Patrick Fitzgerald for Governor???

The US Attorney for Northern Illinois has been in office since 2001. He's originally from New York (Brooklyn in fact) and indeed was involved in many high profile cases in that part of the country. I mean look (thanks to Wikipedia)...

After practicing civil law, Fitzgerald became an Assistant United States Attorney in New York City in 1988. He handled drug-trafficking cases and in 1993 assisted in the prosecution of Mafia figure John Gotti, the boss of the Gambino crime family.[4] In 1994, Fitzgerald became the prosecutor in the case against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others charged in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[5]

In 1996, Fitzgerald became the National Security Coordinator for the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. There, he served on a team of prosecutors investigating Osama bin Laden.[6] He also served as chief counsel in prosecutions related to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

And then he comes to Illinois. Successfully convicts a former Governor and went to Washington to be involved in an investigation of the Bush Administration (see the Plame Affair). And then I look at the post election analysis of the recent state elections in Illinois by Russ Stewart and I find this line...

The slam-dunk winner in 2010 would be U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, if he ran for governor as a Republican.

This has been thrown out there a lot. I kind of question why he would being that he is from New York. I don't know, it seems like an intriguing prospect. The question is will it happen?

I get the feeling that it won't. He doesn't seem like he's really interested in running for a political office. And I imagine he'll have some enemies thanks to his activities as a US Attorney in Illinois.

If he does the only asset he has right now is that the public really doesn't know him. The only thing those of us might know about him is not his political ambitions but his activities as US Attorney. He isn't very boisterous for sure and that's OK especially for a prosecutor with the ability to put away some powerful people. Then again we'll see what he does when he makes the switch to politics.

BTW, when 2010 rolls around who might come out the woodworks to take on Blagojevich. A little early, but thank goodness that 2008 is coming around. That's when Americans WILL be looking for a new President.

Happy holidays everyone.