Blagojevich expected to appoint Obama replacement

Roland Burris, Illinois’ Former Attorney General

As the Illinois House of Representative moved to impeach Governor Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges before he appoints a replacement to Obama senator’s seat, Gov. Rod Blagojevich has planned a press conference today in Chicago and is reportedly planning to make an in-your-face move by naming a replacement despite the impeachment proceedings.

Blagojevich’s press conference is schedule for 2 p.m. CST Tuesday. Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero is declining to say what the governor plans to discuss.

An unconfirmed http://www.ChocolateCity.cc source at Springfield, the state capital is saying that Illinois’ former attorney general and comptroller Roland W. Burris is the likely candidate.

Burris, a very highly regarded African American is not referred to in the recent Illinois pay-to-play scandal, which alleges the governor tried to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat. Burris was not among those labeled Senate candidates 1 through 5 in the complaint, and therefore, not among those the governor is allegedly heard discussing the financial pros and cons of appointing on the wiretap.

Roland W. Burris first ran for political office in Illinois in 1968, and since the 1970s has held two of the state’s highest elected posts. He was Illinois’s first African American comptroller, or treasurer, as well as its first African American attorney general. Yet Burris has also made unsuccessful bids for the governorship of Illinois–a state that has elected more African Americans to its top offices than any other in the union–but he failed to win the necessary political support among the powerful Chicago-Springfield Democratic Party organization.

"Some politicians are easy to pigeonhole," remarked Chicago magazine writer Greg Hinz. "Roland Burris is not one of them…. His most visible side is that of the fighter, a man determined to succeed by dint of persistence and guile and hard work."