Photo: Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich confer about Senate replacement

[UPDATE: The state of Illinois has deleted the PDF containing this picture; see the link for some cached copies of the Gazette documents.]

From the "Governor's Gazette" - an Illinois state publication - dated November 12, 2008 comes the following undated photo of Barack Obama speaking privately with recently-arrested IL governor Rod Blagojevich. It could conceivably have taken place months before and in relation to something else, but there's a very good chance it was taken sometime just after Obama was elected. A screengrab of the first page of the Gazette is here. The PDF of the Gazette is here. Note that the text of that portion of the Gazette is the same as this page dated November 5, 2008:

After congratulating President-Elect Barack Obama on his decisive victory, Governor Rod R. Blagojevich announced today that he will take his time and use a diverse senior staff made up of key members of his administration who will assist him in selecting a suitable replacement for Obama.

There's no explicit indication that they met on 11/5 or 11/4, but one might assume that he congratulated him at the least with a phone call and probably face-to-face.

Read more at the main Blagogate entry.

Politics · Wed, 12/10/2008 - 13:08 · · Importance: 9