U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush has written to President Joe Biden to request “redemption.”
He is asking for an unconditional pardon for former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife, Sandi Jackson, a former Chicago alderman.
Rush wrote: “Though their crimes were serious, I firmly believe that Jesse and Sandi have not only shown remorse but have atoned for them as well.”
In his July 19 letter, he notes, “As legislators with a long history of public service, Jesse, and Sandi — like all of us — were not without flaws. Both, however, took responsibility for their actions.”
Jackson Jr. served Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District from 1995 until November 2012, when he resigned in disgrace. Sandi Jackson represented Chicago’s 7th Ward from 2007 to 2013.
Both pleaded guilty and served prison time — Jesse, for wire and mail fraud, having been accused of spending $750,000 in campaign funds. Sandi, for filing false income tax returns.
Lobbying the White House on the Jacksons’ behalf may be Rush’s last major act on the congressional stage. He is retiring after 15 terms representing Illinois’ 1st Congressional District, which spans parts of Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs.
“Both have served their sentences and paid full restitution for their crimes,” Rush wrote. “Since their release, Jesse and Sandi have led their life as law-abiding citizens, focusing on the growth and well-being of their two children.”
Rush does not take their crimes lightly, and their fall was a “disappointment,” he told me when we met recently at a coffeehouse in Bronzeville.
“We all want to have the opportunity to find redemption. We all have to be redeemed from something,” said Rush, an ordained minister and a former Black Panther radical and Chicago alderman.
“I am looking at what they have done in the past and also what is the potential for the future.”
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The past and the potential are embedded in the Jackson family saga.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson is the founder of Rainbow PUSH, an international civil rights activist, a roving international diplomat and a two-time presidential candidate.
Jesse, his eldest son, inherited his father’s name, charm, charisma and connections. In 1995, those attributes propelled him to become a congressman.
Jackson was once a major player in local and national politics. He hammered at economic development and jobs as his No. 1 priority in the majority-Black district. He loudly touted the hundreds of millions in federal dollars he brought home and spearheaded a fierce pursuit of a regional airport in the south suburbs.
Jackson adopted high-tech campaign strategies long before many of his peers. He has penned books on constitutional law and public policy.
When Jackson wasn’t talking, people were talking — about him. They talked about him running for Chicago mayor. They talked up a run for the U.S. Senate or that he could become the nation’s first Black U.S. House speaker.
In 1997, Newsweek magazine named Jackson, then only 32, one of “100 people to watch” in the 21st century. “Jackson has inherited his father’s oratorical gifts and is beginning to acquire his political base. He’s a hit in Congress. Will he be the first Black president?” Newsweek wrote.
Through abundant hubris and ambition, he fell. Back in 2012, I wrote that Jackson was like Icarus, the mythological Greek hero who mounted a magnificent pair of wings of feathers and wax.
His father, Daedalus, warned him: Go forth and fly, but stay away from the sun, or your wings will melt away. Icarus, full of pride, ignored his father’s counsel and fell to his death.
The Jacksons spent campaign money on sports memorabilia, fur capes and parkas, and other pricey items. The sentencing judge berated Jackson for using his campaign funds as “a personal piggy bank.”
There were other unsavory and sad episodes, including marital infidelity and Jackson Jr.’s struggles with gastric bypass surgery and a bipolar disorder.
That was then, Rush said. Now, the Jacksons are desperately needed, particularly in the African American communities they once represented.
“This young man, he has so much to offer in terms of finding solutions to the enormous quandaries and problems, and questions that we are facing as a community first of all, and as a nation,” Rush said.
He added: “I shudder to think that the talent, the skill, training that Jesse Jackson Jr. has would somehow be trapped on the sidelines of our future.”
Rush is asking his fellow members of the congressional Black Caucus and other colleagues to sign a letter of support.
The Jacksons did not ask Rush to make the pardon request, he said.
Rush has a singular and complicated relationship with the Jacksons. He has known the family since Jackson Jr. was a toddler, “crawling on the floor,” he told me. The Jackson children call him “Uncle Bobby.” Rush served with Jackson Jr. and watched him debate on the House floor.
In June, Jesse’s younger brother, Jonathan Jackson, won the Democratic nomination for a crowded race to replace Rush in the 1st District. Rush had backed a different candidate.
Rush knows the seamy side of the Jacksons’ ambition. In 2008, he was diagnosed with cancer of the salivary gland.
“There was a time in my life when I was at the point of death, really,” he recalled. “There was a rumor about Sandi making a move to replace me.”
Rush “thanks God” that he recovered. Now, “People will ask, ‘How can you ask for a pardon for them, when they were stepping over your dead body?'”
Forgiveness, he said, is an antidote to the violence and pain in his community.
“The inability to forgive keeps our community at a severe disadvantage,” he argued. “I hope that what I am doing will inspire a greater spirit of forgiveness in our community and, therefore, that we can harness our energy to work for the betterment of all.”
Forgiveness heals.
The Jacksons flew too close to the sun. The sun also rises.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at [email protected]
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