E-mail a friendChris Cillizza
airdate December 15, 2008
Chris Cillizza writes "The Fix"—a daily political blog on The Washington Post's Web site. He's also a regular contributor to the Post on political issues. Cillizza was previously White House correspondent at Roll Call, covered governor's races and southern House races for the Cook Political Report and wrote a column on politics for Congress Daily. His freelance work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly and Slate. The Connecticut native is a graduate of Georgetown University.
Washington Post journalist discusses Democratic strategy to keep President-elect Obama's senate seat in the party's hands amid the Blagojevich scandal. (2:28)
Full interview. (8:55)
Chris Cillizza
Tavis: Chris Cillizza covers politics for "The Washington Post" and is the author of the paper's influential political blog, "The Fix." He joins us tonight from Washington. Chris, nice to have you back on the program, sir.
Chris Cillizza: Tavis, thanks for having me.
Tavis: Let me start with the - there are a number of topics I want to cover in the few minutes I have here. We will start with Illinois. You know anything I don't know about this Rob Blagojevich story? This guy will not go away - literally, he will not step down, the story isn't going away. What of it?
Well, it's really so complicated, Tavis, there are so many pieces to unpack. There's the Blagojevich piece of it, which is essentially that this guy has been caught, through a series of wiretaps, seeming to sell the Senate seat of Barack Obama. He gets the power to appoint it; he is caught seemingly trying to trade it for any number of things, ranging from a Cabinet appointment. He thinks he might name himself to the Senate.
So this is someone who clearly has no political future, but he does hold the unique power that he can stay in office as long as he likes, unless the state legislature decides to impeach him. Now, they've begun those proceedings today; they've formed a committee to look into it. My guess is you're going to see that move pretty quickly. Democrats especially want Rob Blagojevich out of office as soon as possible, but he is not making it easy for them.
Tavis: They want him out of office as soon as possible, Chris, because the Republicans are starting to ratchet up their own story around this and connecting it to Mr. Obama. We'll come back to that in a second. The Democrats want him out, but wait a minute, not so fast, because if they have a special election, which some in Illinois are calling for, a Republican - and that's why the GOP is ratcheting this story up - a Republican could sneak in and take this seat that once belonged to Barack Obama.
But if the governor, before he gets impeached or decides to leave, appoints someone to this position, it is likely that a Democrat will get that seat, and that's got to make Harry Reid, the majority leader, happy. So what do you do - do you impeach the guy, do you let him make the appointment, do you call for the special election and let the Republican slide in, perhaps? What do you do?
Cillizza: Well, Tavis, here's the scenario I'm 99.9 percent sure won't happen - Rob Blagojevich picks anyone to go to the Senate. I just don't see a way that state and national Democrats or state and national Republicans let that happen.
Tavis: So how do Democrats make sure they get a Democrat?
Cillizza: What they do, and this is what Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, wants, and he's had his 50 colleagues sign on to this, is they want to get Blagojevich out, whether through resignation or through impeachment. If that happened, Illinois state law would put the lieutenant governor, a guy named Pat Quinn, also a Democrat, into power.
Reid is saying we should let Pat Quinn, assuming he can become the governor, let him do the appointing, because we need a Senator on day one on January 5th. We can't wait for several months for a special election.
The problem with that, though, as you point out, Tavis, is that Republicans are saying the seat is so tainted, any appointment is necessarily going to be viewed skeptically by voters. We need to put this to a vote, and there's a lot of Democrats out there, namely Lisa Madigan, who yesterday on "Meet the Press" made mention of the fact that she believes there should be a special election, who are pushing in that direction.
So you've got national Democrats who want this appointment by Blagojevich's replacement, and then you've got almost everybody else, including a lot of influential editorial boards like "The Chicago Tribune" saying, "Well, wait a minute - let's have a special election, because we can wait three or four months to get this thing right."
Tavis: I should underscore that Lisa Madigan that Chris references is the attorney general in the state of Illinois, and that's the person he was talking about a moment ago.
Cillizza: And Tavis, just one other quick thing on her - she is influential for a number of reasons; two big ones. One, her father is Mike Madigan, the very, very powerful speaker of the state House; number two, she's now the leading candidate to be governor of that state. She's very likely to be the Democratic nominee in 2010; she was almost going to run against Blagojevich, whether or not he ran again for reelection. So her voice carries real weight.
Tavis: I guess the question is whether or not any of these machinations, any of these movements over the last 24 hours, play to any particular candidate's strength. We've been hearing the most, of course, about Jesse Jackson Jr., quite frankly on the defense about this, and some are saying now that he ought to just step out of the process because he is so on the defensive, even if he didn't do anything.
But do these movements over the last 24 hours move toward a particular candidate?
Cillizza: I don't think they do. Let's talk about Jesse Jackson Jr. first. His press conference last week to address the fact that he was Senate candidate number five in this criminal complaint dismissed the allegations that he had okayed an emissary to approach Blagojevich about some sort of pay-to-play scandal. The problem with it is the optics of it don't look good - the perception of it doesn't look good.
It's Jesse Jackson Jr. having to defend himself that no, in fact, I am not as tied to Rob Blagojevich as Rob Blagojevich says I am. - not necessarily a good thing when you're going to expect the state party and voters to want to have a clean break with the governor, whenever he decides to leave or is forced out.
I think a special election, it certainly favors Republicans, only in that they would have a chance at winning. Illinois is still a pretty Democratic state, still feeling very good about their home state senator being elected president, but it would give them a chance, a fighting chance as opposed to an appointment by a Democratic governor - they have no chance at that.
So people like a Mark Kirk, who's a member of Congress, a John Shimkus, who's a member of Congress, both Republicans, they're going to look at this on the Republican side because it would afford them a real chance to get to the Senate that they might not otherwise have.
Tavis: Quickly here, one of the things the GOP is doing is now trying to tie Obama as closely as they can to Blagojevich. Talk to me about that.
Cillizza: Tavis, I think this is not going to work all that well. Anyone who knows anything about Chicago politics knows that Rob Blagojevich has long been surrounded by this cloud of scandal, way back to 2002 and 2003. Barack Obama knew that well. He's an ambitious politician who knew that being tied too closely to Rob Blagojevich would not serve his chances.
These are not people who have ever been close, politically. I think it's a little bit of a stretch, and I think there's a risk for Republicans in doing this. People generally are behind Barack Obama and his transition so far, they're supportive of it. They want bipartisan solutions.
I think Republicans can look small, can look too partisan, and can really do damage to themselves as they start this new minority party status that they're going to have to fight for the next two years. I'm not sure they're doing themselves a favor because the ties between Obama and Blagojevich are so tenuous.
Tavis: From one Senate seat to another - so Barack Obama gives up his, of course to go to the White House; Hillary Clinton gives up hers to move to the State Department as secretary of State, if she is confirmed, which we expect, of course, that she will be. And so now the name at the top of the list is Caroline Kennedy - of course, daughter of John Kennedy; niece of Bobby Kennedy.
The reports today are that she is officially - she hasn't said anything and we'll come to that in a second, but the news reports are that she is officially going to get serious now about trying to fill the seat of Hillary Clinton, which is complicated in and of itself because the governor of New York, David Paterson, gets to make that appointment - here again another Democrat.
But Caroline Kennedy campaigned very aggressively for a guy named Barack Obama, and she now wants to, we are told, at least, take the seat of Hillary Clinton. Is this crazy, or what?
Cillizza: Well, Tavis, just real quickly, yes, she is going to actively seek this appointment. I talked to someone today who's familiar with her thinking who said, "Yes, this is something she has now decided to do." But you rightly point out two potential problems.
Number one, David Paterson makes this appointment. He can pick whoever he likes - it is really the judgment of one man. Now, Caroline Kennedy, given her last name, her family's legacy in American politics, will certainly be at the top of any list.
Tavis: And fund-raising prowess.
Cillizza: Absolutely, and name identification - she's a strong candidate in many ways. But remember, it's Paterson's decision. The other is the point you made about Hillary Clinton and her supporters - and some of them have voiced this publicly - are not happy about Caroline Kennedy endorsing Barack Obama during the primary.
They don't view her as a natural heir to Senator Clinton's seat - sort of like putting the enemy into that seat - and they've been public about it. New York politics is about as complicated and fascinating as it comes, so I'm not going to warrant a guess here. But I would say very likely, given Caroline Kennedy's name ID, her family name, her ability to raise money; she's in the mix right at the top, if not at the top.
The other name, though, to keep an eye on - New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, son of the former govern of New York, Mario Cuomo. And in a sign that all politics is related, formerly married to Caroline Kennedy's cousin Kerry Kennedy. (Laughter) So it's all one big family.
Tavis: Yeah. Two very important Senate seats, both connected to drama right about now. We will see how this plays out in the coming weeks - hopefully not months. Always pleased to be joined by Chris Cillizza, who covers politics for "The Washington Post," and of course author of "The Fix" on WashingtonPost.com - the blog, that is. Chris, nice to have you on. Thanks for your insights.
Cillizza: Tavis, thank you, as always.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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