About that $150,000 campaign donation to Ald. Carrie Austin’s ward organization

The 34^th Ward Regular Democratic Organization, the political base of embattled Ald. Carrie Austin, reported a $150,000 campaign donation this past week from a South Side moving company that once operated at the pinnacle of Chicago politics.

The donation was from Medley Moving & Storage, whose founder Howard Medley was one of the city’s most powerful African American businessmen before he was convicted in 1989 of taking a $25,000 bribe while serving as a CTA board member.

Medley has always maintained his innocence, contending to this day he was the victim of overzealous prosecutors who withheld evidence and that the $25,000 was a legitimate real estate “finder’s fee.” The federal courts have ruled otherwise.

Austin’s campaign committees have paid at least $85,000 to the Clark Hill law firm since her ward office was raided in June by federal investigators.

I could see the story I would write: “Businessman Who Says He Was Framed Finances Alderman’s Legal Defense.”

There was just one problem.

The 92-year-old told me Friday he never wrote any $150,000 check.

“The check was for one thousand, five hundred. They must have added too many zeroes,” Medley said, calling over an office assistant to clear up the matter.

“Look at that check,” he instructed her. I could hear her in the background as she checked the ledgers and confirmed the check was only for $1,500.

“That definitely was an error,” Medley said. “I’ll have to call the bank.”

So this wasn’t your way of making a statement in defense of a prominent black politician getting railroaded the way you believe you were, I asked?

“No, no, no,” Medley said, adding: “I know her. She’s a very nice person.”

But implying, without actually saying so, that her being nice isn’t worth $150,000 to him, not when he’s got a business to run and is still trying to clear his name.

How disappointing.

“Embattled Alderman Commits Typo on Campaign Report” isn’t quite the column I was hoping to write.

Still, I saw no reason to pass up a chance to chat with one of the true characters of Chicago politics.

Medley said his relationship with the 34^th Ward Democratic Organization dates back to the late-Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Wilson Frost, who also had been the ward’s alderman and committeeman.

“I’ve helped everybody. You name them,” Medley said.

Mayor Richard J. Daley put Medley on the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, and he held an important city appointment in every administration from then through Richard M. Daley.

“I worked with Frost. We all worked with old man Daley. Bilandic put me on at the CTA,” Medley said.

That bank Medley said he needed to check with?

Seaway, once the city’s preeminent African American-owned bank, where Medley was one of the founders.

But none of Medley’s clout has been able to help him overturn his conviction.

“I have tried everywhere,” Medley says, dropping the names of numerous officeholders from City Hall up through Congress.

“Nobody wants to touch it because it’s too big,” he said.

His latest hope is taking his case to the Innocence Project, which mainly represents clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence.

Medley said he rejected an effort to apply for a pardon from President Barack Obama because it would have required him to admit he committed a crime.

“I told them to take it and shove it,” said Medley, who served 10 months of a 30-month prison sentence.

As for the $150,000, Medley said: “I’ll donate that to the Sun-Times if you’ll get me a new trial.”

I politely told Medley he had a better shot with the Innocence Project.

On Friday afternoon, a few hours after I first called Medley, the campaign treasurer for the 34^th Ward Democrats filed a letter with the board to clarify that the $150,000 donation was indeed a typo and that the correct donation amount was $1,500.

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