It’s been months since Johnny Lira didn’t get the job he wanted with the state, but folks up on the northwest side are still talking about how Governor Rod Blagojevich turned his back on his old friend.
While out on bail, Lira got caught trying to rob the safe in an office near Kedzie and Addison. “This is how stupid I was,” he says. “I needed money to hire a lawyer for the first case. So, I know–I’ll do another break-in.”
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He was brought before Judge Marvin Aspen on both charges. “Judge Aspen gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he says. “I was already boxing then–I’d been boxing since I was eight. He sentenced me to two years on work release. If I messed up he was sending me to prison for real time.”
After the Olympic trials he moved to Las Vegas and fought as a professional. All in all he had 33 pro fights. He won 27, tied one, and lost 5.
After Blagojevich took office in January 2003, Lira began maneuvering to get the job. He called Kelly, who called state senator John Cullerton.
Several more weeks passed. A new director was hired, Fernando Grillo, a lawyer from Chicago. In July, Lira met with Grillo. “He called me in and we talked,” Lira says. “I told him my ideas about building bigger purses so the state gets more taxable revenue. After all that he said, ‘I can’t give you the position.’ I asked why, and he said, ‘Because you’re a convicted felon.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, Fernando. You’re telling me it’s all right that I can hold a state license to box and a state license to judge and a state license to promote’–all of which I had gotten over the years–‘but I can’t be the regulator? That’s fucking hypocrisy.’”
Some of Lira’s old friends in local politics think he was duped. They say his story fits a pattern. They say Blagojevich got his start with the blessing of Chicago’s political bosses–including former 10th Ward alderman Ed Vrdolyak and 33rd Ward alderman Richard Mell, the governor’s father-in-law–but in the last few years he’s tried to position himself as a reformer. They think he’s ashamed of his past, and so he’s taken to ignoring his old friends. They point out that earlier this year one of Blagojevich’s aides refused to hire Dominic Longo, a longtime Mell aide who’d helped Blagojevich in his first run for office. Longo had pleaded guilty to charges of voter fraud in 1984, but it hadn’t hurt his political career till then.
