Clockwise from upper left: Quinn, Blagojevich, Andersen, Rolvaag (MHS)

Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn is calling for the resignation of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a man with whom he shared a ticket but apparently little else (except antipathy). Despite making overtures and even having once defended his embattled boss’s integrity, Quinn says he hasn’t spoken to Blagojevich since Aug. 2, 2007.

That’s a contrast with Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Pawlenty stood by Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau and pleaded her case until the state Senate canned her from her moonlighting stint as state transportation commissioner in the wake of the I-35W bridge collapse — which by coincidence occurred the day before Quinn’s last talk with Blagojevich.

So things are different in Illinois and Minnesota, at least in that respect. But the distant relationship between Blagojevich and his second-in-command does have at least one parallel in Minnesota, from the time of the last great statewide election recount in 1962.

The rivals in the race for governor that year were the sitting governor, Republican Elmer L. Andersen, and the sitting lieutenant governor, DFLer Karl Rolvaag. (Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in those days did not run together on a ticket, so the office-holders weren’t necessarily of the same party.) After each won election to two-year terms in 1960, their 1962 clash was inevitable, according to the 1964 book “Recount” by Ronald F. Stinnett and Charles H. Backstrom.

Rolvaag, who had already served three terms as lieutenant governor, and Andersen, a 10-year state Senate veteran, “had personalities and philosophies so different that they could only resolve into opposition for the governorship in 1962,” Stinnett and Backstrom wrote, adding:

Karl Rolvaag stated several times just prior to his ascension from the “broom closet” to the plush parlors of the Governor’s suite that he had been in the Governor’s office only twice during Andersen’s term.

(The “broom closet” was a small office to which Rolvaag decamped toward the end of the 139-day recount, to make way for A.M. “Sandy” Keith, a fellow DFLer whose separate election in 1962 to the office of lieutenant governor was undisputed.)

By the end of the recount, which gave Rolvaag a 91-vote victory over Andersen, the two men exhibited a civility toward one another not seen between Blagojevich and Quinn — or between current recount rivals Al Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman for that matter. Still, during the two years they spent working — in theory — together, the relationship was an arm’s-length one on par with the current occupants of Illinois’ Statehouse.

Andersen left Rolvaag alone to do the one duty of a lieutenant governor: oversee the state Senate, which then met only 90 days per year. He might have more profitably given Rolvaag something else to do, even running the state transportation department. Instead Rolvaag enjoyed plenty of spare time in which to plot his campaign to topple Andersen.

The Rolvaag-Andersen contest is one such rivalry that NPR’s Political Junkie blog cites in a useful overview of the governor-lieutenant governor relationship in America, inspired by Quinn’s comments Thursday. Today in 18 states, voters elect candidates to those offices separately. Among the other states, Illinois is one of seven in which candidates are nominated individually (running separately in party primaries in Illinois), only to unite on a single ticket for the general election.

That allows plenty of opportunity for potentially distant shotgun marriages around the country, though few reach the caustic depths of one calling for the other’s ouster as in Illinois today – or the razor’s-edge rivalry of Minnesota in 1962.

But before the president-elect could get to his swearing-in, out bursts Blago, swearing up and down in wiretap transcripts with the best expletive strings since Nixon. Once Blago’s cussed, illegal schemes got taken down by the FBI and disseminated by the Justice Department, the nation took notice of a new literary lion rumbling from its midsection. Even Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, draws comparison to Shakespeare as readily as she draws blunt verbal daggers of her own. And if their oratorical eclipsing of Obama is regrettable, the Blagos’ lingo also blew away all traces of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s faux folksy rap with a harsh Chicago gust that dropped F-bombs where the mavericka merely dropped Gs.

Although I saw somewhere that reprints of his speeches are depleting the nation’s asterix supply, Blagojevich’s words have also inspired Americans to take up their pens to compose a new musical (or fragment thereof) and a flattering Daily Beast quiz that compares lines from “The Sopranos,” a show that won six Emmys for the best writing on television, to lines from the FBI affadavit. Excerpts after the jump. 

Ben Greenman at The New Yorker online composed “Fragments from ‘Blagojevich: The Musical.‘” Here’s an excerpt from those “Fragments”:

JOHN HARRIS:
Let’s make certain we get
The most for our pick

ROD BLAGOJEVICH:
I’ve dreamed of this since I was a boy
A Senate seat in Illinois
Do you know the value of what I’m holding?

I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden …

ROD BLAGOJEVICH:
You have reached
The Blagojeviches

DEPUTY GOVERNOR A.:
Those Tribune scumbags
Should sleep with the fishes.

ROD BLAGOJEVICH:
What do you propose?
Harming the writers who compose
The paper’s editorials?
That’s far too dictatorial.

JACK:
See
I exhaled
Cooler heads
Have prevailed

[PATRICIA BLAGOJEVICH grabs the phone from her husband’s hands.]

PATRICIA BLAGOJEVICH:
Fuck them all
I’m so mad I could spit
Fire the writers
And hold up that Cubs shit
Whoever dares to interfere
With us will simply disappear
Their faces I’ll slap
Their necks I will break
I’ll cut them to the bone
Like the wind off the lake

[The federal agents all stare at one another.]

And here’s a sample from the Daily Beast quiz:

7. “That motherfucker’s full of shit. He’s shaking me down.”

8. “Our recommendation is fire all those fucking people, get ‘em the fuck out of there…”

9. “I could have made a larger announcement but wanted to see how they perform by the end of the year. If they don’t perform, fuck ‘em.”

10. “Jesus Christ! The money I’ve been dropping in here, I could’ve bought a fuckin’ Ferrari.”