Nick Blase: The Prince of Niles, Illinois

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Chapter 1

THE ARREST

You bet…I haven’t been convicted of a crime.

—Nick Blase to a reporter who asked if he was planning to keep his post as mayor after he was arrested in 2006

Corruption investigations are rarely a surprise in Chicago, so when the big local daily reported on June 7, 2006, that Nick Blase, mayor of suburban Niles for the last forty-five years, was being investigated for a kickback scheme, it made page one, but only one column.

I was editor of Niles’ local paper, but I didn’t even know it was happening until my boss called at 7:00 a.m. while I was still asleep that Wednesday morning. He ordered me to get on the story. I’d already put the paper to bed the night before, and the printer would need to start the presses in the next few hours. I wasn’t sure what could be added in the time I had, but I didn’t like to be scooped by a paper like the Chicago Tribune either; it barely deigned to notice Niles, let alone my paper.

I rolled out of bed, walked down the block and bought a Tribune. It had a photo of Blase on the cover in one column with the article below:

Niles Mayor Got Bribes, FBI Says

Federal agents raided an insurance agency Tuesday as part of a federal investigation of alleged kickbacks to longtime Niles Mayor Nicholas Blase for extorting village businesses to buy insurance from a close friend, court records show.

The records, obtained by the Tribune before they were sealed by a court order, indicate that the FBI was investigating allegations that Blase threatened to withhold liquor and business licenses if restaurant owners didn’t use Ralph Weiner’s insurance agency.

Weiner allegedly disguised kickbacks of significant amounts of bribes to Blase as commissions paid to a shell company effectively controlled by the mayor, the FBI alleged in the court documents.

Bank records show that the company, S.M.P. Insurance Service, received more than $280,000 in commissions from Weiner’s insurance agency in the six years ended in April 2003, according to the FBI sworn statement.

Weiner died last year, and Blase has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Blase flatly denied any wrongdoing, saying of the bribery allegation, It’s crazy.

The article continued, quoting business owners who found that buying insurance through Weiner meant quick approval for liquor licenses and village inspections. Opting out of Weiner insurance resulted in dire consequences:

The owner in 2002 of a Mexican restaurant in Niles told authorities that his landlord advised him that if he bought his insurance through Weiner & Associates it will take care of any problems with village inspections.

But after staying with Travelers Insurance instead, the owner quickly encountered trouble with village building inspectors and an expected liquor license was rejected, according to the court document.

After the owner was introduced to Weiner through the landlord, the liquor license won approval, no further building inspection woes surfaced and the restaurant operated without any major problems, the FBI affidavit said.

The owner told authorities that Weiner’s insurance premiums ran as much as $4,000 a year higher than competitors’.

The article concluded:

Blase said that Weiner had sold him business insurance for years and that he recommended Weiner as an agent to others because I liked the guy.

I’ve never done any money with him or got any commissions, Blase said. I’m really surprised.

After reading the article, I was even more certain I’d have nothing to add. The investigation documents had been sealed by a court order, so I wasn’t going to have access to them. I probably wouldn’t be able to track down Steven Weiner, the late Ralph’s son and successor at the agency, before deadline, so anything I wrote would have to source the Tribune only.

So I did the only thing I could—a little before 8:00 a.m., I called the mayor’s office. The machine answered. Mayor Blase, this is Andrew Schneider. Just had a couple of quick questions for you. Call me back if you get the chance. I left my number and then threw in by way of parting, I hope you’re having as good a day as is possible.

I called our printer and told him I had to replace the lead story on page one. He was about as happy as I’d expected but agreed. I started to rewrite the Tribune story, feeling like a hack and wishing I was back in bed, when something I hadn’t expected happened: Blase called me back.

He denied everything. I’m choice meat for them, he told me. The newspapers, the feds, they’d love to take someone like him down.

I had no idea what to ask. All I’d done was read the Tribune article. I hadn’t seen the FBI’s files myself, and besides, I still had some cobwebs in my head. But it didn’t turn out to be a problem. I didn’t have to ask real questions; he had things he wanted to say.

It wasn’t his money. It belonged to an employee of his office who sold the Weiner insurance through his own agency. The taxes were paid and the commissions went to him, Blase said. He didn’t pressure anyone to purchase insurance, he said, but he did recommend Weiner.

I’m the mayor; people would call me and ask for recommendations and I would recommend Weiner because I had insurance with him.

Though it placed the allegations on page one on June 26, the Tribune did note that following the raid on the Weiner offices, documents connected with the case were sealed by a court order, suggesting that the feds might just be fishing. He seized on that together with the fact that no charges had been filed. Then he attacked.

I’m concerned that the Weiner agents may have been overstating things, he said. They may have been overselling the product. He was going to look into it.

I didn’t have any real questions when we started, so on that note, I thanked him for his time and wished him a good day.

This wouldn’t turn out to be a bad article. I had something no one else would have, I thought, and even if I had to source the Tribune on the FBI activity, I could still put a byline on this one. After all, I had an exclusive interview. Not bad.

So I rewrote the story again: "Blase was reached by phone Wednesday morning and flatly denied the allegations, calling them ‘crazy.’ The Bugle will continue to follow this story and update its readers when new developments occur."

Satisfied, I sent it along to the printer and prepared for work.

As it turned out, I wasn’t wrong about the interview, but I wasn’t expecting another phone call from my boss the next morning: Blase had been arrested at his home by federal agents. It was his seventy-eighth birthday. He even made the New York Times:

Longtime Mayor Is Arrested in Illinois

The mayor of a Chicago suburb was arrested on federal corruption charges and accused of steering local business owners to an insurance agency, Ralph Weiner & Associates, of Wheeling, that in return paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks over 17 years. The mayor, Nick Blase, 78, who has been mayor of the village of Niles for 45 years, was charged with mail fraud. A lawyer for Mr. Blase, Harvey M. Silets, said his client denied wrongdoing.

The agents barely allowed him time to dress, and when he appeared in court that afternoon at the Dirksen Federal Building in downtown Chicago, he was bedraggled, his hair was a bit disheveled and he was wearing slippers. I was there, waiting in a pressroom with reporters from TV stations, the big dailies and my competing weeklies. FBI agents and federal attorneys chatted together, as did the TV reporters. Cameramen fiddled with their equipment, looking for the best angle, and I thumbed through a full copy of the affidavit, a summary of the evidence the feds had against Blase.

It didn’t look good for the mayor. They had recorded conversations with staff at his law office, records from the Weiner agency and interviews with business owners in Niles who said they’d been pressured.

The feds had lined up three cooperating witnesses, one at Blase’s office and two at Weiner’s. One of them expressed remorse for operating in Niles, saying he felt like he was putting a gun to the business owners’ heads.

CW2 [cooperating witness 2] rhetorically asked what choice did any business owner have if the mayor of Niles was calling them and saying that they should use [Weiner]? according to the affidavit.

They’d also lined up testimony from at least twelve businesses before they’d arrested Blase. One later told the Tribune from his new home in Costa Rica that the strong-arm tactics used in Niles had cost him his business. I just want to see justice done, Roberto Martinez told the Tribune in 2007. Martinez had purchased a failing Spanish restaurant in Niles in the early 1990s and claimed he had spent nearly $900,000 trying to rehab the building to satisfy the village’s inspectors. It wasn’t until he purchased insurance from Weiner, paying $4,000 a year more in premiums than at competitors, that the inspectors went away. He even claimed that after the restaurant had proved a success, pressure from Blase forced him to sell an option he had to buy the building, eventually receiving $100,000, according to the Tribune.

While I was reading the affidavit, a man approached me and asked what publication I represented. He was Randall Samborn, the U.S. attorney’s press secretary. When I told him I was with the Bugle, he directed me to a page in the affidavit. It seems they’d recorded a phone conversation between two men, Cooperating Witness 3 and Individual A, on January 12, 2006. They had been afraid of my paper:

CW3: My main concern was that you know going to this one day a week thing and you told me to be careful.

Individual A: Yeah.

CW3: That’s something I should be careful of and I just uh was thinking about that and trying to see what I should be doing and what I should be careful of.

Individual A: The only thing that uh you know there was a guy named, do they still have the Bugle?

CW3: Yeah.

Individual A: There was a guy named [an identified reporter] and uh a couple of times you know when I was there.

CW3: Yeah.

Individual A: He brought up this uh relationship with uh with the insurance.

CW3: Yeah.

Individual A: Well he made ref, a couple of references to that in the paper and uh my only thought was that he, he, he’s the only thing that bothers me.

CW3: Yeah.

Individual A: He’s the only thing that bothered me about this whole situation, the way it was set up.

I wasn’t the [identified reporter] of course; it was the old owner/editor, David Bud Besser. He’d started the paper in the 1950s, before Blase had become mayor. Over the years, he did mention a relationship between Blase and insurance agents in his regular column. He’d even mentioned the insurance connection in a letter to the editor he wrote to me opposing a proposal to bring off-track betting to town. It ran on March 16, 2006, and the last paragraph read:

The old phrase, Follow the Money may or may not be significant regarding the new gambling business. In our years publishing The Bugle we received many phone calls from new incoming retailers and industrialists noting the insurance men who knocked on their doors days after the Mayor dropped in to welcome them. It may or may not have been a coincidence the insurance people had an office in Blase’s offices.

I talked to him following Blase’s arrest to ask about the letter and his past columns. He was reluctant to talk at first but warmed up later. I’ve been going after Blase for forty years. We wrote about [the insurance business] for years. It always bothered me, but I never said it was illegal.

The feds had only been investigating the allegations against Blase for four and a half years, but they eventually made charges about money going back to 1989, and the so-called shell company, SMP, had been formed in 1974. Besser had actually been writing about the insurance not for years but for decades.

Though the insurance business had always bothered him, Besser’s support for Blase over the years was unwavering. He endorsed him for mayor every time he ran and was pivotal in electing Blase the first time he ran in 1961. When I talked to him following Blase’s arrest, he even expressed his concern for the mayor and his family. He wished him the best.

The whole room straightened up when a brigade of suits walked in, led by Gary Shapiro, first assistant U.S. attorney for Chicago. He began the press conference with an observation: they didn’t know it was Blase’s birthday. We weren’t planning on ruining his day, Shapiro said. At least not that way.

Together with officials from the FBI, Shapiro outlined the case against Blase. That day he was to be charged with one count of mail fraud, a move designed to make the investigation public, force Blase to initially answer the charge and surrender his passport.

He said that buying insurance from Weiner in Niles was essentially a prerequisite for staying in business.

Blase and Weiner had been partners in the scheme since at least 1989, Shapiro said. Figures they released showed that $280,000 was paid by the Weiner company to SMP. They believed Blase used that money to pay the salary of an employee at his law firm.

And there would be no quick trial: the suits said the investigation was ongoing and that, while they weren’t intending to arrest Blase on his birthday, they did want to send a message. Getting arrested is no way to celebrate a birthday, said Bill Monroe, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI in Chicago. But public officials must be held accountable for their actions.

They hoped that all the publicity generated by the arrest would encourage other business owners who had felt pressured to come forward. Shapiro described it as an investigative technique that showed an era of intimidation in Niles was coming to an end, we hope.

The day before he was arrested, the feds visited Blase at his office. The last bit of evidence in the affidavit outlined that discussion:

Blase stated words to the effect that he has recommended people to obtain their insurance from Weiner because Weiner is very good. Blase claimed that he has no financial interest in RWA, and that he never received any commissions or kickbacks from Ralph Weiner or RWA. When asked if he knew of SMP, Blase claimed that people who use space in his law office have helped sell insurance for SMP. When asked to identify who those people were, Blase refused and stated that this was as far as he wanted to go with the interview.

There were questions; I mostly let the big guys ask them. Then we were led into a courtroom where, after a few short minutes, a bedraggled Blase entered and stood beside his lawyer to answer the complaint. He was then led out.

That left us in the press to head down to the Dirksen’s lobby to wait for Blase. Wanting to avoid a media circus, the government allows the press to wait in the lobby but only in an area that has been specifically roped off. We waited for more than an hour, clustered together in a space about twenty feet square. It felt particularly strange in the cavernous, echoing space.

Lawyers came and went. I talked with a photographer I knew and a reporter, Jason and Jennifer. They worked for competing papers. From my undignified sprawl on the floor, I was even noticed by a passing attorney. She was my college roommate’s old girlfriend.

Blase stands silently beside his attorney, Harvey Silets, who spoke to reporters in the press area of the Dirksen Federal Building on June 8, 2006, after Blase was arrested. Courtesy the Bugle.

After a wait of about an hour, somebody in the pen shouted, Here he comes, and Blase walked out with his lawyer. We didn’t have to do much to attract their attention. They walked straight over to us, and Blase’s attorney was irked but composed. Harvey Silets was a grizzled veteran who had defended Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa. He wouldn’t let Blase answer any questions. He made a statement that was brief and pointed. He praised the mayor’s record of service and harangued the feds for arresting him at his home. [Steven Weiner] was allowed to turn himself in while the mayor was arrested at home, on his birthday in front of his children and grandchildren.

Silets thanked reporters and then began leading Blase from the building, all while reporters and cameramen jostled for position and shouted questions. One of the reporters asked whether Blase intended to stay on as Niles’ mayor.

Blase is hemmed in by reporters and cameramen as he leaves the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago on June 8, 2006, after listening to the charges against him. Courtesy the Bugle.

You bet, he said.

Why?

He snapped back, Because I haven’t been convicted of a crime.

Blase jumped in a cab as I took a few pictures for the paper. As he drove away, I walked back into the Dirksen building to discuss my impression with my two competitors. Jason walked up, reviewing the pictures in his camera.

Check it out. He held up the camera. I got him smiling.

The next day, alongside articles about the arrest and court appearances, both the Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times ran articles about shock in Niles. The headlines read Birthday Arrest of Niles Mayor Stuns Town, Family Devastated, Suburb Shocked and Friends Remain Loyal to Longtime Niles Mayor.

One of the village’s trustees, Tom Bondi, told the Tribune that he felt Blase should continue as mayor. In my mind he’s innocent until proven otherwise, so I think he should continue to act as mayor, he said.

Blase’s grandson Nick Beyer told the Sun-Times that the arrest was very hard for the family. It’s devastated the family because he’s just the most honorable man that we know and we love. I don’t think he’s ever had a nasty word for anybody.

I talked to Beyer too. I met him when I rode along in a Niles squad car with him. He was a patrol officer then, and I was in the Citizens Police Academy. I didn’t learn he was Blase’s grandson until later. After Blase came home, Beyer ran interference, standing outside his home and answering questions. We stand behind him and give him our complete support and love, he told me. It was nice to have all the family there to celebrate his birthday, he said. We felt good once he was home. We have a strong bond.

Meanwhile, Village Manager George Van Geem told the Tribune that the arrest was a surprise. We obviously didn’t have any idea what was going on until we picked up the paper yesterday, he told the Tribune. We pride ourselves on doing it right, so when something like this comes up, it’s a huge surprise.

Village staff members I talked to in the ensuing weeks told me that at first, Blase was more subdued. The atmosphere at village hall was different. Some of those I talked to privately said they thought there was no question of Blase’s guilt after looking at the government’s evidence.

But slowly, things began to change. After a couple of weeks, the mayor was back to his old self. After talking to him, the same people who told me they didn’t question his guilt now wavered. One even suggested that his ability to connect with people and convince them of his good intentions was almost hypnotic. Unquestionably, his confidence returned, and the atmosphere at village hall resumed its usual feel. One staff member told me that it was as if Blase had made up his mind to fight.

Chapter 2

THE VARIOUS TYPES OF GOVERNMENTS AND THE WAYS BY WHICH THEY ARE ESTABLISHED

When the electorate vote all over the ballot, they merely perpetuate the best-organized machine.

—Niles Bugle, April 13, 1961

Santo Salvatore Bruno first saw Niles when he helped a friend who had moved to the sleepy town in the 1950s lay a concrete floor in his garage.

Do you like it out here? the man asked Bruno (Sam to his friends).

Yeah, Bruno said.

Well, the nearby onion farm was going to be redeveloped.

This was country with a population of only four thousand, Bruno said. It was just beautiful.

So Bruno, a veteran of the navy in World War II, moved his growing family to Niles. They bought a one-story, three-bedroom house on a modest street developed on the onion farm. His sister moved into a similar two-bedroom house just down the block. Bruno was part of the new Niles, part of the community’s development from farms and taverns to suburban housing for returning World War II veterans and baby boom families.

Niles’ mayor, Frank Stankowicz, was part of the old Niles. He had begun his service as a motorcycle cop and was first elected village clerk and, ultimately, mayor in 1941. He coasted to victory in every election until 1957, when his margin was a razor-thin 150 votes. The challenge to his rule was driven by new people—lots of new people. In 1950, Niles only had 3,600 residents. By 1957, that population had risen to 13,949.

Niles’ elder statesman: Frank Stankowicz, mayor of Niles for nearly two decades when Nick Blase moved to town in 1959. Courtesy the Bugle.

Those new residents had different concerns than the old ones. Bruno and his sister found out sometime in the late 1950s that