Hope started to dissolve long before governor's fall

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — In his first inaugural address, before a crowd of thousands, Gov. Rod Blagojevich railed against a "system of corruption that has become too commonplace, too accepted and too entrenched."

"You voted for change," said Blagojevich, the state's first Democratic governor in 26 years. "I intend to deliver it."

If what federal prosecutors alleged Tuesday is true, the 40th governor of Illinois failed his promise spectacularly.

Less than six years after becoming governor, Blagojevich stands accused of trying to benefit financially from his power to appoint the U.S. Senate replacement for President-elect Obama.

Less than 24 hours before his arrest Tuesday, Blagojevich said the Chicago Tribune's report that federal agents had secretly recorded him in recent times indicated that the rest of his "past has been pretty good."

That view is far from unanimous. Even before Blagojevich's arrest, his populist agenda and erratic governing style won him few fans.

"Blagojevich has been the most incompetent governor that we've had in the last 50 years," said Charles Wheeler III, a longtime chronicler of state government who is now a journalism professor at the University of Illinois, Springfield. "He's a guy who was more interested in the razzmatazz and the press pop than in doing the nitty-gritty detail work."

No one could have predicted then that Blagojevich would crash so hard.

Dreams of Camelot

Blagojevich's first election gave hope to Illinois residents that change was in the air. A youngish-looking jogger whose fans dreamed of a Camelot in Springfield and someday a spot on the national Democratic ticket, Blagojevich polished the image of a man on the way up.

He had the résumé: former state lawmaker, former congressman and, for good measure, a former Cook County prosecutor. He had the look: One political operator talked of how Blagojevich liked the camera and the camera liked him. And he had the right mix of political connections.

Blagojevich's father-in-law is Alderman Richard Mell, who leads one of the city's most powerful ward organizations. The new governor came with a photogenic family that included Patricia Blagojevich, a professional woman with her own real-estate firm, plus a daughter with made-for-TV cuteness and another daughter on the way.

The timing of Blagojevich's election looked good for all Illinois Democrats. For the first time in a decade, Democrats took control of the Illinois Senate. Democrats retained the House. And Blagojevich led a Democratic sweep of all but one statewide office.

Flush with success, Blagojevich took a rambling victory lap through rural Illinois communities, launching a three-day bus tour in Streator by taking a helicopter into the town, where local folks said a governor hadn't visited in 60 years. Inside a family restaurant in Monmouth, Blagojevich bumped into a man wearing a cowboy hat and singing a catchy ballad he wrote about the new governor.

"These kinds of trips are good for me," he told a crowd at a union hall in Hennepin. "They energize me. They motivate me to stay close to you — the people — so that I never lose sight of why I am the governor."

To supporters, Blagojevich made good on that commitment when he beefed up early-childhood education. He pushed the Legislature to give senior citizens free rides on Chicago-area buses and trains, part of a deal to avert a mass-transit crisis that also carried a Chicago-area sales-tax increase. It was the only significant crack in the governor's vow to hold the line on sales and income taxes.

Legendary battles

But Blagojevich's fights with the Legislature were the stuff of legend. He counted state Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, a candidate for Obama's U.S. Senate seat, as an ally, but the governor always appeared ready to pick a fight with House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago. The split cost Blagojevich a number of proposals.

Since at least 2005, U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has dug into Blagojevich's administration, looking into allegations of hiring abuses, influence-peddling and pay-to-play schemes in which contracts were given to his biggest political donors.

This year's federal trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the convicted former Blagojevich fundraiser, provided alarming testimony from numerous insiders who said the governor freely spoke of rewarding contributors with state jobs and business. Christopher Kelly, the governor's former chief fundraiser, was indicted last December on tax-fraud counts tied to gambling trips to Las Vegas. And the Tribune a week before Kelly's indictment had reported that Patricia Blagojevich's real-estate deals were under federal scrutiny as part of the pay-to-play investigation.

The scandal prompted the House to approve legislation aimed at allowing citizens to recall statewide officials, but it failed in Jones' Senate.

In April, a Chicago Tribune investigation outlined an exclusive club of Blagojevich donors who contributed exactly $25,000 to his campaign, and most of the 235 givers got something from state government, ranging from favorable regulatory and policy moves to appointments and contracts. The next month, lawmakers approved sweeping legislation to prevent major donors from bidding on state contracts controlled by the statewide officeholder who doled out the business.

Blagojevich fought it relentlessly and then used his veto power to rewrite the bill. When it looked like Jones might block an override vote, Obama called the Senate president and asked him to let the vote take place. Jones relented, and lawmakers overrode the governor's veto.