Ex-Ill. governor starts 14-year prison term

Associated Press

LITTLETON, Colo.

Convicted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich never allowed himself to even think about spending the next decade of his life behind bars. Less than an hour before he began serving his 14-year sentence on corruption charges, he could hardly say that word: “prison.”

Now, he is Inmate No. 40892-424.

With helicopters and TV news crews broadcasting his every move Thursday, the one-time golden boy of Illinois politics stepped out of a black SUV, the Colorado mountains on the horizon, and just before noon walked into the Federal Correctional Institution Englewood in suburban Denver.

Inside, there was a protocol: full-body strip search, hand over all personal belongings. That means the man with a taste for fine Oxxford-label suits traded in his clothing, save for his wedding ring, for khaki prison garb and boots.

Jurors convicted Blagojevich on 18 counts, including charges that he tried to sell or trade President Barack Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat. FBI wire- taps revealed a foul-mouthed Blagojevich describing the opportunity to exchange an appointment to the seat for campaign cash or a top job as “f------ golden.”

Although he was sentenced in December, he was given more than three months to say goodbye to his wife, Patti, and their two daughters.

“I keep speaking euphemistically about ‘a place,’” the 55-year-old Blagojevich said about an hour before entering prison, during a stop at a nearby restaurant. “I look at it like I am reporting for military service. ... That is a game I play with myself. But the sad reality is that’s a prison that I have to walk into shortly.”

As he rode around in his rental car before reporting to the prison, his youngest daughter — 8-year-old Anne — continually called on his cellphone, upset at his departure, he said. Blagojevich could be seen leaning against the vehicle, talking on the phone in the parking lot.

Blagojevich requested the prison in Littleton, just outside Denver.

Inside, Blagojevich’s life will be strictly regimented. The impeached governor — who was heard on the FBI wiretaps scoffing at earning a low six-figure salary — will work a menial prison job, possibly cleaning bathrooms or doing landscape work, starting at 12 cents an hour.