RICK PEARSON, Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO -- Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday dismissed the notion -- raised at the trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- that a major Blagojevich fundraiser wanted to prevail on Bush to seek a pardon from his presidential brother.
Blagojevich's former chief of staff Alonzo "Lon" Monk, a prosecution witness, was caught on a secret recording saying the late fundraiser Chris Kelly was contemplating seeking a pardon with the help of former Cleveland Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar, who played college football at Miami.
Monk said Kelly thought he could use Kosar to go to Jeb Bush, a two-term Republican who was then Florida governor, and seek a pardon from outgoing President George W. Bush in 2008.
Even Blagojevich thought such a plan was far-fetched, Monk told jurors.
Kelly was indicted in 2007 on a tax case, and was under investigation that fall along with the then-governor. Kelly committed suicide last year.
"It would be humorous if it wasn't so tragic," Jeb Bush told reporters after appearing at a fundraising event for Illinois Republican governor candidate Bill Brady. "No, Bernie Kosar didn't call me and I don't know who the guy (Kelly) was."
Asked about having his name brought up in the former Democratic governor's corruption trial, Bush responded, "My first impression was, only in Chicago."
Brady, a state senator from Bloomington, also dismissed as Blagojevich-like criticism from his Democratic rival, Gov. Pat Quinn, that an appearance with a member of the Bush family was a sign that Brady would return to the fiscal policies of President George W. Bush.
"It seems to me that this current governor's hallucinating the same way that the governor on trial is," Brady said at the Chicago Club.
"He's talking about raising tax rates on a recessionary economy that's losing jobs faster than almost every state in the nation. He's talking about borrowing on the backs of human service providers, educational institutions, colleges, cities and county government. He's ignored dealing with the budget while he's gallivanted around the state when we're in a fiscal crisis," Brady said.
"He's a professional naysayer, we know that," Quinn said of Brady. "All he does is preach doom and gloom, that's not going to get Illinois out of the economic turmoil that George Bush created. You know, Sen. Brady was a George Bush delegate, he was a cheerleader for George Bush, George W. Bush, and all these policies that ran the American economy into the ditch."
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