Golden (54 page)

As the two men digested the new information, Blagojevich remained interested in money going to an issue-advocacy group for him and said maybe someone could approach Emanuel with that idea. Harris didn't rule it out but said to him that the value of the ask had clearly been diluted. The incoming administration had offered an array of options including a white man, a white woman, an Asian woman, and one African American man who had previously been unpalatable. The only person they seemingly did not want was Emil Jones.

Blagojevich's next call was to his secretary, Mary Stewart, asking her to find Tom Balanoff for him.

The governor got him, but it quickly became obvious that Blagojevich was well ahead of him on the negotiating front. When he told Balanoff that Emanuel had called him that day, Balanoff still assumed it was about Valerie Jarrett. And it was the governor who told Balanoff the four new names, not the other way around. At any rate, Blagojevich said he was going to sit back and try to make the right choice. He had much to think about, and Balanoff said he would reach out to Jarrett himself and mention the 501(c)4.

“Nothing's changed,” Blagojevich said, even though Obama had thrown him four names.

“You know and I think, you know, you have another candidate for a whole lot of reasons that, uh, is obviously valid so …” Balanoff said.

“Which one is that, Tom?”

“Well, the whole question of Lisa,” replied Balanoff.

“I got that one, right,” answered Blagojevich, who had seemingly forgotten all about it.

Robert Blagojevich's phones were busy, too, both his own cell phone and at the Friends of Blagojevich. Lon Monk gave him updates about dealing with racetrack owner John Johnston's family for money and waiting to hear from others. Johnston promised constantly that he was “good for it,” or at least that's what Monk said, and the money was coming. On November 12, Robert was doing cleanup from a Serbian event and seeing whose checks had cleared. He asked one organizer if a check from Chris Kelly had gone through. Yes, the man said, that motherfucker's check had made it. They agreed Kelly was a loser, but be careful, Robert said. The man apparently didn't fully know who Kelly was.

“You've got to check Google.”

Among Robert's other conversations was with Roland Burris, who also was interested in the Senate seat. In a conversation about fund-raising and ways to get Burris engaged, in a remark that would haunt him later, the politician who had previously run against Rod for governor said he thought he could personally do something to get money to the campaign fund. “Tell Rod to keep me in mind for that seat, would ya?” Burris said.

“And God knows number one, I, I wanna help Rod,” Burris said. “Number two, I also wanna, you know hope I get a consideration to get that appointment.”

The governor also continued to use his brother as a sounding board. Round and round he would go on every name in the air and even some that were new. Robert liked Gery Chico, for example. He found him a man of good character. Fine, Blagojevich said, but Chico wasn't black.

The next week or so provided no more clarity for the governor, as he bounced from adviser to adviser searching for direction. It started with Scofield and a way to salvage his dealing with the Obama administration. He wanted it “in Rahm's head” sooner rather than later that he would still make
a pick in exchange for Obama's friends funding an issue-advocacy group. Someone should go and say that was something Blagojevich wanted help with, but not in connection with the Senate seat. Maybe Wyma could do it. Blagojevich wasn't thrilled with Emanuel anyway. “All a one-way street with that little asshole,” the governor said to Scofield. “Fuck him.”

Not in connection with anything else, Scofield repeated, apparently seeking some clarification.

“It's unsaid,” Blagojevich said, adding it would be up to the messenger to communicate that. “Well, you know what I am saying.”

Maybe Scofield could talk to Wyma and ask him to pass the message on the governor's behalf.

“I'm a little reluctant myself to talk to Wyma. Between you and me I just feel like, I just feel like, ah, I don't know if I can, I don't know. I feel like, I can't completely trust him with Rahm. I don't know why. Why do I feel that way?” said Blagojevich, who would later directly ask Scofield to go to Emanuel. The governor later confided in Harris that another reason he didn't want to make the call was that he figured Wyma might someday be questioned about things Rezko might know. He didn't want the conversation to come up. He wouldn't have guessed in a million years that Wyma had already been in meetings with prosecutors and investigators were already listening to him.

Blagojevich stayed mostly fixated on appointing an African American, but on many calls he sounded more desperate. He seemed to be losing his grip on normal reasoning or was at the very least saying things he never would have said in public.

“Oh yeah. Yeah, here, look, you want a black US senator. Louanner is black, OK. Has a little bit of an Afro-centric look to her but not anything that is threatening,” Blagojevich said on a call to Fred Yang. “You know what I'm saying?”

Yang answered that someone like Dan Seals, who was of a mixed racial background, would be good.

“See Dan Seals and Obama and Valerie Jarrett and everyone,” Blagojevich said, “too much white blood in them.”

Louanner Peters was not from Hyde Park, Blagojevich said to Greenlee in another call, with its “light-skinned, black fucking elite.”

Maybe he would just send himself after all. As a senator, he would demand Special Forces training and then go hunt down Osama bin Laden by himself. “You gotta give me all the best intelligence you have,” Blagojevich said. “The Obama people say, yeah, fine, give it to him, good, here, send
him, good, maybe he'll get killed. Then we don't have to worry about this guy anymore, and the Rezko shit dies there.”

Or maybe he would write his own book like Obama did, but it would be a parody.
“The Audacity of Hopelessness”
he said.

But his scattered look for some nameless African American hero may have peaked on November 21. Among the names he had thrown out in recent days were Oprah Winfrey and Cubs great Ernie Banks. Blagojevich was apparently lifting weights that morning, as the clanking could be heard while he spoke to Harris and plowed through a workout. Had Harris gotten any names of black military personnel from the adjutant general he was planning to call?

Harris had gotten two, but he wasn't that impressed. They were African American, all right, but they were both Air National Guard and not exactly war heroes. One was now an anesthesiologist, and neither was especially compelling.

And about that Oprah thing, Harris said. That was crazy.

“Yeah, see that's where you're wrong,” the governor said.

It's true the Oprah pick would be way out there, but Blagojevich said he could do it. She was a Democrat for Obama, and she was a kingmaker. She had endorsed the man who became president. She had made him. It wasn't just that he wanted a celebrity friend, the governor said.

“This one, she's so up there, so high, that nobody can assail this pick,” he said. “This would be huge.”

There was also Melody Spann-Cooper, president of the African American owned WVON Radio in Chicago. Patti liked her, Blagojevich said. And there was still Louanner Peters. The truth was they were now stuck in the mud, Blagojevich said. No one was coming up with new names.

How about Arnold Schwarzenegger? said Blagojevich. Not black and not from Illinois, but the governor asked Harris to find out what the residency requirement might be, even though that would be a long shot. Someone might only have to spend one day in Illinois to be eligible to serve as a senator.

“But, you know, you got like a black Albert Einstein or somethin'?” Blagojevich asked.

The governor wanted Harris to be writing this stuff down. Did he have Spann-Cooper? “Is there a Mother Theresa type out there?” he said. Maybe Jackie Collins, the state senator, Blagojevich said. He was leaning away from Jackson Jr. and toward Peters.

“This thing's a whole fuckin'—it's a mess because there's so much negativity in me,” Blagojevich said, as he gasped for air from his reps. “It's not healthy.”

Who else in the field was potentially Valerie Jarrett-like? Blagojevich said. It was as if he was back to square one, but square one didn't even exist anymore. Harris just sat at times, saying “mm-hmm” and then pausing. All he could add was that he would start growing the list.

You know what was good about Oprah? Blagojevich asked.

“There's nothing affirmative action about her,” he told Harris. “She's a huge success. A mega success in her own right.” Not like some of these other names he was throwing around, Blagojevich complained, who weren't as qualified.

“How ‘bout Halle Berry,” Blagojevich said. “Get her to move to Illinois and make ya a senator, and then have a shot to fuck her.”

Maybe he could get that—the whole deal, Blagojevich joked as Harris laughed.

“Imagine doing something like that?” the governor said.

At the end of November, Blagojevich had calls with Lon Monk attempting to tie up loose ends on the fund-raising front before the end of the year. Monk described his efforts to get the wanted contributions from both John Johnston, who was waiting for Blagojevich to sign the recapture bill to route casino funds to his horse tracks, and Krozel, the road builders representative. Both men were promising to come through, is what Monk told the governor. In truth, Monk wasn't having nearly as much success as he was letting on, and his reason for talking to Blagojevich was twofold. He was nominally helping the governor, but also Monk was being paid as a lobbyist for Johnston, and he was trying to get a read on when the governor might sign the racetrack bill so he could report back to the man who was paying him.

Most of the pressure on Blagojevich was political, but there was also a call from an old friend with a stake in what was happening. On Thanksgiving Day, Chris Kelly called out of the blue. After having been largely out of touch for many months, the men caught up with each other for more than an hour and spoke about how Kelly's personal life was in shambles: his relationship with his wife, Carmen, was falling apart and his business was all
but ruined. He did have a girlfriend, he said, and he had secretly invested in a nightclub.

Soon, their talk transitioned to the “nightmare” that the federal investigation had been and how Kelly was getting ready to go to prison after pleading guilty in his own cases, before circling back to politics. Obama had reached the presidency by stealing Blagojevich's story, they agreed.

“I've never done more good for more people and never had so many people mad at me,” Blagojevich lamented.

Kelly asked what Blagojevich thought of Rezko and then gave an opinion of his own.

“I got one word,” Kelly said.

“Bad guy.” Blagojevich answered.

“That's two words.” Kelly said. He had been thinking of the word
operator.

“Just an operator,” Kelly said. “You know, his operation is good for you, then he's a good guy. His operation hurts you, then he's a bad guy. He's an operator. That's all he is.”

When it came to prison, Kelly knew it was going to be ugly, he said, but he had an ace in the hole. It was a friend he knew in Florida, Bernie Kosar, the former NFL quarterback. Kosar had asked Kelly if he wanted him to talk to Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, and ask him to bring up a pardon for Kelly with his brother, President George Bush. It was a long shot, but it just might work.

Bush was going to do some high-level pardons and some lower-level ones, which Kelly might be, the governor replied. It was only later that Blagojevich began to think Kelly might have been feeling him out for other reasons. Kelly also had connections to the Johnstons, who had their own big-time Florida connections, and Blagojevich thought maybe they'd had Kelly call him to try to push on the horse racing bill.