Ill. Gov, an Ex-Prosecutor, Sparred with Onetime Boss and Many Others

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, arrested last week based on allegations he tried to sell Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, has had several high-profile spats with public officials over the years. But former employees said they also were the object of his anger in lesser-known disagreements.

One of the public figures he opposed is Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, formerly the state’s attorney for Cook County, the New York Times reports. Blagojevich worked as an assistant prosecutor under Daley after graduating from Pepperdine University law school in 1983.

After Blagojevich married the daughter of a powerful alderman and rose to political office, he had a falling out with both Daley and his father-in-law, the Times story says. Blagojevich started his political career in the state legislature, going on to win election to the governor’s office in 2002 and winning re-election in 2006, according to ABC 7 News. Once in the governor’s office, Blagojevich disagreed with Daley over a casino for Chicago and with his father-in-law over a landfill. Blagojevich said the landfill, run by a relative of the alderman’s, wasn’t properly licensed; the alderman said Blagojevich’s decision to shut the facility was a personal vendetta.

It wasn’t his only disagreement. He often differed with members of the General Assembly, and former employees say they had received angry reprimands from the governor, the Times story says.

“Blagojevich, 52, rarely turns up for work at his official state office in Chicago, former employees say, is unapologetically late to almost everything, and can treat employees with disdain, cursing and erupting in fury for failings as mundane as neglecting to have at hand at all times his preferred black Paul Mitchell hairbrush,” according to the story.

One state representative, John Fritchey, told the Times he had considered Blagojevich to be callous. But as Blagojevich's "legal bills mounted after years of federal investigation, he appeared to have evolved from what Mr. Fritchey considered callous into something closer to panicked or delusional," the story says.