The Political Whore

If you’re former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich, you’re going to Disney World. Or at least that is where Blago and family were reported to be in Orlando when his indictment was announced in Chicago.

From the NYT:

Rod R. Blagojevich, this state’s ousted governor, was charged on Thursday with 16 felony counts, among them racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud and extortion conspiracy in a wide-ranging scheme to deprive residents of “honest government,” prosecutors said, including trying to leverage his authority to pick someone to fill President Obama’s former Senate seat.

Five of his closest advisers, including his brother, Robert, a top fundraiser, and two former chiefs of staff, were also charged in the 19-count indictment.

Prosecutors said Mr. Blagojevich used numerous elements of his state work – including appointing people to state boards, investing state money and signing legislation – as a way to seek money, campaign contributions and jobs for himself and others.

One of those indicted with Blago was his brother, Robert, a distinguished alum of the University of Tampa and a commencement speaker in recent years. Here’s my story on the Blago-Tampa connection from earlier this year.

Our favorite indicted, removed-from-office-on-Thursday governor, Illinois’ Rod Blagojevich, is a uniquely Chicago phenomenon. So why does so much of his back story take place in Tampa?

It turns out that Blago’s family, a friend’s campaign money, his publicist and even the former governor himself all — at some point — spent time in the Cigar City. (Blago did a stretch at the University of Tampa in the 1970s. But more about that later.)

Robert Blagojevich, left, at the UT 2008 commencement. (University of Tampa)

The most recent Tampa-factoid in the Blago saga emerged in the past two weeks, as the Illinois Senate prepped for his impeachment trial and new tapes came out detailing various cell phone conversations by the governor and his associates. Blagojevich had quite a cast of characters surrounding him, including one named Betty Loren Maltese, who was once the mayor of Cicero, Ill., and is now in prison. ABC 7 in Chicago reported:

For more than two years, Maltese’ bulging campaign fund had invested millions of dollars through a company headquartered in Tampa, Florida, the firm Invest Financial Corporation. Its CEO at the time was Robert Blagojevich, the governor’s older brother.

Read the rest of this entry »

The change in UT policy was announced to the campus in an e-mail Wednesday: the downtown Tampa university has done what Hillsborough County government couldn’t do in offering domestic partners of homosexual employees insurance and other benefits.

The campus newspaper, The Minaret, reports:

A week after Hillsborough County commissioners shot down a similar idea and two months after Florida voters rejected gay marriage, the University of Tampa agreed Wednesday to begin offering domestic partner benefits for homosexual couples.

Beginning April 1, UT will allow same-sex domestic partners to secure health insurance and other employee benefits. The offer does not apply to heterosexual domestic partnerships because those couples are allowed to marry under state law.

“It’s about time,” said Matt Gould, president of the Gay Lesbian Transgender Straight Bisexual Alliance, a UT student group. “I think it’s great that UT is implementing [benefits], but I think it’s wrong that the entire county won’t.”

Read the rest of this entry »

John McCain is down the street from our West Tampa news factory, at the University of Tampa. But as William March of the Tampa Tribune points out in his blog, it is damned unusual to see the candidate have a no-press, no-public event so close to the election:

One thing some of them can’t figure out is why, just six days before the election, McCain is holding an event in Tampa that’s closed to most of the media and the public.

“I don’t know. I’ve been asking the same question,” said Pinellas County Republican Party Chairman Tony DiMatteo.

Hillsborough County Commissioner Mark Sharpe, McCain’s county co-chairman, emphasized that national security concerns could affect voter decisions.

“It’s a very important issue at a time when people are beginning to focus” on the election, he said.

As to why McCain would hold a closed event, he said, “McCain doesn’t always do things that appear on their face to be purely political—he just does what seems right.”