Illinois Corruption Implications

The arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris on corruption charges this morning should serve to wipe out the perception of an ethics advantage Democrats have enjoyed since their successful 2006 congressional campaign against the "Republican culture of corruption." And though it should hurt his party, so far the scandal has only served to improve Barack Obama's personal stature on ethics.

In the run up to the 2006 election Republicans were at the center of a flurry of embarrassing corruption incidents. Scooter Libby, Tom Delay, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Larry Craig and Mark Foley headlined an all-star rogue's gallery that, combined with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's constitutional transgressions, badly tarnished the GOP's reputation that year. In conjunction with public disillusionment with the Iraq War, the result was the Democrats gaining the majority in both houses of congress for the first time in 12 years.

The Blagojevich scandal has broken right after the December 6 defeat of Democratic Louisiana congressman William Jefferson, who had been indicted for bribery in 2007 after a raid on his Capitol Hill office in 2006 found a wad of $90,000 in campaign cash.

As the soon-to-be party in power, the Democrats will be the ones primarily having to play defense on ethics, and expect the Republicans to quickly seize the initiative on the issue, particularly since Blagojevich hails from the same state as President-elect Barack Obama.

Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of Libby trial fame today announced the specific charges as mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bribery in trying to sell his appointment to the Senate seat being vacated by Barack Obama to the highest bidder. The fraud charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years and the bribery charge 10. A Reuters report picked up by Yahoo News spells out the details. You can read it here.

So far, Barack Obama has come out of the incident on the moral high ground. Top former Republican strategist Ed Rollins comments on NPR that Obama receives high marks for refusing to deal. In the taped sessions Blagojevich rails against Obama for offering only "appreciation" should the governor appoint Obama's preferred choice, reputed to be Valerie Jarrett. See the NPR story here.

In fact, Obama may have indirectly spurred the urgency of Blagojevich's bribery efforts by acting to tighten up Illinois' ethics laws. A week before his first debate with John McCain and when he was under Republican attack for his associations, Obama called Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones and asked him to pass a law he had long backed, "banning the so-called pay-for-play system of influence peddling in Illinois." Jones, a Chicago Democratic power and Obama mentor, changed his position on the bill and got it passed 55-0. Blagojevich, who had also opposed it, could do nothing to stop it since his veto would have been overridden. Instead, as the charges read, he became frantic to extort what benefits he could for the appointment before the new law goes into effect on January 1. To see the New York Times story on this click here.