 His career in shreds, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich clung defiantly to power Wednesday, ignoring a call to step down from President-elect Barack Obama and a warning that Senate Democrats will not let him appoint a new senator from the state. "Everyone is calling for his head," said Barbara Flynn Currie, a leader in the Illinois Senate and, like the governor, a Democrat.
| He'll resign on Friday afternoon. Ev'rybody knows you resign on Friday and put the bad news into the Saturday newspaper ... |
One day after Blagojevich's arrest, fellow Illinois politicians sought to avoid the taint of scandal-by-association.
| Blago's got the federal version of 'cooties'. No one knows him, no one is friends with him, no one ever had dinner with him, no one ever got anything from him, and no one owes him nuttin'. The man is a political leper ... |
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. said at a news conference in Washington that he was Senate Candidate 5 in the government's criminal complaint -- a man Blagojevich was secretly recorded as saying might be willing to pay money to gain appointment to Obama's vacant Senate seat. Jackson said he had been assured by prosecutors he was not a target of the investigation, and he emphatically said he had not engaged "whatsoever in any wrongdoing."
Other Democrats in Washington edged away from calls for a special election to fill Obama's place in the Senate, hoping that Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn would soon become governor and fill the vacancy on his own. That would assure the party of holding the seat, and on a far faster timetable than any balloting would allow.
| Probably will hold for them, too, since the Illinois Republican Party, the party that begat Dirksen, Thompson and Edgar, is now a joke and a running sore ... |
Ensconced in his downtown office, Blagojevich gave no sign he was contemplating resigning, and dispatched his spokeswoman, Kelley Quinn, to say it was "business as usual" in his 16th-floor suite, situated a few blocks from Obama's transition headquarters. "At the end of the day, the top priority for our office is to serve the people, and we have not lost sight of that, nor will we lose sight of that," Kelley Quinn said.
One day earlier, federal prosecutors released a thick document that included excerpts of wiretapped conversations in which the governor allegedly schemed to enrich himself by offering to sell Obama's Senate seat for campaign cash or a lucrative job inside or outside government. Blagojevich, whose 52nd birthday was Wednesday, is charged with conspiracy and solicitation to commit bribery, punishable by up to 20 years in prison and 10 years, respectively. |
