A Just Cause (3 page)

Clayton Harris had joined the governor's staff in August 2008, after serving as chief of staff for the Illinois Transportation Department. He majored in aerospace technology at Middle Tennessee State University and then worked for an engineering firm at the Pentagon. He decided to go on to law school and graduated from Howard University in 1999. His work in government started after he moved to Chicago. He first worked as an assistant state's attorney and later for the city of Chicago. Although a seasoned government professional, Clayton Harris was not part of the governor's inner circle, had never contributed to the governor, and had never worked on his campaigns.
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Now, with the top of the organizational structure lopped off, confusion set in. Some people who should have come to work that day did not. People began to come into the deputy chief of staff's office asking what was going on. Some were crying. Harris instructed everyone to meet in a conference room on the fifteenth floor. “Someone had to step up,” he later said. He told those present to calm down and carry on as if it were a normal workday. And he asked those who were crying to please stop. “I can take everything but crying,” he said. He officially became the acting chief of staff one week later.
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For Illinois' longtime Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, the day started in an ordinary way, with a visit to his chiropractor. Madigan was contemplating an out-of-town trip and felt relaxed, and his doctor later remarked that he had seemed particularly happy that morning. He then returned to his home on Chicago's Southwest Side, oblivious to what was happening. He found that his wife, Shirley, had been trying to contact him and was somewhat agitated. She had been fielding calls from seemingly everyone. The methodical and controlled Speaker began returning the calls and made some of his own. Madigan spoke to his chief of staff, Tim Mapes; chief counsel David Ellis; and soon-to-be senate president John Cullerton. He decided to go to his political headquarters, the Thirteenth Ward office, on South Pulaski Road. The ward office was a familiar and comfortable place, out of the public spotlight, where the most powerful politician in Illinois could surround himself with trusted confidants, digest incoming information, and discuss and plan the reaction of the legislature.
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Michael Madigan is sometimes referred to as a master chess player, because he thinks several moves ahead. The arrest was a surprise, but the Speaker was prepared. For years the Chicago papers had been reporting on the corruption occurring within the Blagojevich administration. Some
of the governor's confidants had been convicted, and several more were under indictment. The reportage of the
Chicago Tribune
was particularly withering. On September 29 the paper had run an editorial titled “Indict or Impeach.” Indeed, the possibility of removing the governor was being discussed as a real option. In June 2008 Republican senator Larry Bomke had written a letter to Michael Madigan urging him to begin an impeachment investigation, and the Speaker's staff had begun to compile evidence of the governor's indiscretions and maladministration.
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With his arrest, there were few options to consider. Blagojevich had to be quickly removed from office. The governor had been arrested and booked on suspicion of several criminal acts and was facing certain indictment and a trial. There was some hope that in the coming days, Blagojevich would consider his situation and resign from office. Another option, presented in the Illinois Constitution, was that the governor could temporarily step aside, and his duties would be assumed by the lieutenant governor.
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The third option was that the Illinois house of representatives could immediately hold an impeachment investigation and pass an impeachment resolution. The senate would hold a trial to decide whether to remove the governor from office.

Madigan was hesitant to act immediately that Tuesday morning, conscious of the political repercussions of acting too soon. Lisa Madigan, Illinois' attorney general, was the Speaker's daughter, and there was talk of her possible aspirations to the governor's office. The following Monday, the delegates to the Electoral College would meet in Springfield and officially cast their votes to elect Barack Obama president of the United States. Madigan decided to give Blagojevich six days to resign or step aside. If the governor did not remove himself from office, the Speaker would announce an impeachment investigation on Monday after the Electoral College met.
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Madigan was managing events instinctively, thinking of moves three steps ahead of the current situation. His instincts and political skills were honed by years of involvement in old-fashioned Chicago ward politics. His family was involved in city politics and had an early association with Richard J. Daley, when the future mayor worked in the Cook County Clerk's Office. Madigan's political career had followed a charted course. He went to Chicago's St. Ignatius College Prep, a Catholic preparatory high school; attended college at Notre Dame University; and then earned his law degree from Loyola University. The young attorney was chosen by the Democratic organization to be a delegate to the 1970 Constitutional Convention. A year later he was elected to the Illinois house of representatives. He rose rapidly
in the house, and when the Democrats gained control in 1983, he was elected Speaker. Madigan served in this capacity until 1995, when the Democrats lost the majority in the first midterm election of the Clinton presidency. The Republicans held the house for only two years, and in 1997 Madigan again became Speaker. In 1998 he was elected chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party and still held that position in 2008.

The removal of the governor was a decision the Speaker did not take lightly. Madigan has a sense of history, and colleagues say that he has an almost religious respect for the legislative process.
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Despite calls from both parties for an impeachment investigation during the year leading to the arrest, Madigan remained cautious. He knew that impeachment and removal from office would be an unprecedented action by the Illinois legislature. Never before in the state had the sovereign will of the people, as expressed through the ballot, been nullified—an executive office holder had never been removed by the legislative branch.

In December 2008 the legislature was completing the two-year cycle of general assemblies. The Ninety-Fifth General Assembly would end when the legislature adjourned in January, and the Ninety-Sixth would be sworn in. In November John Cullerton, a senator from Chicago's North Side, had been elected by the majority Democrat caucus to be the new senate president. Cullerton, a veteran legislator who came to the Illinois house in 1979, had served in the senate since 1992. Achieving the position of senate president had become the personal goal of the former public defender from Cook County. When he moved to the senate after an unsuccessful run for Congress, he set his sights on the senate presidency. Surprisingly, Emil Jones, the senate president since 2003, chose to leave the senate, and John Cullerton had his chance. Several senators vied for the spot. Jones worked against Cullerton, but Cullerton prevailed. After the November election, the Democrats again held a firm majority in the senate and elected Cullerton their candidate for senate president, a move tantamount to being elected by the full senate.

Cullerton was having breakfast in downtown Chicago when he heard of the arrest. He talked by phone with the Speaker. Emil Jones was still senate president, but Madigan did not want to talk to Jones; he dealt with Cullerton instead.
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Both Cullerton and Madigan agreed that Blagojevich had to be removed quickly. The idea of Blagojevich remaining as governor while he went on trial, an event that could have been years away, was totally unacceptable. Cullerton understood Madigan's three options: the governor could resign, temporarily give up the office, or be impeached. On
the morning of the arrest, planning an exact schedule of events leading to removal was impossible, but the two men agreed that an impeachment investigation would begin in six days. If Blagojevich could be persuaded to resign or step aside, the legislature could avoid taking action and the state could avoid the trauma of impeachment and a senate trial. The last thing John Cullerton had on his mind as he sat down for breakfast that morning was commencing a trial to remove the governor as his first legislative act as senate president.
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The arrest of Rod Blagojevich occurred against a backdrop of partisan and personal hostilities that had played out in Illinois state government during the preceding sixteen years. In 1993 the Republicans had gained control of the senate, and James “Pate” Philip, from the solidly Republican DuPage County, was elected senate president. A veteran legislator, Philip had first been elected to the Illinois house in 1967 and moved to the senate in 1975. Philip was well liked, known to most as a regular guy, and accessible to rank-and-file senators from both parties. A former marine who in his early days sported a crew cut, he was unpretentious but could be rough and short with those who disagreed with him. He was staunchly conservative by the standards of the 1960s and 1970s and a rock-solid supporter of the business community. Upon becoming senate president, he had the audacity to offer committee chairmanships to two Democrats. Newly elected senate minority leader Emil Jones interpreted the move as an attempt to undermine his authority. The two Democrat senators declined the chairmanships, but the games had begun.

Emil Jones, in contrast, was a product of Chicago politics. He came to his position in a fashion well known among the city's legislators. Jones grew up in Morgan Park, a neighborhood on Chicago's far South Side. He worked as a newspaper carrier and then held a series of public jobs, first at the US Postal Service and then as a sanitary engineer for the city's South District Water Filtration Plant. He paid his dues, as did many public job holders in the 1960s and 1970s, doing political work in Chicago's Thirty-Fourth Ward. His work for the ward organization and his loyalty and political skills caught the attention of the Thirty-Fourth Ward committeeman and alderman, Wilson Frost, who appointed him ward executive secretary. In 1972 Frost picked Jones to be the candidate for state representative. Jones won and served in the house for ten years before moving to the senate in 1983. After an intraparty struggle, he was elected by the Democrats to be minority leader in 1993.

When Pate Philip became senate president, the Democrats had controlled the Illinois senate for eighteen years. Philip set out to change the way the senate operated and to consolidate control by adopting new rules and procedures that diminished the minority party's role in policy-making. The clash between Philip and Jones was immediate. The men knew each other from a decade of serving together in the senate, and there was a mutual dislike. Philip dismissed Jones and rarely consulted him on policy matters. During one yearly budget meeting, negotiations that occur at the end of each legislative session and are attended by the four legislative leaders and the governor, Philip suggested to Madigan that the senate Democratic leader be excluded, but Madigan insisted that Jones be included.
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Jones was resentful and felt that Philip did not give him the proper respect. Mindful of his self-image, Jones informed his staff to call him Leader Jones.

The mutual dislike between Philip and Jones was manifest in all their dealings. Both men had prosaic personalities but diverged in their backgrounds and political views. They both approached politics as a personal enterprise to be manipulated and managed. They each shared a high concern for their individual self-esteem, and they both treated the political craft as a complex interaction guided by the constant influences of paranoia, struggle, and intrigue. Both men approached political leadership as a military battle. Jones often said that his personal heroes were Sun Tzu, author of
The Art of War
, and Machiavelli, author of
The Prince.
He would listen to a books-on-tape version of
The Prince
while driving from Chicago to legislative sessions in Springfield and often quoted passages from the book. Both Philip and Jones were directed by their own moral compasses. Their histories and their deeply rooted, distinct cultures proved to be barriers to understanding each other. Given their similar personalities but their differences in cultures and experiences, tension was predictable.

For ten years under two Republican governors, the Democrats remained the senate minority party. In 2003, when Rod Blagojevich was sworn in as governor, the Democrats gained the majority in the senate and Emil Jones attained the office he had long sought, that of senate president. In addition to his perceived mistreatment by Philip, Jones chafed at the authority and influence of House Speaker Michael Madigan. With the election of Rod Blagojevich and his own ascent to senate president, Jones felt that there were now three important—and most significantly, equal—Democrats in Springfield. An alliance with Blagojevich was a way, Jones believed, to check the power of Madigan.
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With Pate Philip now retired, Jones directed his
built-up animosities toward Madigan and the newly elected senate minority leader, Frank Watson.

Watson could not have been more different from Jones or Philip. A pharmacist from downstate Greenville, he was rooted in small-town America. His family had owned Watson's Drug Store for generations, a symbol of permanency on the Greenville town square. Before holding public office, Watson had been involved in local civic organizations. Soft-spoken, he was popular among members of both parties. Initially, Jones was cordial to Watson and would call him on session days and offer the courtesy of going over the legislative calendar. By the spring of 2004, however, budget contentions had forced legislative alliances, and Jones and Blagojevich were allied against Watson and Madigan. Having Watson allied with his old nemesis, Madigan, irritated Jones. According to Watson, one particular incident that vexed Jones occurred during a budget meeting of the four legislative leaders and the governor. Blagojevich opened the meeting by asking the Speaker, “Well, what do we do now?” Jones apparently became upset that the question had not been asked of him. The relationship between Jones and Watson rapidly deteriorated. Watson made an effort to cooperate: “I told Jones I was not Pate that I wanted to work together,” he recalled, “but it did no good.” He characterized Jones as “a very vindictive man.” When Watson suffered a stroke in the fall of 2008, the Speaker called several times to offer support and encouragement, but Jones never called him.
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