Antoine “Tony” Rezko has plead guilty to a 2006 charge of defrauding GE Capitol out of $10 million in loans for Rezko Enterprises and his Papa John’s Pizza restaurants.
The one-time confidant of Rod Blagojevich appeared in federal court Friday before Judge James B. Zagel wearing a federal prison uniform and leg shackels.
Rezko has been imprisoned at an undisclosed Wisconsin county jail since June 2008 on charges stemming from his association with the former Illinois governor.
He faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Federal prosecutors are expected to drop the additional counts against Rezko in exchange for his guilty plea.
[Judge James Zagel] said federal guidelines call for sentence of at least eight years and one month.
There was no official plea agreement, so prosecutors remain mum on whether he will appear as a witness in the second trial of Rod Blagojevich. Defense attorney Joseph Duffy said Rezko is “ready, able and willing” to testify against Blagojevich and would be a “formidable witness.”
Rezko’s next court date will be December 17, but there is still no indication when he will be sentenced for either of his two cases.
Rahm Emanuel reached out to Chicago voters in his White House resignation speech even though he hasn’t formally announced he’s running for mayor.
He connected to Jewish voters by mentioning his bar mitzvah. He got to sports fans by mentioning the Chicago Bears’ 3-0 record. He talked about how his mother marched with Martin Luther King Jr., in a nod to black voters and others. He choked up talking about his family, showing his sensitive side.
Wow. Just, wow. I’ve seen campaign-generated tip sheets which were far more subtle than that idiotic tripe.
* Robert Gibbs had this to say at today’s White House press briefing when asked if the president would campaign for Rahm Emanuel…
“I don’t — I don’t believe any — I don’t have anything on that. I don’t — I don’t know the answer to that, to be honest with you. I think — I mean, obviously the president was — you’ve heard what the president said over the past several weeks and what the president said today about Rahm and his next endeavors.”
Smooth talker, that Gibbs. And just in case anyone at the White House sees this, have Gibbs return my call, please. I want to ask him about a topic I’ve never seen the president address: State Sen. Bill Brady. The two often played poker together back when Obama was a colleague. Brady’s been in the race for months, but Obama has been curiously silent.
Sneed is told [Rev. Sen. James Meeks], a state senator who is very unpopular in the gay community for his track record on gay issues, requested a hush-hush meeting with Rick Garcia, a top Illinois gay rights activist, days after Mayor Daley decided not to run again.
“Rev. Meeks, who would never return Rick’s calls in the past, is now treating Rick like his best friend,” said a source familiar with the meeting.
• The upshot: “It’s true we met, and Rev. Meeks has a completely anti-gay voting record and said horrible things about the gay community,” Garcia, a founder of Equality Illinois, told Sneed. “But my job is to build bridges, so we met at his Salem Baptist Church.”
• The final shot: “He [Meeks] told me he knows its going to be a hard sell and a hard stretch to endorse him, but he wanted to make sure he didn’t say things wrong. It was mainly an educational meeting,” said Garcia, “but it lasted two hours.”
Glenn Poshard snubbed the gay community in 1998 and it cost him dearly. Meeks won’t change his stripes, but at least he can change his rhetoric. Whoever wins will be mayor of the entire city, so it’s good to see he realizes that he needs to work on his mouth, as well as his heart.
* Greg Hinz has an interesting take on where the big money is going. Mostly, right now, to THE MAN WHO MUST NOT BE MENTIONED, but Sheriff Dart is picking up some bucksters…
Insiders say a second candidate, Sheriff Tom Dart, is likely to have one big business name in his camp, Mesirow Financial’s James Tyree — who’s also an owner of the Sun-Times. Mr. Tyree wouldn’t commit when my colleague Steve Strahler briefly chatted with him early in the week, but he has deep roots in Mr. Dart’s home 19th Ward on the Southwest Side.
Mr. Dart also may be best positioned to get money and troops from the Service Employees International Union, with whom he’s had a decent relationship at Cook County Jail.
SEIU absolutely despises THE MAN WHO MUST NOT BE MENTIONED. That’ll be a lot of fun to watch.
Hinz claims that Gery Chico is saying he can raise $5 million and reports that the Illinois Restaurant Association is gearing up to spend $150,000. More…
Preacher-politician James Meeks has deep respect in portions of the business community for his willingness to back school vouchers. Others, in the gambling business, like him because he’s against any further expansion of legal gambling here.
But many African-American business types are said to really like former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun. And it will be fascinating to see where President Obama’s circle of black business folk ends up — with Mr. Meeks, Ms. Braun or Mr. Emanuel.
*** UPDATE *** Your weekly exclusive preview of WBEZ’s “Best Game in Town” has just arrived. Click here to listen. From the producer…
This week on Best Game in Town – we head to Chicago’s Daley Plaza to talk about the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and the rest of the week’s political news with NPR’s David Schaper and Crain’s Chicago Business Columnist Greg Hinz.
Also, we sit down with Nancy Kaszak to talk about her experience running against Rahm almost a decade ago.
* Rahmup…
* Emanuel mayoral team would need to explain $17 million bank pay: Emanuel, 50, earned at least $17 million in three years as an investment banker after leaving the Clinton White House, public records show. While that part of his resume didn’t hurt him when he first ran for Congress in 2002, any new bid for public office would come amid criticism of Wall Street’s excesses and a U.S. unemployment rate of 9.6 percent. “It didn’t have traction because it was before the markets went down,” said Nancy Kaszak, who lost to Emanuel in the 2002 Democratic primary to represent part of Chicago’s north side and northwest suburbs. “There are a lot of people who are very angry now because of the finances they are facing. I think it is a potentially more harmful issue now.”
* Emanuel leaves White House: Alderman Ed Burke says he cannot remember when Emanuel ever visited his Southwest Side 14th Ward and wonders if just under five months is enough time for any candidate to make a citywide impression.
* It’s the Big Leagues Now, Rahm: “He’s a big political bully,” said Ricardo Munoz, an alderman who admits that he is “not a fan” of Mr. Emanuel. “There’s talk at City Hall, people out loud saying, ‘Do we want to go from a Daley dictatorship to another bully dictatorship?’ ”
* In one word sum up the Chicago media’s coverage of state political stories during the past month. Do not use the words “Rahm” or “Emanuel” or any iteration thereof. That’s just too easy.
OK, I’ve changed my mind. You can’t talk about this past month without somehow using those words. Feel free, but try to be creative with it.
She’s only a few weeks old but she already owes the federal government 43,000 dollars.
Will she have a better life than us? Or worse? How will she afford college, her first home?
Mark Kirk: If you’re as worried as I am about our skyrocketing national debt, runaway spending, and the lack of jobs, I need your vote. I’ll fight to spend less, borrow less and tax less so our children have a better future.
I’m Mark Kirk and I approved this message.
* Response from Giannoulias campaign…
After two decades in Washington DC supporting all of the Bush economic policies that sunk our economy into recession, Congressman Mark Kirk today released another ad that lies about his fiscal record.
“In ad after ad, Congressman Kirk expects voters to throw truth to the wind and forget his record of doubling the national debt and voting against tax cuts for the middle class,” said Alexi for Illinois campaign spokesman Scott Burnham. “The record is clear: Congressman Kirk’s votes took the country from record surpluses to record deficits by handing out tax cuts to millionaires and large corporations, while leaving the middle class and small business to fend for themselves. That’s not a record to be proud of, and it’s not the type of leadership that Illinois families can trust.”
…Adding… The Kirk spot appears to be a popular one this year. Ohio Republican congressional candidate Steve Stivers is running basically the same ad, except that he uses his own daughter…
* Meanwhile, in news from Kirk’s home district, Bob Dold has been threatened with an FEC audit. One of his constituents filed a complain alleging that he hadn’t reported spending money on his big campaign tour bus…
“I noticed he made very careful filings of expenditures under two dollars and I couldn’t imagine why an expenditure of this size was not listed,” Stowell explains of a motor coach that was used in Dold’s ads as part of a bus tour he touted post-primary and through the summer. In April, the cost was disclosed as about $15,000, but in July’s report, it wasn’t there.
Stowell wrote the FEC and she got a letter back. The Dold campaign got one too, threatening audit or enforcement action if he failed to provide more information. The FEC said Dold’s numbers don’t add up.
In Dold’s amended report, we found around $22,000 in debts that had gone unreported, as well as about $24,000 in expenditures. His cash on hand is listed as $22,000 more than it was the first time. But he did add the debt for the bus- it cost around $17,000.
“It would be really hard to say that a $17,000 miss was just sloppy bookkeeping. It looks a little funny,” said Burt Odelson, an election attorney who represented President Bush in the 2004 recount.
* Dold also complained to the Daily Herald about his opponent’s campaign posting a harsh remark on his Facebook page…
Republican congressional candidate Robert Dold and his Democratic rival, Dan Seals, have something new to fight about: Facebook.
On Wednesday, a posting appeared on Seals’ Facebook page tipping off his Internet followers to a news report about Dold.
“Uh oh,” began the post, which was attributed to Seals and ran next to his picture. “The Cook County Clerk and States Attorney are now looking into Dold’s potential property tax fraud.”
An electronic link to a Chicago-area media report raising questions about Dold’s residency and voting record in the last decade followed. The comment was posted on Seals’ Twitter account, too.
However, representatives of the clerk’s office and the state’s attorney’s office insist there is no investigation.
The matter was referred to the state’s attorney by the Cook County Clerk. But the state’s attorney claims there’s nothing going on with the issue.
What Dold did manage to do, however, was move the residency story from the Sun-Times, where it began, to the Daily Herald.
Every county in the Chicago area except Kendall experienced slightly increased poverty rates during the four-year period, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Cook County’s rate was 15.9 percent in 2009, up from 14.8 percent in 2008 and 15.3 in 2006.
In Illinois, the poverty rate rose to 13.3 percent in 2009, up from 12.3 percent in 2006. The national poverty rate last year was 14.3 percent.
A report released Thursday by Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac shows there were 8,909 second-quarter foreclosure sales, accounting for 24.32 percent of all homes sold in the state. That was an increase of almost 5 percent from the first quarter of 2010.
For his part, Mr. Singh, who gave more than $30,000 to local Democratic politicians in the most recent presidential cycle and $2,000 to Ms. Schakowsky’s campaign in 2006, says he owns property on North Clark Street with a $5.6 million loan from Mutual Bank. He says United Central had rebuffed his attempts to ease the terms of his loan as he rounded up potential new tenants at his property, prompting him to spur the action from the tight-knit Indian-American business community in Chicago.
* Ald. Stone rips problem building crackdown as too extreme
Only 2 percent of eligible households — about 7,000 — have signed up for free meters since the program began in March 2009. And the city has installed only 2,500 of the devices.
Many Chicagoans don’t believe the meters will lower their water bills, thinking it’s cheaper not to have one. But few realize just how unfair the city’s water-billing system is.
Hardik Bhatt, Chicago’s chief information officer, has resigned his $141,840-a-year job to join Cisco Systems, a California-company that bills itself as the “worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.”
Bhatt is the first member of Mayor Daley’s cabinet to pull the plug since the mayor chose political retirement over the quest for a seventh term.
But he’s not expected to be the last.
All 956 city policymakers exempt from the federal Shakman decree banning political hiring and firing must decide whether to stick around — and hope they can defy the odds and be retained by Daley’s successor — or dust off their resumes now.
* Eric Zorn once again provides us a transcript of one quite interesting part of yesterday’s Chicago Tribune gubernatorial debate. Scott Lee Cohen talks about why he dropped out of the lt. governor’s race…
COHEN: The governor made it very clear to me that he was going to take away my responsibilities, put me in a room with nothing to do. […]
Q: You had a conversation with Governor Quinn before you withdrew in which he told you he was going to put you in a room with nothing to do?
COHEN: I did not have a conversation with Governor Quinn. Next question.
Q: You say did you did not have a conversation with Governor Quinn? You just said that he told you —
COHEN: He made it clear. I did not say he told me. I said he made it clear.
* Of course, Gov. Pat Quinn argued with Bill Brady about Brady’s taxes…
Quinn called for all candidates to make available to the public their income tax returns, pointedly noting that Brady only made his returns available to reporters for about three hours in Springfield and would not allow copies to be made. Quinn also said that public officials should pay state and federal taxes on their public jobs even when their overall tax matters would allow them to not owe the state or federal taxes. Brady did not owe federal income taxes for two years and state taxes one year, citing the ups and downs of construction and other businesses he operates.
“I think we ought to end the Brady loophole,” Quinn charged.
A pre- Labor Day Tribune survey had Brady leading Quinn 37 percent to 32 percent. But in the last four weeks, Quinn’s abysmal job approval rating improved a little, and voters view him slightly more favorably than a month ago. And the governor is attracting more support from traditionally key sources of Democratic vote, particularly in Chicago and among African-American voters.
On the other hand, Brady’s numbers flipped and he is now liked and disliked by about the same percentage of voters, though more than a third say they still haven’t formed an opinion about the veteran state senator. Brady, who hails from a prominent Bloomington homebuilding family, continues to trounce Quinn downstate, though his lead in the collar counties has disappeared.
Democrats are coming home. A month ago, Quinn had only 56 percent of Dem voters. Now, it’s 71. He’s almost at 60 percent of Chicagoans, up from less than half of city voters a month ago.
Brady’s unfavorables have risen 10 points, from 19 to 29.
The poll found 39 percent of those surveyed think Brady would do a better job of restoring the state’s economy, compared to one-third who said Quinn would do the better job. […]
Quinn remains heavily out of favor with voters outside the Chicago area — a possible explanation for his recent spate of downstate visits to cut ribbons for public works projects. Almost half of downstate residents view the governor unfavorably, and Brady has the backing of 51 percent of the region’s voters compared to Quinn’s 27 percent.
Among independent voters, a group key to Republican chances for victory, Brady holds the advantage but has failed to distance himself significantly from Quinn. The poll found Brady favored by 37 percent of independent voters, compared to 33 percent a month ago. But Quinn also gained and is now backed by 29 percent of independents, up from 24 percent last month.
But the Trib says they’re basically tied in the collar counties. That’s hugely significant. Huge.
…Adding… I forgot to mention the other guys. Scott Lee Cohen is at 4 percent, Green Party nominee Rich Whitney is at 3 and Libertarian Lex Green is at 2.
…Adding more… The reason I say this looks like a trend is that we have now seen four polls released this week which put the race in single digits. Three of the four are public, one is private, except for subscribers. And three of those four polls have this as a one or two-point race.
(W)hen [Scott Lee Cohen is] included in polling, the Capitol Fax calculated that Democratic numbers improve.
Look at the polls that have included Cohen’s name going back a month, when the Tribune had this as a five-point race. Every major pollster who included Cohen had this contest in single digits. Every one. Rasmussen, PPP (until now) and the rest have simply been churning out completely wrong numbers. This race has been close for a while. And now it’s probably closer.
* Sen. Bill Brady’s latest TV ad is a blistering attack on Gov. Pat Quinn over the widely vilified AFSCME endorsement/no layoff story. Rate it…
The ad was recorded off the air this evening during “Wheel of Fortune.” Here’s the script…
Pat Quinn sold us out.
When union bosses endorsed Quinn, Quinn guaranteed them jobs until June of 2012.
Using 190 million of our tax dollars.
Newspapers called Quinn’s actions, “A return to the state’s pay to play politics,” “Horrible for the state,” “A conflict,” and “A sellout for Quinn’s benefit and not ours.”
Every time he sells us out, we learn that Pat Quinn’s only priority is Pat Quinn.
