If Blagojevich ultimately goes to prison, he will become the fourth out of the last eight governors to wear stripes, joining predecessors George Ryan (racketeering, conspiracy, obstruction), Dan Walker (bank fraud), and Otto Kerner (straight-up bribery).
[From Which state is the most corrupt—Illinois or Louisiana? - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine ]
It's a "fact" making the rounds these days - and as stated it may be true enough - but Dan Walker doesn't really belong on the list. Although he served for a while on Adlai Stevenson's staff, Walker was not a career politician - and most emphatically not a machine politician.
Walker was corporate attorney for Montgomery Ward when he was named by Richard J. (Da Mare) Daley to head the Chicago Study Team set up in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention riot, in part because he was widely known to be one of the few Democrats in the city not in Da Mare's pocket. On the strength of public acclaim for the study team's report, Walker conducted an outsider campaign for the Democratic nomination and went on to win the Governor's mansion in 1972.
(One of my friends in Chicago wrote the police section of the study team's report and on the basis of that association I wound up working on the outer fringes of Walker's campaign. Others more central to Walker's election had names that have become familiar again today - Axelrod and Pritzger among them.)
With no big fan base in either party, Walker proved an ineffective governor. But not a crook - or at least not one that was caught. Walker's legal troubles came later - after leaving office and becoming involved in a Chicago-suburban Savings and Loan, Walker was convicted of "banking improprieties."
Imagine that.
(For more info, Wikipedia's entry on Walker is here.)
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