Milorad Blagojevichⁱ/bləˈɡɔɪ.əvɪtʃ/ (better known by the alias Rod R. Blagojevich (born December 10, 1956)) is a convicted felon and former American politician who served as the 40th Governor of Illinois from 2003 to 2009. A Democrat, Blagojevich was a State Representative before being elected to the United States House of Representatives representing parts of Chicago. He was elected governor in 2002, the first Democrat to win the office since Daniel Walker's victory 30 years earlier.

Lisa Madigan (born July 30, 1966 in Chicago, Illinois) has been the 41st Attorney General of the US state of Illinois since 2003, when she became the first female attorney general for Illinois. She is a Democrat and the daughter of Michael Madigan, who has been Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives for most of the last quarter century.

On December 12, 2008, she attracted national attention after filing a motion with the Supreme Court of Illinois to temporarily remove Governor Rod Blagojevich from office. The motion was subsequently denied by the court without a hearing.

Madigan attended The Latin School of Chicago for her secondary education, and received her bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in 1988. She received her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Prior to becoming an attorney, she was a teacher and community organizer, developing after-school programs to help keep kids involved in education and away from drugs and gangs. Madigan also volunteered as a high school teacher in South Africa during apartheid. Madigan later worked as a litigator for the Chicago law firm of Sachnoff & Weaver.

Roland Wallace Burris (born August 3, 1937) is a former United States Senator from the state of Illinois and a member of the Democratic Party.

In 1978, Burris was the first African-American elected to statewide office in Illinois, when he was elected Illinois Comptroller. He served in that office until his election as Illinois Attorney General in 1990. Since then, he has unsuccessfully run for office four more times.

Burris was appointed by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to replace President-Elect Barack Obama as the junior senator from Illinois. The appointment was controversial, as the governor was already under investigation and there were rumors of his being paid for the appointment. Prior to Burris's appointment, Obama was the U.S. Senate's only African American; he resigned his Senate seat after being elected President of the United States. Burris was the subject of an ethics probe.

Burris was born and raised in the small community of Centralia in southern Illinois. The Burris family can trace their roots to American slaves in the American South, mainly in the states of Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. He was a 1955 graduate of Centralia High School. He attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1959. He was an exchange student on scholarship to study International Law at the University of Hamburg in Germany. He earned his Juris Doctor degree from the Howard University School of Law in 1963.