The Man Without A Friend

1:09 pm, 3/11/07

The Man Without A Friend
It seems that Rod Blagojevich keeps losing track of his associates, as the Chicago Tribune's John Kass observes:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich sure got edgy about Mahajan when Tribune reporter John Chase asked him about their relationship Thursday.

Blagojevich said he knew Mahajan but then tried to change the subject to baseball.

"What do you think of the Cubs?" the governor said.

"I don't have any thoughts about the Cubs," Chase said. "I'm a Sox fan. Could you please answer the question?"

Mahajan isn't a household name, unless you live in the Daley or Blagojevich households, or the home of federally indicted Blagojevich fundraiser Tony Rezko, who received millions of dollars in loans from Mahajan's Mutual Bank in Harvey for real estate deals.

You've got to wonder if the lunch buddies still discuss politics and business with Mahajan, or whether they're painfully silent and awkward around him these days, as they avoid speaking directly into his tiepin.

Based on my experience on how friendships unravel, I figure their current conversations are limited strictly to sports, the weather and "hey, pass the steak sauce."

Mahajan must be doubly lonely now that Blagojevich dumped him. They were close until quite recently, a span of time as thin as a federal subpoena.

In October, the Tribune reported that the governor's wife, Patti, received $113,700 in real estate commissions through Amrish and Anita Mahajan. Interestingly enough, wife Anita Mahajan denied the relationship.

"I didn't hire her," she said then about Patti. "I didn't even know who she was until closing. That's when I heard she was the governor's wife. I try not to get involved in politics."

She must not have tried too hard. She owns a drug testing company with no-bid state contracts, and she was arrested and charged this week with bilking state taxpayers out of $2.1 million for tests the company allegedly never performed.

One of Mahajan's oldest supporters in politics is Daley, who in one of his first acts as mayor in 1989 appointed Mahajan to the Chicago Plan Commission, which makes decisions on real estate and development. Daley and his brother Cook County Commissioner John Daley appreciate Mahajan's political connections with Indian-American groups along Devon Avenue.

John Daley even authored a resolution proclaiming Mahajan to be a very nice man. Blagojevich thought he was a nice man, too, once, though he became angry when Patti's real estate deals were questioned.

"To suggest that she doesn't have the right to have her own business, and pursue her own business, is Neanderthal and sexist," he declared during his campaign to reform Illinois last year.

Another interesting note is the investigation itself. The fraud charges against Anita Mahajan are not federal charges. They're state charges, filed by the Cook County state's attorney's office.

In January, five days before search warrants were served allowing county investigators to seize the Mahajan drug testing company files, Mayor Daley had the amazing foresight to quietly return Mahajan's $5,000 contribution.

In unrelated news, the Governor's appointees and aids apparently run their offices in a manner similar to Nero and Caligula, what with the $74,000-a-year "chauffeurs" serving as pool boys to female employers, and guys in turbans with vague job descriptions running about imposing themselves on unsuspecting coworkers.