Lance Trover, of Vienna, former deputy chief of staff to Bruce Rauner.
Lance Trover, of Vienna, former deputy chief of staff to Bruce Rauner.
Lance Trover of Vienna, who resigned from a post as deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bruce Rauner in July, has announced he is joining the public affairs firm of a former top staffer to another Illinois governor.
Rod Blagojevich.
Trover is joining Tusk Strategies, led by Blagojevich's former Deputy Governor Bradley Tusk.
Bradley Tusk, Founder and CEO of Tusk Holdings and former deputy governor to Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
| Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College
Before joining Rauner's campaign in January 2014, during a heated primary, Trover worked for U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.).
He was one of several ex-Kirk aides who guided Rauner's strategy during his first two years as governor.
Trover, who recently married Rauner aide turned lobbyist Sarah Clamp, left after Rauner fired his bosses, fellow former Kirk aides Mike Zolnierowicz and Richard Goldberg.
Clamp is partners with super-lobbyist Nancy Kimme.
Tusk, a New Yorker who had previously worked with U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, joined Blagojevich's administration in 2003.
Former State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) once said Blagojevich hired Tusk to clash with the state legislature.
"I think the governor hired Bradley Tusk to get him in the paper and make other people look bad, to pick fights," Franks told the Chicago Sun-Times. "The governor is getting exactly what he paid for and what he wants. I think it's horrible for the state of Illinois, but it's good for Rod's poll numbers in the short term."
Blagojevich's former chief of staff in Congress and campaign political director John Wyma, who also works at Tusk Strategies, referred Tusk for the job.
The lead informant against Blagojevich, Wyma went from "confidant to informant (and) ultimately inched prosecutors to the governor's most recent -- and most brazen -- alleged attempts to trade political favors for campaign cash," ABC News reported at the time.
"You can't get much closer than they are to each other," Capitol Fax publisher Rich Miller added "(Wyma's) a lobbyist but he's almost never in Springfield lobbying legislators. He virtually only lobbies (Blagojevich) at his home in Chicago."
Wyma and Tusk had worked together for Schumer – he was Schumer's chief of staff when Tusk served as Schumer's communications director.
Wyma launched a lobbying business a just a few months after Blagojevich took office, according to a report in Chicago Magazine.
Tusk left Blagojevich's administration in 2006 and went back to New York, joining Lehman Brothers as a lobbyist.
He would later run Bloomberg's re-election campaign in 2008 – the year Lehman collapsed.
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