Many years ago during one of my first visits to Washington, Iowa Congressman H.R. Gross, a flinty Midwesterner who if he were still with us might look on Oklahoma’s Sen. Tom Coburn as something of a spendthrift, took me on a personal tour of the just-opened Rayburn House Office Building.
Gross was outraged by the cost of the place and the various built in “luxuries” he was convinced were neither needed nor justifiable. At the time the Rayburn building was, Gross contended, the second most expensive public building on a per square foot basis in the entire country.
I was reminded of that tour by the arrest this week of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for actually trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat. As several commentators have observed, once convicted and sentenced, Governor “pay to play” will be the fourth of Illinois’ last eight governors to be hauled off to prison.
That is, unsurprisingly, a record. Illinois today makes Louisiana and New Jersey look utopian. It is a state in which official corruption is a bi-partisan sport anyone can play.
The last Republican governor, for example, is still in the slammer for, organizing a hair brained scheme to sell illegal Mexican truck drivers Illinois driver’s licenses while he was Secretary of State.
It is a state dominated by Chicago where the dead vote, property owners are routinely shaken down by a city administration willing to lower one’s real estate tax bill in exchange for political contributions and a city whose water department was described in a criminal indictment a few years ago as a “classic criminal enterprise.”
Indeed, a friend of mine was told by an FBI agent assigned to investigate official corruption in Chicago some years ago that he and his colleagues considered the city a “free fire zone” for ethics investigators because of the widespread corruption that infected the place.
And a fellow I met some years later who served time in a federal prison in Wisconsin said he met more judges and politicians while he was penned up there than most people run into in their entire lives … and they were all from Illinois.
Although Blagojevich’s attempt to auction a Senate seat off to the highest bidder strikes most of us as a bit over the top, anyone who has ever done business in or been involved in a Windy City campaign knows everything else there is for sale or rent and always has been. So why not a Senate seat?
In fact, it didn’t surprise me at all to hear that the morning after being released on his own recognizance, Blagojevich unhesitatingly showed up for work, waved to state workers as he strode into his office and was quoted as saying he didn’t think he’s done anything wrong.
It was a shameless performance until you realize that the man actually offered to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat to at least five Illinois politicos and that none of them apparently found the offer outrageous or offensive enough to require them to report it to the FBI or anyone else.
By Illinois standards, it is at least possible that Blagojevich is no more corrupt than some who preceded him, but he’s certainly dumber. This is a guy who has known for at least a year that the Feds have been after him and might even be tapping his phone.
But he went on flamboyantly soliciting bribes over the phone. He makes former Republican Rep. Randy Cunningham, who printed up menus detailing what he would do for how much, seem like a rocket scientist.
Which brings me back to my long ago tour of the Rayburn Building. I asked Gross what building cost more. Gross chuckled and said that, based on the public records available at that time the prize would go to the Men’s restroom facility at the Illinois state fairground’ a property then utilized by the State’s then notoriously corrupt Secretary of State to launder bribes.
His name was Paul Powell and few remember him today, but in his day he was as notorious as the current Illinois governor. He died in office back in 1970 and after his death it was discovered that he had some $800,000 stuffed in shoe boxes in his closet.
That was a lot of money for a government employee to squirrel away in those days and it’s apparently more than Blagojevich wanted for Obama’s Senate seat, but its discovery really didn’t upset Illinoisans.
Indeed, Mike Lawrence, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute said that while the amount Powell had stolen raised a few eyebrows, Powell had done a lot of good and “there was a sort of sense (that) if he gave us our share, what’s wrong with him getting his share.”
That was a long time ago, but it is some ways comforting to know that in a fast paced and changing world we can still count on some things to stay the same.
David A. Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union and was born in Illinois, (but claims to be from Wisconsin).
