posted at 9:35 am on October 3, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
The FBI conducted a raid on the offices
of Larry Walsh, Will County executive and former Illinois state
senator, as part of a probe into corruption tied to earmarks and
lobbyists. The raid comes after the FBI met with the county auditor
to investigate his complaints about one of his aides taking money from
lobbyists for favorable treatment. Walsh endorsed Barack Obama this
year, and Obama supported Walsh in his current position:
The
FBI on Wednesday raided the county offices of a former Illinois state
senator who is a poker-playing buddy of Democratic presidential
candidate Sen. Barack Obama.
According to Chicago authorities,
the FBI visited the offices in Joliet, Ill., of Will County executive
Larry Walsh, a longtime friend of Mr. Obama’s, and his chief of staff
Matt Ryan.
Mr. Walsh, who served in the Illinois Senate from
1997 to 2005, was endorsed by Mr. Obama in his county executive
election bid. With the support of some of Mr. Obama’s U.S. Senate
volunteers, he easily defeated incumbent Republican Joseph Mikan.
Will
County auditor Steve Weber confirmed that his office had been asked by
the FBI to assist in an investigation, but he did not elaborate on the
specifics.
No one will be terribly surprised to
find corruption in Illinois politics, and this looks like
garden-variety backscratching, at least for the moment. Weber suspects
that Walsh and/or Ryan have been getting kickbacks from the lobbying
firms hired by Will County to pursue federal earmarks. If true, it
demonstrates the corrupting influence of Congressional pork all the way
through every level of government. When millions of dollars can be
had, people will throw thousands at the people who can get it for
them. It’s an entire industry in and of itself, and that’s not good
for truly representative government. It’s also terribly inefficient;
instead of wasting all that money in getting taxes to Washington and
then sending it back to local communities, it would be much cheaper for
everyone if the money just stayed local in the first place.
So
far, this particular bit of corruption doesn’t appear to have any
direct connection to Barack Obama, but that’s not really the point.
Obama endorsed Walsh and played poker with him on a regular basis. In
the 2004 election, faced off against Alan Keyes in a walkover, Obama
sent his campaign volunteers to work for Walsh’s election. It makes a
farce out of Obama’s claims to be a reformer. He didn’t do anything in
Illinois to reform politics, a place that needs much more
reform than Washington. Instead, he played poker with people who later
appear to have committed the kind of cronyism and backscratching he now
criticizes — and worse yet, helped them win elections.
I doubt
this has anything to do with Tony Rezko and his apparent decision to
start cooperating with authorities, as this raid appears to have come
from the county auditor’s work. However, it fits well with the overall
impression of politics in Illinois and the lack of any reform effort by
those who succeeded in winning elections there.