Sen. Roland Burris’s hometown paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, felt obliged to identify the senator as a “Chicago Democrat” in its story on the latest development in the Burris-Blago ‘pay-to-play’ scandal, but the word “Democrat” is curiously missing from the New York Times‘s report:
Burris-Blagojevich Ties Come to Life in Transcript By MONICA DAVEY and KAREN ANN CULLOTTA CHICAGO – A transcript of a secretly recorded telephone call released on Tuesday revealed the degree to which Roland W. Burris aggressively and openly pursued an appointment to the United States Senate with those close to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, who went on to appoint Mr. Burris last year before he was removed from the job. Mr. Burris, who was appointed to succeed Barack Obama in the Senate, is now the subject of two investigations. In the call, he seemed almost in a crass negotiation with Mr. Blagojevich’s brother – also his chief fund-raiser – over how he could help the governor, win the appointment and not run into trouble over negative connotations that he might be trying to buy an appointment by fund-raising for him. “If I do that, I guarantee you that that will get out, and people said, ‘Oh, Burris is doing a fund-raiser,’ and, and then Rod and I both going to catch hell,” Mr. Burris said in a phone call shortly after the presidential election that opened the Senate seat held by Mr. Obama. By the end of the call, Mr. Burris had promised to send a personal check within a month. “God knows, No. 1, I want to help Rod,” he was recorded as saying. “No. 2, I also want to, you know, hope I get a consideration to get that appointment.” At another point, Mr. Burris reminded the governor’s brother, “Tell Rod to keep me in mind for that seat, would you?”
But, of course, the Times always found room to point out that Larry Craig is a Republican of Idaho. Update: The Washington Post is respectable:
CHICAGO. May 26 — Sen. Roland W. Burris (D-Ill.) can be heard on an FBI audio recording promising to make a campaign contribution to then-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) at the same time he was pressing the governor for a Senate appointment.
