Golden by Jeff Coen Page B

Elvis, and this is a district that Elvis would do very well in,” Blagojevich told him, not mentioning that four years earlier he had voted for Clinton’s Republican opponent, President George H. W. Bush. “Working-class, middle-income kind of district. We really want to help you.”
    â€œWe’re all trying to figure out how to say your last name out here,” Clinton answered.

    With his primary victory in his rearview mirror, Blagojevich and his campaign staffers felt confident about their chances in the November general election.
    Blagojevich pounded away at several themes: Flanagan’s opposition to abortion rights and gun control and his signing of then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, which upset unions. Axelrod also brought on Pete Giangreco, another well-known media consultant who specialized in direct-mail pieces.
    â€œYou need to go see Mell,” Axelrod told him.
    Inside Mell’s ward office on the Northwest Side, Giangreco met Blagojevich for the first time and was taken by his drive for success. After joining the campaign, Giangreco discovered Blagojevich’s immense talent for retail campaigning. He’d have boundless energy visiting El stops for hours at a time or Polish delis on Milwaukee Avenue. At parades, Blagojevich’s skills as a runner paid off as he sprinted to both sides of the street, shaking nearly every hand. He fed off the crowd’s energy with his affable personality and vigor. “It was unbelievable,” Giangreco recalled later. “Some people just have this talent and some people have
it.
In front of crowds, when he turned it on, he had
it.”
    Privately, though, Blagojevich would reveal the toll
it
took on him. He would become shy and reserved. Amid a flurry of campaign events one day, Blagojevich paused and looked at those assembled around him. “I’m the guy who has to go out there and perform,” he said.
    Axelrod was also concerned about something other than Blagojevich’s opponent or his peculiarities. His old employer, the
Chicago Tribune,
was doing an exhaustive investigation into Mell and Blagojevich.
    Several of the newspaper’s best investigative reporters were pulling almost every piece of paperwork at city hall imaginable related to Mell, including timesheets and checks that Blagojevich received from the city while working for Mell’s ward organization between 1989 and 1993 when he left to become a legislator. One of the motivations for the increased scrutiny was the fact that in a few months Chicago was hosting the Democratic National Convention for the first time since 1968. All the eyes of the world would be on the city and its politics, and the newspaper’s highest editors wanted to give the city’s visitors in August a taste of the city’s sometimes infamous political scene.
    Blagojevich saw it as little more than a vendetta being waged by a newspaper that years earlier had become identified with the Republican Party through its editorial page. Still, he felt the pressure as reports got back to him about all the calls and inquiries the reporters were making about him and his father-in-law.
    â€œThey’re conducting a goddamned proctology exam on me,” Blagojevich ranted to one associate. “I know they aren’t looking this hard at Flanagan.”
    When he finally sat down for an interview with
Tribune
reporters Laurie Cohen and Robert Becker, Blagojevich was his sociable self. Meeting at Mell’s ward offices at 3649 N. Kedzie Avenue, Blagojevich didn’t come alone. Alongside him was John Kupper, an Axelrod associate, who wanted to know what the paper was
really
working on.
    â€œLet’s not conduct this under some facade of standard political reporting. Let’s be straight about this,” Kupper told the pair. “Our feeling was this was a request to follow a campaign to write a political story. There obviously was