Daley, Blago, Burris and Obama

Tom Roeser takes us back in time:

Privately, Daley was on the verge of making yet another mistake with the sin of power greed. preferred a lackey in the post, subservient to himself as the Great Lord God Jehovah. He delicately passed the word that he preferred a candidate for governor with the unctuous traits of subservience not unlike Uriah Heep. One appeared. He was a good looking kid in a boyish, eastern European kind of way with a mop of curly black hair that tumbled on his forehead which made old ladies wish he was available to marry their daughters (they changed their minds later). He had been an assistant to Daley as states attorney so he supposedly knew the drill. Earlier, his multi-millionaire alderman-ward boss father-in-law had spent a kingly sum on billboards telling voters how to pronounce his surname…Rod Blagojevich...

To get Blago elected, the bosses had to siphon away black votes. So they recruited a black Dem into the race, providing modest funding for him to get around. His job: to sop up the black votes that would otherwise go to Vallas. His name: Roland Burris the first black state comptroller and attorney general. Burris was far from inspiring so to ensure he Burris had credibility, Daley ordered the ever-obedient Sen. Barack Obama to endorse Burris. Obama did. And the siphon worked: Blago was nominated and won election. After Blago took the oath, Burris returned to private business as a lobbyist. Read the whole shebang here.

Roeser hosts a Sunday night radio show on WLS in Chicago.  He is a long-time political operative, former lobbyist, former Sun-Times columnist, and consultant.  Roeser is frequently insufferable as a blogger, but he knows how politics works and he knows people who are in the know.