In wine country some years begin with routine weather conditions that suggest an ordinary crop. Then late in the season a perfect confluence of sunshine and rain brings a special magic to the vineyards. So too may things change on the political landscape.
No one noticed when the former tree trimmer switched from couture by J.C. Penney to wearing $3,000 cashmere suits, started driving a big Beamer, and blimped up to 300 pounds–signs he wasn’t merely making wise investments with the spare change from his aldermanic salary. In the classic aldermanic mode, Huels was getting “honest graft” through his security firm, SDI Security Inc., as Sun-Times sleuths Chuck Neubauer and Charles Nicodemus have revealed:
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Huels isn’t the only crony prospering from the, security business. Mayor-for-life Daley’s now ex-chief bodyguard, Michael Marano, also has such a business–run by his wife out of their living room. This fledgling firm somehow won many city contracts. The good mayor was also shocked to learn of this–so shocked he issued an executive order to his staff, including security people, forbidding them to take outside jobs and banning their spouses from doing business w ith the city. Plus, no city employees or their spouses can accept $1.25 million loans from Michael Tadin–or any other loan from a city contractor.
Marano took a $40,000 pay cut and had to suffer the ignominy of returning to life as a patrol officer to keep his wife’s security company.
Alderman Ed Burke began bidding for his Janey Award back in January, when former 31st Ward alderman Joseph Martinez pleaded guilty to ghosting on three City Council committees, including Burke’s finance committee. Martinez was working full-time for Burke’s law firm at the time. Then the Sun-Times started a page-one series investigating possible conflicts of interest in Burke’s City Council votes. After reporters questioned him, Burke tried rewriting history by blithely going back to the council journal and changing four votes that he’d made favoring his private clients to abstentions. When the Sun-Times reported that too, he said he was just correcting errors in the journal made by Alderman Thomas Cullerton, who’d died months before one of the votes was cast. Now that’s a pesky ghost.
GUBERNATUS INTERRUPTUS
Republican flipping and flopping began with Al “Two Gun” Salvi, the defeated Senate candidate who discovered that his pistolmania was too extreme for Illinois. He announced that he’s against assault weapons for ordinary folk and supports limited gun control–at least as long as he’s running for secretary of state.
