The 'Governor-In-Law’

Long before the Feds cuffed Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the politician—known for his carefully cultivated black mane, and, more recently, for his foul mouth—had another vocal critic: his father-in-law.

It was Richard Mell, a powerful Chicago alderman, who introduced his daughter, Patti, to the young, ambitious lawyer at a fundraiser in the early '80s. Mell would orchestrate the young man's rise to the state legislature, the United States Congress and the governor's office.
When Mell boasted about being "the governor-in-law," as Dick Simpson, a former Chicago City Council member put it, Blagojevich would seethe.

But it remains conventional wisdom in Illinois that Blagojevich would never have become a big deal politician without Mell—a man who would later, after a rift with his son-in-law, publicly accuse the governor of trading state jobs for financial contributions.

"Mell wanted to be the power behind the throne," said Simpson, now the head of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Silver-haired and lanky, a backslapper with sharp elbows, Mell, 69, has always played for keeps. When Harold Washington became the city's first African-American mayor in 1983, and threatened to squash old machine pols like Mell, the fight became nasty. In an interview with NEWSWEEK before the 2008 November elections, Mell recalled the political street fighting of the '80s—and his own willingness to bare his knuckles.

"We were hearing this talk of 'It's our turn now,' and 'We're going to cut you off at the knees!" Mell said. "So we figured, if someone wants to cut your throat, you don't give them the knife to do it."

Mell eventually styled a workable relationship with Washington. But when Washington died in 1987, and a wild brawl broke out in City Hall in choosing his successor, it was Mell whose actions largely symbolized the chaos of the night. He leaped atop a table, his arms waving frantically. Angry protestors jeered as Mell and other white aldermen hand-picked a quiet, go-along black colleague, Eugene Sawyer, to serve as acting mayor—a man viewed by many African-Americans as a puppet to white machine powers. Tensions were so fierce that some aldermen donned bulletproof vests. Through most of the night, Mell smiled broadly.

"Mell is a wheeler-dealer who loves politics like a sport," says Simpson. "He's a king-maker."
He succeeded in making young Blagojevich a political king by enlisting his army of supporters and contributors. But tensions grew between the men, and flared into the public in 2005. Blagojevich shut down a landfill run by a distant cousin of the Mell family. To Mell, it was the last straw of an ungrateful, cocky young man who didn't realize who had made the path for him.