Ill. gov’s wife disappointed in husband’s friends

CHICAGO — The wife of ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says she is disappointed that people she and her husband thought were friends didn’t support him during his arrest and impeachment.

During an episode aired Wednesday of NBC’s “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!,” Patti Blagojevich said her husband’s good friends “just weren’t strong enough to stand against the tide or speak up for him.”

“People that he’s known for 17 years, they had to vote to impeach him …” she said.

Illinois’ former first lady also said people in the state capital of Springfield hated her and her husband for not living in the governor’s mansion. But she says they decided they wanted to keep their two girls in their Chicago school and not upset their routine.

“There’s a 35-room, 50-thousand-square-foot mansion in Springfield with the chefs and the butlers and stuff,” she said. “But we decided that for our girls, we wanted to keep them in the school where they were and keep them in the home that they were, because it would be too much … Boy, those people in Springfield hated us for that because they felt like it was a slight that we didn’t move down to the state capital.”

She shrugged when asked what she would do if her husband is convicted.

“I’m not going to say it because they’ll show it on TV and I don’t want my girls to see that,” she said.

During the live portion at the end of the show, Patti Blagojevich was chosen to get a phone call from home.

Blagojevich has pleaded not guilty to charges that he schemed to sell or trade President Barack Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat and used the muscle of the governor’s office to get campaign donations. He was impeached and ousted from office in January.