Blago trial: Blago considered Oprah for the Senate seat.

Oprah? lol Man, this is too funny.. Ahnold? lol

Chicago Tribune:

Rod Blagojevich’s corruption trial has resumed this morning with his very own version of Star Search, featuring Oprah Winfrey.

With former chief of staff John Harris taking the stand for a fifth day, prosecutors played another wiretap of Harris and Blagojevich talking, this time about their hunt for a new U.S. senator to replace Barack Obama who just a few weeks earlier had been elected to the presidency.

Harris, in narrating the tape, said Blagojevich’s search became more desperate after Obama friend Valerie Jarrett dropped out of the running in mid-November 2008. In Blagojevich’s mind, that undermined his leverage to extract something for himself out of a Senate appointment because he could no longer do Obama a favor by appointing Jarrett.


On the tape, recorded on Dec. 2 while Harris was in Chicago and Blagojevich was at a governor’s conference in Philadelphia, the two men run through possibilities of someone else who could fit the bill: Former Chicago school board head Gery Chico, U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, Linda Rice Johnson from Johnson Publishing and WVON radio host Melody Spann Cooper.


Some far-out possibilities Blagojevich raised included California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Children’s Defense Fund founder Marion Wright Edelman, neither of whom live in Illinois.

Finally, Blagojevich said it had to be an African-American, possibly a person with a military or law enforcement background. That could help Blagojevich with black voters if he decided to run for re-election in 2010, the governor said.

Then Blagojevich tossed out the name of Winfrey.


“Oprah, by the way, is not far-fetched,” Blagojevich told Harris. Blagojevich said Winfrey’s support “made” Obama’s rise to the presidency possible. “She’s up there so high, no one can assail this pick,” he said at one point.


Blagojevich told Harris he didn’t want to give the Senate seat to U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, who had expressed interest. Harris then expressed the opinion that putting Winfrey in the job “was crazy”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Blagojevich said.

Harris said voters might take away from a Winfrey pick that Blagojevich was just trying to hand the job to a celebrity. Blagojevich said that was not true.

“People would say that’s just Rod trying to get some of that gold dust sprinkled on him,” Harris insisted.