The arrest of Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic Governor, on influence peddling and corruption charges, including trying to sell the now vacant U. S. Senate seat formerly held by president-elect Barack Obama, "simply opened another chapter in Illinois' infamously corrupt history".
In the last two years, Mr. Blagojevich has been accused of trading appointments to state boards and commissions for campaign cash; a friend of the Chicago mayor pleaded guilty to setting up fronts to capture city contracts reserved for minorities and women-owned firms; an official in the city's water management department allegedly ran a Colombianlinked heroin-trafficking ring; and 73 state officials were convicted of accepting bribes.
In November of 2006, Mr. Blagojevich was re-elected despite the continuing corruption investigation into his administration.
The editorial writers of the Chicago Tribune once claimed in Illinois "corruption has been as much a part of the landscape as corn, soybeans and skyscrapers."
“I say that Illinois politics is like a roller coaster,” said Christopher Mooney, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois. “It's exciting if you don't puke your guts out.”
“Illinois politics is not about good government, it's not about ideology, it's about who gets into office so they can help the guy who got him there,” Dr. Mooney said. “There are a lot of people who have this concept of government as a venue in which to pursue your own private interests.”
"Illinois, which gave rise to the political careers of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama, Civil Rights Act author Everett Dirksen and UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson, has also been home to a string of corrupt public officials accused of everything from tax fraud to auctioning off the state's currently vacant seat in the Senate", writes Siri Agrell in The Globe and Mail.
Political corruption, "pay-for-play culture", has been around since the founding of the state of Illinois in 1818. People arrived with the goal of making money, he said, buying land, cultivating or developing it, and selling it for profit.
A surge in immigration in the late 19th century further ingrained a political system based on quid pro quo.
Political parties would meet immigrants upon their arrival in the state, Dr. Mooney said, offering themselves as a kind of surrogate social service, and then asking for a return of favours down the road.
In Chicago, ethnic groups were rewarded for political support with specific jobs. The Irish were installed in the police force, while Italians were given jobs with the transit system.
"We have a culture of machine politics and it lends itself to corruption," said Dick Simpson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a former Chicago alderman. "We are the capital of corruption in the U.S. The idea of machine politics is, 'If you vote for me, I give you some favours.' "
The heart of machine politics is deal making and deal making is a political tradition in Illinois, added Paul Green, director of the Institute for Politics at Chicago's Roosevelt University. "You give nothing away. Everything is traded. Everything is a deal and that's how this state has operated from the very beginning."
Usually, under machine-style rule, those in power dole out contracts, jobs and social services in exchange for political support. But in Illinois, the practice surpasses anything else in the United States.
When the last governor, Republican George Ryan, received a six-year prison term in 2006, for racketeering, mail fraud, accepting bribes, lying on his taxes and lying to police, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper noted 79 elected Illinois, Chicago and Cook County officials had been convicted of corruption in the past 30 years.
That tally included three governors, two top state officials, 15 state legislators, two congressmen, one mayor, three top city officials, 27 aldermen, 19 Cook County judges and seven other Cook County officials.
In 1960, Illinois became the centre of a national controversy after John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard Nixon in the presidential election. Rumours of election fraud in Chicago blossomed into theories that the state had been stolen by Democrats, and that then-mayor Richard J. Daley had used his suspect political machine to deliver victory for his party.
The allegations of a stolen election were never proven, but at least three people were sent to jail for election-related crimes and the state's uncanny ability to deliver political results became ingrained in legend.
In 1971, after the death of Paul Powell, an Illinois secretary of state, his executors were shocked to find a man who spent 30 years in public service and never earned more than US$30,000 a year had an estate worth more than US$2-million, including US$800,000 in cash stashed in shoeboxes in his hotel room.
Otto Kerner, a former Illinois governor who went on to become a judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals, was convicted of bribery, conspiracy and perjury in 1973 for taking secret payoffs from a racetrack operator.
In 1988 a federal probe into the Chicago court system convicted 87 court personnel and lawyers, including 13 judges.
In the 1990s a federal probe into Chicago city government ended with the conviction of 18 public employees.
And in July of 2006, a jury convicted four former city officials on corruption charges for awarding jobs and promotions to politically connected candidates.
“Culture is hard to purge, it's like groundwater,” Dr. Mooney said. While other jurisdictions have had stretches of corruption, Chicago hasn't yet benefited from the kind of crusading politician who has cleaned up messy practices in places such as New York and Washington.
“We've had a lot of problems over the years, but people around here are just shocked at the level of corruption, the extent of it, the greed, the arrogance, the hubris, the stupidity of [Blagojevich]. This might be the big event that changes something.”
"If [Illinois] isn't the most corrupt state in the United States, it's certainly one hell of a competitor," Robert Grant, the head of the FBI's Chicago office said after he arrested Mr. Blagojevich.
[Source: Agencies]
