* Several commenters were rightly upset today at the way Country Club Hills Mayor Dwight Welch handled himself at a press conference announcing some of the details of Chris Kelly’s death. Well, they didn’t know the half of it. The Tribune has the unedited video from the presser. Yeesh.
You should really watch the whole thing. But if you don’t have a lot of time, I’ve put a few of the choicest excerpts into a video, with particular attention to his grandstanding about the key witness in the case and his “in jokes” with reporters. It ain’t pretty. Take a look…
There’s also an update in the case. Read it for context on how bogus some of the mayor’s claims were.
* But if for whatever reason you really want to be disgusted today, go find Rod Blagojevich’s interview with Howard Stern today. Profanity and off-color jokes galore. Classy. Real classy.
* I’ve been informed that JB Pritzker has definitely decided not to run for state treasurer. So, for now at least, Robin Kelly still has a free ride through the Democratic primary.
* Republican gubernatorial candidate Kirk Dillard laid out his ethics reform plan today. At the top of his list was a pledge not to raise any campaign money during the first two years of his term in office.
I guess that’s OK, but it could just mean that a Gov. Dillard would have to focus that much more on fundraising in the second half of his term.
Also, Dillard reported raising just over $50,000 during the first six months of the year, while claiming privately that he’d file with a million bucks. So this new “no fundraising” pledge leaves him wide open to severe snark.
But, besides all that, take a look at Dillard’s blog. Dude, not even a link to your campaign site? Huh?
* Speaking of snark and the Internet, somebody has created fake Twitter accounts for several US Senate candidates.
I know I can be stuffy & wooden sometimes, but no, I’m not a ventriloquist and no, I didn’t throw my voice in Rep. Wilson’s direction.
* And speaking of Twitter, Congressman Don Manzullo is using the site to ask for help circulating his nominating petitions. He added several hashtags to attract notice, including #sgp, which, I’m told means “Smart Girl Politics.”
I don’t get it.
* And whilst we’re on the subject of the Intertubes, I was searching Google News for stories on Mark Kirk’s US Senate race this morning and noticed these Google ads on the right side of the page…
The NRSC Google ad has been up for a while now, but Giannoulias is now countering with his own. That “Voice of the New Right” ad appears to be new.
So, then I searched Google News for Alexi Giannoulias…
Just one ad there, for now.
Cheryle Robinson Jackson? Not much…
Conservative US Senate candidate Patrick Hughes? Nothing much of note there, either…
However, new Democratic US Senate entrant David Hoffman is spending a bit more on Google ads. Search for his name and his ad appears above the actual results…
One of my Hoffman searches produced a Giannoulias ad on the right, so he’s doing some counter-programming on Hoffman as well.
Keep in mind that not all searches will yield the same ad results since the Google ad program is a bit weird and complicated. But I did a few searches for each name and got essentially the same results, except for Hoffman.
* I’m starting to get lots of campaign press releases that consist of pdf attachments again. I hate that. We’ve discussed this before. Please just paste your release into the body of the e-mail. Why should I have to download this, for instance?…
Robert Dold will formally announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for Congress in the 10th District on Monday, September 14th. Dold will make the announcement at Rose Pest Solutions, a family-owned business he runs.
* And, finally, after announcing that huge SEIU endorsement with a strictly embargoed and breathless e-mail late last night, Gov. Pat Quinn’s campaign sent out another embargoed press release this morning announcing a long list of liberal endorsees headed by Congresscritter Jan Schakowsky. Others include Sens. Iris Martinez and Heather Steans, Reps. Will Burns and Harry Osterman, Commissioner Larry Suffreding and Alds. Joe Moore, Mary and Smith and Tom Tunney, and William Marovitz.
The strict embargo ended at 10 o’clock. It’s now 11:30 as I write this and nobody has picked up the story yet. I wonder why.
Greg Boltz, a Downers Grove GOP committeeman, noted that many Republicans are skeptical of health-care reform and said he has seen polls that show “83 [percent] or 84 percent of people are happy with what they have.”
* The Question: Are you happy with your and your family’s current health insurance situation, including cost, covered items, deductibles etc.?
Please, make sure to disclose whether you have a government health insurance plan, a private employer-provided or subsidized plan, or you buy your own insurance.
Also, this is not intended to be a debate about the DC health insurance proposals. I’ve seen the above talking point a lot, and just want to see how it’ll play out here. If you get into that national debate in comments I’ll just delete you. Stick to the question, and only the question, please.
* Yesterday’s Tribune editorial noted something about its statewide poll that the paper’s reporters had completely ignored…
Recent Tribune polling statewide finds 45 percent of respondents identify themselves as Democrats, and 28 percent as Independents. Republicans, dodging extinction, lurch in third, at 23 percent.
So, even after all the craziness that this state has gone through in the past two years, there are now fewer Republicans than independents? Well, that may be a surprise to the Trib, but we’ve talked about this very issue before.
And, of course, that horrific result doesn’t mean the Republicans are completely doomed. Plenty of “Blue” states have or have had Republican governors. And, as I pointed out in my newspaper column this week…
Illinois voters simply stopped listening to Republicans in this state several years ago. But after years of watching Rod Blagojevich and the perpetual Springfield circus, the GOP message of no tax hikes, budget cuts and ethics reform probably will get a fair hearing next fall.
Whether that fair hearing is enough to actually win an election is anyone’s guess.
* Right now, though, the best thing the Republicans have going for them is the Democratic Party. For instance…
A bomb that blew out the window of a Prospect Heights home may have been planted in the wrong location, authorities said.
An explosive that went off about 3 a.m. Aug. 25 in the 200 block of Gail Court South likely was intended instead for the home of an area political activist who lives on the same block, Prospect Heights Police Cmdr. Al Steffen said.
The intended target of the bomb “was a whistle-blower in a political campaign,” Steffen said. “We were aware that there was an investigation going on involving that person.”
If that police speculation is correct, then the cops apparently believe the bomb was intended for the woman who blew the whistle on Democratic state Rep. Paul Froehlich.
For the first time since he became mayor two decades ago, Daley’s critics outnumber his fans, a Tribune/WGN poll found. The mayor’s approval rating is at an all-time low of 35 percent in Tribune polls, according to the new survey. […]
Nine out of 10 people disapprove of the parking meter deal, according to the Tribune/WGN poll, which surveyed 380 Chicago voters from Aug. 27 to Aug. 31. The poll has an error margin of 5 percentage points.
When Daley is in trouble, everybody with a “D” behind their name in the Chicago media market is in trouble. People may or may not like him, but they always thought he got the job done. That’s not the case these days.
* And of course there’s the outside chance that the Democrats might nominate Rod Blagojevich’s former spokesperson as their US Senate candidate. From Lynn Sweet…
Democratic Senate hopeful Cheryle Jackson and I talked Sunday about why she went to work for Gov. Rod Blagojevich as his spokeswoman — and why she left his administration during his first term when she realized Blagojevich was making decisions “based on personal benefit.”
Some Democratic leaders had hoped to prevent a direct vote on an endorsement of Stroger by first proposing a vote to hold an open primary. But Stroger’s supporters sought an endorsement vote, and those backing other candidates then asked for a roll call.
What protects Illinois Democrats from the abyss? Their unwitting friends the Republicans, who have a disgraced former governor in prison. They have some excellent officeholders, some interesting candidates, but no cohesive message: Quick now, how does the Republican Party of Illinois propose to fix all that’s so wrong with this state? What does the GOP believe?
Well, let’s see. Hmmm. Hey, they’ve got a guy who walked out in a huff during a presidential address to Congress because the president wasn’t bipartisan enough. This was the same guy who told his fellow Republicans at the State Fair that the GOP mantra ought to be “Just say ‘No!’” to the Democrats on everything. So, there’s that.
* Orlando Jones’ suicide clearly showed the stress that can be caused when the federal walls move in. Chris Kelly, facing imprisonment this Friday and enormous pressure to spill his guts on his friend Rod Blagojevich, had reportedly talked about killing himself for several days. He followed through with his threats over the weekend…
His girlfriend, identified by [Country Club Hills Mayor Dwight Welch] as Clarissa I. Flores-Buhelos, drove Kelly to Oak Forest Hospital in his black Cadillac Escalade after he sent a text message asking her for help from the parking lot of Forest Lumber in the 17200 block of Cicero Avenue in Country Club Hills.
A Country Club Hills police officer spoke to Kelly, who was sitting up and alert in his room at Oak Forest Hospital. “Kelly was very hesitant,” Welch said. “He was very ill and not feeling well. And he was defensive.”
Oak Forest Hospital does not have a trauma unit, but doctors were able to stabilize Kelly. Doctors later decided Kelly could be better treated at Stroger Hospital in Chicago, where Kelly was taken about 5:15 a.m. Saturday and died at 10:46 a.m., Cook County hospitals officials said.
The police officer also interviewed an unidentified “male white with grey hair” who claimed to be Kelly’s friend. He told the officer who Kelly was, Welch said.
Later Saturday morning, a white man with grey hair — police are unsure if it was the same man interviewed at the hospital earlier — came to the hospital with keys to the Escalade and tried to remove it from the parking lot but was turned away by police, Welch said.
“We’re trying to determine who that is, too,” Welch said. “It could be the same white male or it could be two separate people we don’t know.”
At the scene, officers found vomit in the parking lot, as they did on the Escalade. Kelly’s clothing, now in evidence, was also “soaked in vomit,” according to Welch. The Escalade had been in the parking lot of the lumber yard, outside an area secured by a locked gate, and adjacent to a storage facility. Welch said police are looking into whether Kellly had a vehicle - possibly a boat - or other belongings stored at the site.
Police in Country Club Hills — where Tylenol wrappers and a large container of pills were found in Kelly’s SUV in the parking lot of a lumber yard — said their main witness, Clarissa Flores-Buhelos, became uncooperative with police after dropping off Kelly at Oak Forest Hospital late Friday. Her attorney vehemently denied that Flores-Buhelos is not cooperating.
What is known is that Kelly arrived at the hospital about 11:15 p.m. Friday, suffering from what appeared to be an overdose, officials said.
The police officer who interviewed Kelly in the hospital said he told him that he took Tylenol for pain because of recent surgery, said Country Club Hills Police Chief Regina Evans. On Saturday, the medical examiner’s office said Stroger Hospital officials told it that Kelly apparently had an intoxication of salicylate, a drug used in anti-inflammatory and pain relief medications such as aspirin.
Later, Kelly became “very defensive,” Welch said. He told an officer: “I know what you are trying to do. You are trying to trick me,” according to Evans. The officer said Kelly did not admit to trying to kill himself, she added.
Last week, a federal judge placed Kelly on a midnight to 6 a.m. curfew until his jail surrender. The unusual step came, sources say, after Kelly displayed recent erratic behavior.
He paid an agitated visit to a nightclub at 2047 N. Milwaukee. As a condition of his curfew, he was told not to go near the business.
Clarissa Flores-Buhelos manages the same nightclub where Kelly became “agitated” and was subsequently banned from.
* Blagojevich says Kelly killed himself because he was being pressured to tell lies. Nobody really knows what goes through the mind of someone who does such a thing. But his attitude when being questioned by local police (refusing to answer questions, cracking that he’d just had surgery on his private parts - likely another way of describing how he’d pled guilty) suggests defiance until the bitter, bitter end.
Either way, Blagojevich will benefit from this, and that’s really too bad.
* Related…
* Scott Fawell’s Take on Kelly’s Apparent Suicide: “You wanna indict Chris Kelly, you want to send him away, you know what? Do it. But this, I’ll indict him a second time, lets indict him a third time, that’s strictly for pressure. I mean, I’d be rather surprised if Rod Blagojevich is exonerated, but no, they want one more piece, so let’s put some heat on Chris Kelly. It never stops.”
* Carol Marin: Did pressure from feds help kill Chris Kelly?
* This is big, and it’s very good news for Gov. Pat Quinn’s primary chances…
The state’s largest union, the Service Employees International Union, will announce today it is teaming up with the Teamsters in an effort unprecedented in statewide elections to campaign for Gov. Quinn.
That means working together in the same phone banks, coordinating spending — it will be similar to what the unions did in the last round of aldermanic elections, working together for candidates who supported them over Wal-Mart, said Jerry Morrison, executive director for SEIU.
Huge bucks, lots of workers. From the governor’s press release…
Further expanding Governor Pat Quinn’s broad, diverse base of support, SEIU Illinois Council today announced its endorsement of Governor Quinn’s campaign, recognizing his decades-long record of
standing up for working families in Illinois. […]
“Governor Quinn has been a fighter for working families all of his life,” said Tom Balanoff, President of the SEIU Illinois Council, which represents 170,000 union members. “Pat Quinn is the right person to lead Illinois out of this recession.
“Pat Quinn is a governor who consistently listens to the issues affecting working families,” said John T. Coli, president of Teamsters Joint Council 25 [100,000 members], which announced its endorsement of Governor Quinn on Sept. 4. “We look forward to working with SEIU to support Governor Quinn and his strong, common-sense leadership.”
The SEIU endorsement of Quinn comes just days after he won the support of Cook County Democratic slatemakers for election next year. Hynes, the product of a longtime county Democratic family, had urged Democratic leaders to make no endorsement in the governor’s race.
* Dan Hynes was endorsed over the weekend by a couple of Democratic township committeepersons, which may cause some trouble since their party slated Quinn on Friday.
* My weekly syndicated newspaper column was written before the slating on Friday and before I learned late that afternoon about the SEIU/Teamsters deal. Still, I’d say it’s mostly correct. Hynes has some good ideas for the primary and a major flaw that he has not yet fully addressed…
There were no spectacular backdrops in place when Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes officially announced his campaign for governor the other day.
No pretty pictures for the TV cameras. No gathering of his adoring family who could not keep their enraptured eyes off him. No flowery rhetoric. No huge crowd. No brass band. No rows of oversized American flags. No razzle dazzle at all, in fact.
Instead, Hynes stood in front of a blue curtain, a single flag and a campaign poster and calmly laid out a plan to cut the state’s budget, raise taxes on annual personal income above the first $200,000, tag certain “luxury” purchases with a new service tax, hike cigarette taxes by a dollar a pack and expand gaming.
That’s not a bad strategy for a Democratic primary.
Hynes can blast Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed 50 percent income tax rate hike on everybody - including the working poor - by pointing to his own, far more “progressive” revenue-generating tax hikes. He can placate Democratic interest groups by showing he’s for new revenues.
Hynes’ message of quiet, honest competence versus the loud, bungling dishonesty of the past eleven years might also be a refreshing change for voters.
The budget cuts Hynes proposes (rolling back the state’s operating budget to fiscal year 2005 levels, for instance) won’t go over well with state employee unions such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, among other Democratic constituency groups.
But considering the way Quinn has treated AFSCME this year - demanding contract givebacks and threatening massive layoffs - the union probably has no place else to go in the Democratic primary unless another strong candidate steps into the race.
As for the general election, Hynes said during a conversation after his announcement that his proposal was similar to Barack Obama’s own tax plan during the 2008 campaign and Bill Clinton’s tax proposal from his first presidential bid. As Hynes rightly pointed out, both those guys won.
Even if President Obama’s recent speech on health care manages to turn his listing ship around, the midterm 2010 campaign won’t be like 2008 or 1992.
Illinois voters simply stopped listening to Republicans in this state several years ago. But after years of watching Rod Blagojevich and the perpetual Springfield circus, the GOP message of no tax hikes, budget cuts and ethics reform probably will get a fair hearing next fall.
One couldn’t help but think during Hynes’ announcement about the then-hapless Democrats’ 1994 disaster, when their gubernatorial candidate was constantly whacked for supporting a “42 percent tax hike.” Like that proposal, Hynes’ plan does have real merit, but it’s a big risk for the fall campaign - albeit far less of a risk than Quinn’s own “50 percent tax hike on everybody” plan.
For now, though, Job One for Hynes is winning the primary. And he does appear to have rattled Quinn. The mere mention of Hynes’ name almost never fails to prompt a flash of anger from the governor. You’d think a guy who released a poll recently showing him leading Hynes 54 percent to 26 percent among likely Democratic primary voters could afford to be more magnanimous. You’d be wrong.
All this means absolutely nothing, however, until Hynes can resolve an issue that threatens his entire candidacy.
While Hynes has always carefully burnished his reputation as a competent administrator, he hasn’t yet been able to shake the allegations that he fell down on the job during one of the most sensational scandals to hit the Chicago-area media market in years.
Comptroller Hynes’ office regulates aspects of the cemetery industry, mainly trust funds. Lately, Hynes has been accused by some of gross negligence for not noticing and stopping problems at the infamous and decrepit Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, which Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart claims was the scene of a massive scheme to resell already occupied burial plots and stack bodies on top of each other.
The harsh bottom line is Hynes has not yet found a way to effectively address this cemetery issue other than to point out the fact that he wasn’t really responsible for the problem.
Facts supporting inaction in an alleged massive failure like this just never are enough in the heat of a campaign.
His competency is in serious doubt. Without an effective, legitimate counter-spin, this cemetery issue easily could be Hynes’ undoing in a close election.
Three men who once ran Laborers’ International Union Local 1001 — a union with a history of mob ties that represents Chicago garbage collectors — are now getting city pensions based on the salaries they got from the union.
All three once worked for the city. All three moved on to work for the union. But even after leaving their city jobs, they remained in a city pension plan but got credit for their time with the union — and, thanks to an obscure state law that allows all of this, were able to have their city pensions calculated based on their union salaries. In each case, the result was a higher pension.
Plezbert was just 49, a few weeks shy of his 50th birthday, when he retired in June 2006 as Mayor Daley’s first deputy commissioner of general services — a job that paid $124,944.
Three days later, he started a new job — as the $155,324-a-year first deputy director of the mayor’s Public Building Commission.
Between his city pension and his city job, Plezbert now makes $246,721 a year.
Picket lines formed Friday in front of three hotels in downtown Chicago. A union representing 6,000 hospitality workers says hotels are trying to roll back health coverage.
The CHA has promised to build or rehab 25,000 apartments by 2015, with just one-third in mixed-income communities.
The rest will be in traditional public housing developments, including 5,000 units — or 20 percent of all apartments — in smaller rehabbed public housing family projects. (The balance will be in senior developments and at scattered sites.) More than half of those 5,000 units already have been rehabbed.
This means the public housing of yesteryear– families concentrated in high-poverty enclaves — remains part of the landscape today and for the foreseeable future.
Does that mean the CHA is doomed to repeat its past failures? The risk is clearly there.
Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis on Friday denounced as “reprehensible” — and demanded severe punishment against those responsible for — a 911 dispatch delay that left an off-duty police officer to fend for himself while being shot at from a car filled with alleged gang members.
“This incident is just reprehensible. We had an officer [who] needed assistance, and he didn’t get it. … He was pretty much on his own for quite a few minutes. … He had to go to [a police] station, and that’s where he received assistance,” Weis said.
Two sources with knowledge of the situation told the Tribune today they have been notified that Christopher Kelly, a key figure into the federal corruption probe into former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, is dead.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office today confirmed that a body identified as Christopher Kelly was brought to the morgue from Stroger Hospital.[…]
On Tuesday, in a surprise move just a day before his scheduled trial, Kelly, owner of a roofing business, pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud as part of a kickback scheme to illegally obtain $8.5 million in work at O’Hare International Airport.
At the time, Kelly, 51, said he was under pressure from federal prosecutors to cooperate in their investigation of Blagojevich, but he refused.
* 5:22 pm - The Tribune now reports that the medical examiner said Kelly’s death was caused by “salicylate intoxication.”
According to medical reference guides, salicylates are used in anti-inflammatory and pain relief medications. An autopsy is scheduled for Sunday.
Christopher Kelly, 51, arrived at Cook County’s Stroger hospital by ambulance at 5:15 a.m. Saturday and was pronounced dead at 10:46 a.m., said spokesman Marcel Bright.
But there’s some confusion about where and when he was found and where he was first sent.
Kelly was found at 7:01 a.m. by his family, according to a report given to the Cook County Medical Examiner. He was pronounced dead at 10:46 a.m., sources said. Kelly died of an apparent “aspirin overdose,” a law enforcement source said.
Kelly, 51, of 702 Ambriance Drive in Burr Ridge, was found unresponsive at an unidentified location, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office.
Initial reports started that Kelly was taken to Oak Forest Hospital of Cook County before being taken to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, sources said. A medical examiner’s office source said Kelly was an inpatient at Stroger Hospital and was there for an unidentified period of time before his death.
Kelly was transported to Stroger Hospital from an unknown address at 5:15 a.m. and was pronounced dead at 10:46 a.m., according to the medical examiner’s office.
* 12:02 am - The Tribune now reports Kelly’s death as a possible suicide, but that it’s being investigated as a homicide…
Authorities said Kelly was in his 2007 Cadillac Escalade in the parking lot of a lumber yard at 173rd Street and Cicero Avenue in Country Club Hills — a few miles from his Markham office — Friday night when he began vomiting. Sources said a girlfriend of Kelly’s drove him to nearby Oak Forest Hospital of Cook County. The Escalade remained there Saturday afternoon, guarded by police. […]
Investigators were still at the empty Forest Lumber yard Saturday night as they looked for evidence. The remote spot, opposite insect-filled cornfields near Interstate Highways 57 and 80, was taped off as officers used flashlights to search on hands and knees.
Country Club Hills Mayor Dwight Welch said detectives were looking for cigarette butts or anything else that might be traced to potential witnesses.
Welch said authorities are investigating whether Kelly overdosed, possibly on over-the-counter medicines. The mayor also said Kelly vomited in the lumber yard’s parking lot.
