Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested today on federal corruption charges including an attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat recently vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. While this news will certainly further tarnish the governor’s reputation, Rasmussen Reports tracking in the state consistently has shown the Democrat to be one of the nation's most unpopular governors, if not the most unpopular.

The most recent poll in Illinois, conducted December 2, found that just 15% of voters gave their governor good or excellent ratings, while 61% rated his job performance as poor.

Even those ratings were higher than those just days before Obama was elected president. At that time, only eight percent (8%) of voters in Illinois gave Blagojevich good or excellent ratings. Sixty-seven percent (67%) graded his job performance as poor.

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Blagojevich’s ratings hit an all time low in mid-October, when just four percent (4%) gave him good or excellent marks and 65% rated his job performance as poor. That same survey found that only five percent (5%) of voters believed things in Illinois were improving under the governor, who assumed office in 2003. Two-thirds of Illinois voters (67%) said the state was worse off under Blagojevich.

In 2002, Blagojevich, who served six years in the U.S. House of Representatives, was the first Democrat elected governor in Illinois in 30 years. He was reelected in 2006. As governor, he has faced steady and growing opposition from members of his own party, including his lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn, and the state’s attorney general, Lisa Madigan, who is expected to challenge him for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2010. Blagojevich has been involved in numerous political controversies and has been a subject of several criminal investigations. The Chicago Tribune in 2007 editorialized on a possible way to remove him from office.

Blagojevich has said that he would appoint Obama's successor as the state's junior senator sometime during the Christmas holidays. Rep. Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. is the clear favorite of Illinois Democrats among the party’s top five candidates.

Ironically, the state's senior Democratic U.S. senator, Dick Durbin, has just asked President Bush to commute the criminal sentence of Blagojevich's Republican predecessor as governor, George Ryan, who was convicted of federal corruption charges in 2006. A Rasmussen Reports survey last week found that 66% of adults in Illinois oppose a pardon for Ryan.

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