An Axelrod to Grind

Amidst a boisterous exchange between Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod and McCain campaign manager Rick Davis on Fox News Sunday, Davis referred to an Op-Ed that Axelrod wrote in the Tribune in 2005 arguing in favor of patronage.

DAVIS: You even wrote an op-ed saying that you thought that the patronage politics of Chicago was a better model for Washington than the law and order model that we currently –

AXELROD: That is – I never – that is as untrue as everything else that you’ve said here. That is not what I said, Rick.

Is it?

The Op-Ed is no longer available online, but I have retrieved it from a newspaper database in order to take a look. The abstract:

A WELL-OILED MACHINE: A system that works? Political debts contribute to better city services. By David Axelrod, a Democratic political consultant whose clients include Mayor Richard Daley.

Fraudulent acts such as test-rigging are one thing. But if hiring of a qualified worker who comes recommended by a politician is treated as evidence of a criminal act, then [U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald]’s approach will ensure that only applicants without political involvement are considered.

Axelrod wrote the Op-Ed in question just a month after Mayor Richard M. Daley’s patronage chief “was accused of systematically circumventing a decades-long federal ban on most political hiring by secretly directing top city managers to hire ‘preselected’ applicants favored by politicians and union officials,” as the Tribune reported.

“Mayor Richard Daley’s administration illegally doled out city jobs to reward campaign workers for the mayor and other politicians in a ‘massive fraud’ that spanned City Hall for more than a decade, federal prosecutors alleged Monday.”

A year later, Robert Sorich and three others were convicted. “I think what we saw in this case was the revealing of the Chicago machine, the inner workings of the Chicago machine,” said S. Jay Olshansky, the jury foreman. “There clearly is one. It has been in existence for quite some time.”

Judge David Coar later sentenced Sorich to 46 months in prison, saying “This offense is corruption with a capital ‘C’. There is nothing good about what you did. Frankly, I don’t give a hoot if this had been going on for the last 200 years – it stinks.”

Here’s Axelrod’s Op-Ed, followed by Obama’s response.

Daley’s Law

“Mayor Richard Daley’s administration still isn’t following basic rules designed to keep city hiring free of politics, a court-appointed official said,” the Tribune reported last week.

“A year after submitting a blueprint to clean up its scandal-plagued hiring system, the city has ‘failed to comply’ with parts of its own plan, city hiring monitor Noelle Brennan said in a report filed in federal court.”

Come hear how the mayor does it when he speaks at the Compliance and Ethics Institute.

Jerry Tonight

WTTW may have to bring Jerry Springer in soon to moderate Chicago Tonight if this keeps up.

On Thursday night, things got a bit heated when Todd Stroger pushed back against Eddie Arruza, telling him he liked coming on the show but wasn’t going to defend everyone one of his Shakman-exempt patronage hires. (Why not? We’re paying their salaries.) Stroger also questioned the premises of Arruza’s questions – because, you know, no allegation every made against the county is true and you can’t believe everything you read and so on and so forth.

Stroger also said that public defender Ed Burnette’s charges against him were “an outright lie” (for what it’s worth, the Sun-Times editorial page backed Burnette today); that criticisms from commissioners Forrest Claypool and Mike Quigley are not true because “they don’t know . . . this is all politics . . . obviously the people who are saying these things don’t understand”; and that he has made “every change” requested by federal monitor Julia Nowicki.

Stroger might have thought he looked tough, but he really looked like a man-child with no potential for growth.

Arruza responded to one outburst by asking when Stroger would finally hire an HR director. Stroger wasn’t sure because that’s been outsourced to an executive search firm.

Another gem was Stroger’s contention that the threatened secession of Palatine was “not a political question.” Should we file it under Entertainment?

Stroger’s appearance came one night after he was invited to appear with Claypool and Quigley and somehow the phone messages from WTTW to Stroger’s office got, um, lost.

Stroger’s performance was one of several recent dramatic episodes. For example, Stroger spokesman Gene Mullins had a set-to last month with commissioner Larry Suffredin in which Suffredin at one point said “You make up numbers!”

And last Thursday, former state Sen. Carol Ronen squared off against Rep. John Fritchey over Governor Blagojevich, with CLTV’s Carlos Hernandez Gomez providing color commentary.

Give it a look, and tell me if you don’t feel the urge to yell “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”

Job Fair

It’s not just who you know, but who you campaign for.

* “More than 90 Chicago Police employees – including a recently promoted district commander – have received payouts from a $12 million fund created to compensate victims of City Hall’s rigged hiring system,” the Sun-Times reports.

The Chicago Police Department: To protect and serve your mayor.

* “A real estate agent Cook County Board President Todd Stroger hired for a high-level Health Department job apparently created just for him in January has been demoted and had his salary cut after the Tribune questioned his qualifications,” the Tribune reports.

“Donald Burleson, a South Side Realtor who worked at Stroger’s health club, is one of at least three people county officials hired before they had the legal authority to do so.”

It’s not who you know, it’s where you work out.

* “Cook County Public Defender Edwin Burnette on Tuesday tried to delay County Board President Todd Stroger’s attempt to fire him until his pending lawsuit over control of the office is resolved.”

It’s not who you defend, it’s who you sue.

The Tree Trimmer

When federal monitor Noelle Brennan announced recently that she had finished divvying up the $12 million set aside for victims of City Hall’s hiring fraud, one unknown person stood atop the list as the lone winner of $100,000. His identity, however, was not revealed.

Now the mystery has been solved: The biggest victim of the Daley Administration’s hiring shenanigans is Richard Gramarossa, described today by the Tribune as “a 27-year employee [who] was passed over 13 times for promotions in favor of less experienced, politically connected co-workers. When he complained, he was punished with bad assignments, such as picking bugs out of infested trees in the bitter cold.”

The Trib has the full list of names and awards here.

Daley’s Boswell

“The city’s new hiring regulator held his first ethics training session for Mayor Richard Daley’s cabinet Thursday, the same day a federal court ordered the mayor’s former patronage chief to prison for running an illegal hiring scheme out of City Hall,” the Tribune reports.

That would be one Anthony Boswell. He’s off to a good start.

“I’m not quite aware of all the details of the trial,” Boswell said as he deflected questions about the massive fraud that led the mayor to hire him.

For all Boswell knows, there was no trial!

“We’re here to change the culture,” he added.

Even though he acknowledged he has no idea what the culture is. The mayor then rewarded him with a bone and a hot meal.

Sorich Verdict Upheld

This just in from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals:

“Despite the existence of a federal consent decree and other measures that for decades have sought to bring more transparency and legitimacy to the City of Chicago’s civil service hiring, patronage appointments have continued to flourish. These defendants were key players in a corrupt and far-reaching scheme, based out of the mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, that doled out thousands of city civil service jobs based on political patronage and nepotism.The government alleged that the defendants concealed what they were doing by falsely assuring city lawyers that their hires were legitimate, and then shredding evidence and hiding their involvement once a criminal investigation began.

“After an eight-week jury trial, three of the defendants were convicted of mail fraud and the fourth of making materially false statements to federal investigators. The centerpiece of their appeal is a challenge to the government’s theory of prosecution: they contend that their behavior, while dubious, is not criminal, and that the honest services mail fraud statute is unconstitutionally vague.

“We conclude that the defendants’ actions do constitute mail fraud, and that the statute is not unconstitutionally vague as applied to the facts of this case.

“The defendants also argue that they did not deprive the city or the people of Chicago of any money or property, but the jobs that they wrongfully gave away were indeed a kind of property, so we reject this argument. Individual defendants also challenge the sufficiency of the indictment, the connection to the mails, and the sufficiency of the evidence against them, while one defendant argues that he was entitled to a sentencing adjustment for playing a minor role. Finding none of these arguments persuasive, we affirm on all counts.”

*

The best part of the decision comes next:

“The beating heart of this fraudulent scheme was the mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs (IGA). Formally, the office serves as a liaison between the City of Chicago and state and federal governments and has no role in hiring for the city’s 37,000 or so civil service jobs. Informally, the office coordinated a sizeable portion of the city’s civil service hiring, ferreting out jobs to footsoldiers in the mayor’s campaign organization and to other cronies.”

And the mayor marched on.

Blog Fog

I don’t want to give anyone any ideas, but the former assistant commissioner of the city’s aviation department has filed a defamation lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court based on comments posted on the Chicago Reader’s Clout City blog.

And the target of the suit isn’t just the Reader – or primarly the Reader, really – but local political thorn Frank Coconate, a critic of the Daley administration who recently won $75,000 from Shakman monitor Noelle Brennan.

James Sachay alleges in court papers that Coconate posted blog comments under Sachay’s name, including one that said: “I am voting for Frank Coconate. I am sorry I challenged his petitions under false pretenses. I am sorry I stole money from Roman Pucinski. I am sorry I got illegal contracts for my son and acted criminally at O’Hare.”

At the time, Coconate was running against Ralph Capparelli for 41st Ward committeeman; Sachay worked for Capparelli. (Both lost to caterer Mary O’Connor, president of the Edison Park Chamber of Commerce)

In his lawsuit, Sachay denies the post was his; so does Coconate, who told me this morning that he uses his real name on “99.9 percent of my posts.”

Coconate also has his own site where he is currently portraying Sachay and Capparelli as crybabies.

The suit asks for $200,000 from both Coconate and the Reader.

Your Machine At Work

Let’s catch up with the myriad ways your elected officials are serving you.

* “Ethics Held Hostage, Day 351,” in which the Tribune editorial page wonders if the Illinois Senate is the place where government for the people goes to die.

* “Monitor Tells Of Patronage Claims,” wherein we learn that Todd Stroger claims patronage does not exist in Cook County government.

* “District Signs Off On Museum In Park,” which describes how the Park District is a co-applicant – rather than a guardian – in the Children’s Museum’s proposed move to Grant Park.

In other words, you, dear citizen, are incidental to the workings of the Machine.

Must-See Political TV

She’s the bane of old-school alderman who say she “doesn’t have a clue” and the mayor calls her most recent actions “silly.” Is she an idiot, or is she fearlessly taking on the Machine? Find out tonight when federal hiring monitor Noelle Brennan is interviewed by Carol Marin on Chicago Tonight, 7 p.m., WTTW.

And after Brennan, a look at the top ten most endangered places in the state according to Landmark Illinois.

Chicago Tonight: They’re in my head!