Golden (25 page)

“Let me tell you a story,” Blagojevich began, spinning a yarn about that infamous Election Day 1994 when George Ryan won his second term as secretary of state, Jim Ryan was first elected attorney general, and the Willis family minivan crashed in Wisconsin, killing the couple's six children.

Throughout the campaign, Blagojevich recited his refrain that Jim Ryan didn't “lift a finger” to investigate corruption in the secretary of state's office under George Ryan in which drivers' licenses were traded for bribes. This time he took it up a notch.

“Neither George Ryan nor Jim Ryan did anything to change that failed system. And, and as every day passed, the corruption continued.”

Ryan quickly interrupted. He hadn't even been attorney general when the Willis tragedy occured. “Have you no shame, Rod? Have you no shame? Are you talking about those Willis children?”

“Is this public television or
The Jerry Springer Show?
Can I finish?” Blagojevich asked.

“No, no, you can't,” Ryan answered, his eyes widening and anger bubbling. “No, no, you're not going to say that. I'm not going to let you get away with that. No, I'm not. Not with my family sitting there, because that is an absolute shameful thing to say!”

Ryan then jabbed his right index finger in Blagojevich's face. “I don't care what your media meisters tell you. I'm not going to let you get away with that, Rod!”

It was as close to a turning point in the campaign as either side had seen. Blagojevich realized he had overreached, and Ryan sensed an opening.

When the debate ended, Ryan, still fuming, stormed into a holding room behind the studio where television and print reporters had assembled. This was the “spin room” where candidates declare victory and reporters attempt to clear up points made during the debate. “The voters of Illinois should be very worried about a guy who will sink to these depths to win an election,” he said. “If they want him, they can have him!”

After the debate, Ryan continued to muster energy he hadn't displayed for most of the campaign. But the difference between him and Blagojevich couldn't have been clearer.

In the small northwestern Illinois town of Sycamore, both marched in the pumpkin festival parade. Organizers separated the two campaigns, giving Blagojevich a ten-minute head start.

Before beginning, Blagojevich tossed off his loafers and slipped on some high-end running shoes. He then engaged in “battle,” as he called it, running obsessively to both sides of the parade route to shake every hand and kiss every baby. He sprinted into the crowds standing on the side of the road or on their lawns. He even found himself in a few people's backyards as they cooked burgers.

“This is how hard I'll work for you if you make me governor!” he said.

Ryan, meanwhile, steadily walked down the center of the street, waving but barely shaking anybody's hands. As Ryan proceeded, he found himself catching up to Blagojevich, the two campaigns uncomfortably bumping up on each other. Ryan stopped for a while as Blagojevich continued to campaign but eventually got sick of waiting, finishing the parade before Blagojevich did.

A few days later, Curry had to all but beg Ryan to get out of his campaign van to do some retail politicking—shaking voters' hands outside Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue. The plan was to for him to do it for a half-hour. After five minutes in the cold, Ryan said he was done and walked back to the van.

“I got ten votes and double pneumonia,” he said.

It was clear even to Ryan's closest backers that Blagojevich was going to win. Stuart Levine had continued to work for Ryan's campaign but was coming up short, and Levine, who had made a career being an insider, saw the dim prospect of backing the loser and being left without any connections to state government. That meant he would likely lose his influential roles on the state boards overseeing investing billions of dollars for the teachers' pension fund and multimillion dollar hospital expansion plans.

Then a door opened.

On the Saturday before Election Day, Levine was invited to a dinner party in Winnetka, a wealthy North Shore suburb. A friend, Dr. Ruth Rothstein, the former head of the Cook County Bureau of Health Services, asked Levine to come over to the home of Dr. Fortunee Massuda and her husband, Charles Hannon. A podiatrist who owned a massive chain of foot and ankle clinics around the Chicago area, Massuda asked Rothstein to invite Levine because he had helped get a project of hers past the board he sat on overseeing hospital expansion, the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. She wanted to thank him properly.

Nestled against Lake Michigan, Massuda's home was filled with players from Chicago's political scene. In addition to Rothstein and Levine, Orlando Jones, an adviser and the godson of Cook County Board President John Stroger, was there, as was another close Massuda friend, Tony Rezko.

With the statewide elections just three days away, politics was a main topic of conversation, and Levine and Rezko politely acknowledged their opposing allegiances but soon realized they had some shared interests too. Rezko dropped hints they were both friends with Cellini and another man, Robert Kjellander, a powerful lobbyist who was Illinois's GOP national committeeman and a close pal of President Bush's senior adviser Karl Rove.

Then they discussed business. Massuda talked about how she was interested in buying a valuable Gold Coast building on Dearborn Street in Chicago that had once been home to the Scholl School of Podiatry. Rezko was
on the Scholl board, which was in the process of selling the building to Rosalind Franklin University. As a Rosalind Franklin board member, Levine knew about the deal intimately. The closing of the sale had been held up for some mysterious reasons, and as they talked, Levine began to suspect Rezko and Massuda might have been responsible for it.

Levine asked Massuda whether she had something to do with holding up the arrangement, and simultaneously she said, “No,” and Rezko said, “Yes.” After Rezko and Levine spoke briefly about what was going on, Rezko told Levine that if the building had been promised to someone else, Rezko could make the snag go away. Rezko told him he controlled the Scholl board.

How quickly could he expect the problem to evaporate? Levine asked.

By Election Day, Rezko answered.

It was the start of a relationship that would have mammoth implications for each of the men involved, not to mention the state's political structure. But at the time, it was just two businessmen working out a deal.

Both were seeing opportunity. In Rezko, Levine saw a man who would soon be on the inside of the new Blagojevich administration, someone who could help him stay on the state boards and keep his power. In Levine, Rezko saw a savvy businessman who had been working the system for years under Republican rule and knew where the bones were buried.

Indeed, even Rezko couldn't imagine how many bones.

Privately, Levine had worked out a deal for the property with none other than Edward Vrdolyak. Levine and “Fast Eddie” had secretly known each other and worked on schemes together for years, even after Vrdolyak left the Chicago City Council. In the Scholl property deal, Vrdolyak had found a developer, Smithfield Properties, willing to buy the building for $15 million, and he and Levine had arranged for Vrdolyak to receive a 10 percent—$1.5 million—finder's fee that he would then kick back to Levine and another member of the Franklin board.

But it wasn't the only secret Stuart Levine was keeping.

The following morning, Jim Ryan was in Springfield for a high-profile rally with President George W. Bush, who was making his way across the Midwest to help Republican candidates.

About five thousand Republicans showed up for a rally of a slate of GOP candidates, from Ryan to US Senate candidate Jim Durkin to Judy Baar Topinka, running for treasurer. Ryan's people were hoping for a little
bump from Bush. But the rally had been organized by Kjellander, who the Ryan people felt was doing all he could to minimize Ryan's role at the event. Indeed, Bush stressed the need to keep US Representative John Shimkus in Congress more than getting the vote out for Ryan, offering only a quick aside.

“And while you're in that voting booth, support a good man for governor. His name is Jim Ryan,” Bush said. “He's got a record you can be proud of. You've seen him in action; you know he can do the job. A lot of folks around this state have written him off. I think they spoke a little too soon, don't you?

Blagojevich wasn't going to let the president slow him down. Three days later, on Tuesday, November 5, 2002, he still couldn't get enough of campaigning. Most of the morning, he made last-ditch pleas for votes from commuters at Union Station in downtown Chicago, shaking hands and promising a new day was coming for Illinois, one filled with reform and renewal, not corruption. “We're trying to ensure that the people of Illinois have a government that's as honest … as they are,” he said.

In suburban Elmhurst, meanwhile, Jim Ryan awoke early and decided to go to Mass. After services, he visited the grave of his daughter, Annie, who had died five years earlier at the age of twelve of a brain tumor. Tired of campaigning, Ryan returned home to spend the rest of the morning and afternoon with his wife and children. He told staffers he'd meet up with the campaign later and then they'd all gather that night at the massive Chicago Hilton and Towers on South Michigan Avenue.

Before the polls closed at 7:00 P
M,
Ryan's campaign gathered at the Hilton. Deputy campaign manager Glenn Hodas had established a massive war room in the International Ballroom next to the hall where partygoers were gathering. A large screen displayed a readout of Illinois's 102 counties next to percentage breakdowns of vote totals.

Early results were looking good for Blagojevich while Ryan remained cloistered in a hotel suite, watching the returns with his wife and a few close friends, including Stuart Levine and his wife.

Several miles away, thousands gathered—once again—at Finkl steel. They cheered wildly as they read that with 37 percent of the precincts reporting, Blagojevich was up 63-36.