In Illinois Senate Race, Round Up the Unusual Suspects: Are the Wheels Coming Off the Chicago Machine?

The Chicago media is having trouble picking a winner out of the line-up of likely suspects for the Machine’s chosen candidate for Barack Obama’s old, hardly even used U.S. Senate seat.  The dragnet doesn’t include anyone with an impressive rap sheet of accomplishments. So what’s up? Is the Machine sputtering?

The Illinois primary election for U.S. Senator is February 2. Senator Roland Burris isn’t running. No money. No support. No surprise.  After what the disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s hand-picked seat warmer had to go through just to get credentialed, it’s no wonder he just wants to pack up and go home to his monuments.

And the recent victory by Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election for the U.S. Senate certainly has put the fear of God into party hacks from sea to shining sea. So, who’s the Machine’s candidate among the leading suspects? Here’s the line-up.

Alexi Giannoulias, age 33, graduated from Boston College and Tulane University Law School.  He worked in the family bank until elected Illinois Treasurer in November 2006.

Here’s U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D. 9^th IL), wife of the notorious felon, Robert Creamer, introducing Alexi.  Like her husband, Schakowsky is a flaming leftist:

Alexi shoots hoops with Barack. In fact, on Election Day, November 2008, they dribbled together to break the tension.

Giannoulias raised six-figure campaign funds for his basketball friend from the Chicago Greek community.  If closeness to President Obama is evidence for being the Machine candidate, then Alexi is the prime suspect.

The Giannoulias family business, Broadway Bank, is a two-edged sword for Alexi’s political aspirations. His banking experience, albeit limited, helped establish his creds as a candidate for Illinois Treasurer. But some of his actions as a senior officer at the bank have called his judgment into question.

Broadway has had many fine, upstanding customers. And then there’s Michael Giorango, a developer convicted of running prostitution rings and bookmaking.  But, look, so what if Alexi finally admitted that he met Giorango in Miami to take a look at some of Mike’s property the bank financed there. Even crooks have to bank somewhere.

Alexi oversaw a loan to a Giorango company that was part owner of a Myrtle Beach, South Carolina marina that was home to a casino boat once partly owned by Konstantinos Boulis, until he was whacked in 2001.  A group of investors, including disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, bought Boulis’ share, then sold it back to Boulis’s nephew, who donated $5,000 to Giannoulias’ campaign for State Treasurer in 2005.  Move along, nothing to see here.

Antoin “Tony” Rezko was also a Broadway customer.  But, hey, Rezko had many business acquaintances back then. He ran up a $450,000 debt out in Vegas at Caesar’s Palace and Bally’s Hotel Casino between March and July 2006 and paid up with nine checks on his Broadway account. They bounced like Alexi’s b-balls. (Maybe that’s why Tony volunteered to stay in jail while he awaits sentencing.)

Alexi, running against greedy banks, did well at his family’s bank. From 2005-2008 he made $5.5 million.

As Illinois Treasurer, Giannoulias oversaw the state’s Bright Start College Loan Program.  During the credit crisis the program lost $150 million.  Although he negotiated a return of 50 cents on the dollar from Oppenheimer Funds, Inc., opponents say he should not have put the money in a risky fund. And, he should have been paying closer attention to the college money Illinois parents invested in the state program. Here’s Alexi answering questions about Bright Start. Watch him pull a pony out of a pile of pony poo here.

Question: Does Alexi’s friendship with Barack translate into unqualified Machine endorsement and support?  Or, is he trying to move up the greasy pole too fast, too soon, with too thin a resume?

Suspect #2, please step forward.

David Hoffman, age 42. After graduating from Yale (‘88), he worked as a staffer for U.S. Senator David Boren (D. OK). After the University of Chicago Law School (‘95), he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney (‘98-‘05) and Inspector General of the City of Chicago (‘05-‘09).  Here’s his announcement as a candidate.

Hoffman calls himself the “ultimate outsider.” Outsider?

His grandfather, David Lloyd Kreeger, was recruited by the FDR administration to work for the New Deal’s Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration.  Kreeger worked on New Deal programs for 15 years. Must have made plenty of political connections useful to his grandson.

Later, Kreeger became Chairman and CEO of the Government Employees Insurance Company, better known today as GEICO — the folks with the talking reptile.

Hoffman’s may not be a Machine insider, but he’s hardly an “outsider.”

The role of the Inspector General’s Office (IGO) of Chicago is, according to its website, to “root out corruption, waste, and mismanagement, while promoting effectiveness and efficiency in the City of Chicago.”  Mission impossible. With limited powers, a salary paid by the city, and a staff of only 55, Hoffman’s rooting and promoting were never going to seriously threaten the Machine. He exposed a few minor Machine shenanigans and hooligans, but Eliot Ness he was not. He’s more like the piano player in a house of ill repute who brags about being the one who pushed classical music.

Inspector Hoffman’s most touted achievement is a post-facto criticism of Chicago’s privatization of the city’s parking meters. Briefly, here’s the story.

In December 2008, after just two days of deliberation, Chicago Aldermen did just what His Honor the Mayor told them to do. They voted 40-5 to lease Chicago’s 36,000 quarter-eating parking meters to a private company for 75 years in exchange for $1,157 billion.  (Daley’s incremental privatization of Chicago’s infrastructure is a whole nother story.) Daley’s aim was to inject quick money into the sick city budget.

Only after the deal was done did Hoffman release a report claiming that:

…the City did not allow for proper consideration of alternatives to the exact 75-yer lease deal it entered into…the City was paid, conservatively, $974 million less for this 75-year lease that the City would have received from 75 years of parking-meter revenue had it retained the parking-meter system under the same terms that the City agreed to in the least…There is simply no reason for these types of decisions to be rushed through the City’s legislative body, with little time to digest and analyze a complicated transaction, with limited information provided and with little opportunity for public input and reaction.

So where was Hoffman when the Machine was feeding the meter deal? How could he not have known it was in the works?

Chicago Parking Meters LLC (CPM) leased the meters. Ninety-nine (99) percent of CPM is owned by…wait for it…wait for it…Morgan Stanley.  Now Wall Street will charge Chicagoans big money to park on Michigan Avenue.

When CPM had problems managing the meters, a representative from the politically-connected law firm of Winston and Strawn spoke on its behalf. (Former Republican Illinois Governor Jim Thompson works at Winston. It’s a bipartisan firm.)  The Chief Investigator of the IGO, plus one of Hoffman’s staff attorneys, took pay cuts to leave Winston and join Hoffman’s office. But, hey, so what, Chicago’s a small world.  Maybe they didn’t know the deal was in the works either.

Back when Tony Rezko was headline news, Blago’s campaign committee, Citizens for Blagojevich, sensing their guy was also in the U.S. Attorney’s crosshairs, signed up Winston rainmakers and ran up $2 million in legal fees. Earlier, the bipartisan counselors represented former Republican Governor George Ryan. He spent $10 million with them. It didn’t go well for George, though; he’s in prison. Like speakers of the house in the Massachusetts state legislature, Illinois governors often go from the state house to the Big House.

From a distance, it looks like maybe Hoffman took the IG job to make a name for himself as a Machine buster, reformer, anti-corruption hero.

Question is: What’s he ever reformed? And, how would he crack the Machine from the U.S. Senate Office Building when its most favored son sits in the White House?

Suspect #3, please step forward.

Cheryle Jackson, a graduate of Northwestern University (’88), is not related to the Jesse Jackson family. She’s President and CEO of the Chicago Urban League (on unpaid leave). Sort of a community organizer.

During his first term as governor, Jackson was Deputy Chief of Staff of Communications and Chief Press Secretary for Illinois Governor…wait for it…wait for it…Rod Blagojevich – the third rail in Illinois politics these days.

Before that, she worked for Amtrak and National Public Radio (NPR).

She’s served on a potpourri of Chicago civic boards and committees.

Jackson is the only African-American in the race for a seat held by Burris, Obama and Carol Moseley Braun, in reverse chronological order.

She is not the Machine candidate.  We can release her this time, but she may have a future in Machine politics.

Final Observation: This is not a line-up of heavyweight Machine operatives. You have to ask yourself – What’s up with that?  What’s happened to the once finely-tuned Chicago Machine?

Veteran Chicago newsman Walter Jacobson has been a Machine pundit for decades. He suggests a possible answer that focuses on the fish’s head.

Maybe the Machine ain’t what it used to be.