science, former Chicago alderman and congressional candidate, and author of “Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps: The Politics of the Chicago City Council from 1863 to the Present.”
According to federal statistics, write the authors, Chicago ranks as the most corrupt city in the country, with Illinois the third-most-corrupt state.
“Four of the last nine governors of Illinois went to jail,” and were preceded by earlier governors “who were indicted or found culpable in civil or legislative hearings but were not convicted in criminal courts and were not sent to jail.”
The authors write of Paul Powell, former secretary of state, who died “leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars from cash bribes hoarded in shoeboxes in his closet.” And not to be outdone by the executive branch, “There were the thirteen judges nabbed in Operation Greylord who were convicted of fixing court cases.”
Chicago’s city hall, the authors tell us, “is a famous political-corruption scene as well. Thirty-three Chicago aldermen and former aldermen have been convicted and gone to jail since 1973. Two others died before they could be tried . Fewer than two hundred men and women have served in the Chicago city council since the 1970s, so the federal crime rate in the council chamber is higher than in the most dangerous ghetto in the city.”
Nor are the suburbs exempt. “More than 130 individuals have been convicted of corruption-related schemes in the suburbs since the 1970s.” In Cicero, a town once favored by Al Capone, Betty Loren-Maltese, whose husband was Cicero’s assessor and a bookie who also warned the mob of police raids, became the town president in 1993. In 2002 she was convicted for her role in a mob scheme to steal $12 million from the town’s insurance fund.
As Jim Edgar, Chicago’s last scrupulously honest and effective Republican governor (the new Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, took office too recently for inclusion here) puts it in his preface, “’Corrupt Illinois’ is the most comprehensive account of corruption in our state ever published. It proposes cures, which will take decades to implement fully, but which deserve our attention now.”
The authors, while giving Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel good marks for transparency and providing information on aldermanic voting records, write that “Emanuel continues mayoral control over the Chicago city council, just like his machine-boss predecessors. In fact, he has more control than ever.”
After studying votes on controversial issues, the authors write, “Our conclusion was that Emanuel presides over a more compliant rubber-stamp city council than any mayor in Chicago history.”
Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House, also comes in for special mention for his “patronage army,” made up of more than 400 current or retired government employees who owe him and contribute to his political campaigns. According to a Chicago Tribune investigative study, quoted by the authors, Mr. Madigan uses this patronage army “to influence elections in every corner of the state, from suburban mayor to governor, from county board to Congress.”
Mr. Madigan, also chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party, is widely considered one of the most powerful men in Illinois politics. (It also helps that his daughter, Lisa Madigan, is Illinois attorney general.) And in the end, it is with Mr. Madigan that the new reform-minded Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, is going to have to deal.
In the end, write the authors, “For as long as machine politics survives in Illinois, corruption will flourish.” But dismantling that machine is a formidable undertaking.
They quote former Alderman “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, heard speaking on the subject during the great Harold Washington-era council wars: “Anyone who would fight the machine had better bring lunch.”
A long hard haul, in other words. “Usually it’s not wise to heed advice from Fast Eddie,” the authors conclude, “especially now after his felony conviction, but what he said that day rings true.”
• John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author of “Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement” (Wiley).
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