One of the interesting bits about Sam Adam approaching Davis and Burris about the Senate seat is that it wasn’t done by someone from the Governor’s office. Several theories abound about why he might do that with mine being that any discussion with a personal lawyer is more protected from being taped while others see it as a move to affect the jury pool and the entire appointment was part of Genson and Adam’s strategy.
My primary problem with the latter is that I don’t think Rod believes he’s going to be convicted so he’s playing to the public–largely because he doesn’t fully understand that the public hates him.
Now, the scuttlebutt I’m getting is interesting in how it might fit in—note this is scuttlebutt and only things I’m putting together from a variety of people. I’ll start with the caveat that this is scuttlebutt and the amount of good information coming out of the Governor’s office is about zero as far as I can tell.
It’s unclear that Rod is talking to anyone in government—other than his spokesperson, Lucio. Reports are that he hadn’t talked to Quinlan (counsel who just quit upon the announcement of Burris) since the arrest. Rumors are that when Harris went to the senior staff meeting after the arrest, he was told to leave by the deputy chiefs.
As I said, don’t take any individual story as truth and perhaps all three of the above are off. However, consistent with what I’m hearing in general and those stories above appears to be that Rod isn’t talking to anyone in his own office other than his spokesperson and may well be more isolated than it was even thought.
He has lost Harris. Several of his next layer of authority appear to be hanging on to simply continue running the government and see the writing on the wall. A man who was never interested in governing is now fighting to keep the job while not actually doing it other than a few press release and visual appearances at the office to pretend to be working.
It may well be that Blagojevich’s inner circle consists of his lawyers, his wife, and his spokesperson. I’ve long heard that his staff is able to keep him from doing too stupid of things by just changing the subject and he forgets what the hell he was trying to do and moves on to the new shiny object. Right now, there’s no one to do that and we saw the effect on Tuesday.
From everything I have heard, Larry, you are dead on.
Even if the Governor tried to do something crazy on the state side at this point (more than signing an appointment document), it is unclear whether there would be anyone on his staff present or willing to act on it.
Those I know on his staff that are left are simply sticking around to make sure the state doesn’t collapse from the lack of an executive.
Ironically enough, his staff could very well be our first line of defense at this point.