VI. Grabbing a Senate Seat with a Little Help from his Trilateral Friends 241these charges were all made ex parte by Hull’s wife, and therefore are not necessarily true at all.
However, they were just the thing that the Trilateral doctors ordered for the anemic campaign of
Obama. Here is a sampling of one journalistic account:
The divorce filings reveal a highly volatile relationship between a couple who were married and
divorced twice within four years. In the second divorce, the proceedings became so bitter that
each party hired a private investigator to look into the other’s life, the divorce filings show.
Before his first marriage to Sexton, Hull had been married for 29 years to another woman with
whom he had four children. For her part, Sexton, 49, alleged a pattern of emotional and mental
abuse by Hull. On March 12, 1998, she asked a Cook County Circuit Court judge to issue an
order of protection against Hull, in part, because she alleged Hull had threatened her life. “I am
in great fear that if this court does not enter a protective order in my favor and against Blair, as
well as exclude him from my residence in which I am residing with my child ... Blair will
continue to inflict mental, emotional and physical abuse upon me as he has done in the past,”
Sexton alleged to obtain a court order to keep Hull away from her. “At this point, I fear for my
emotional and physical well-being, as well as that of my daughter.” Sexton outlined several
incidents in which she accused Hull of becoming violent, profane and verbally abusive. During
one, she alleged that he “hung on the canopy bar of my bed, leered at me and stated, ‘Do you
want to die? I am going to kill you....’” Only once, however, did she accuse him of striking her,
which led to his arrest. But authorities declined to press charges against Hull because they
determined that “mutual combat” had occurred. Hull said he struck Sexton’s shin in retaliation
after she allegedly kicked him. A Cook County prosecutor “felt she would be unable to sustain
a burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt” in the battery case, according to the divorce
filing. But just days after she asked for the protective order, the couple reached a settlement
agreement giving her $3 million and half the value of their North Side home. And despite her
allegations of abusive behavior by Hull, Sexton agreed to allow the protective order to expire
when the marriage was dissolved in court months later. (David Mendell, “Hull’s ex-wife called
him violent man in divorce file,” Chicago Tribune, February 28, 2004)HULL CRUSHED BY TRILATERAL SCANDAL MACHINE
The impact of these revelations on the hapless Hull’s campaign can be likened to that of a
thermonuclear explosion. Here is an assessment of the state of Hull’s campaign on March 19, 2004
which stresses the collapse of
... Blair Hull’s extravagant quest for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Hull’s
campaign followed a trajectory more dramatic than Howard Dean’s, with big leads in the polls
preceding what the Chicago Tribune called “the most inglorious campaign implosion in Illinois
political history.” Hull finished a distant third in Tuesday’s voting, with barely 10% of the vote.
His campaign was financed, lavishly, from the personal fortune Hull made as the founder of an
options firm he sold to Goldman Sachs for $340 million in 1999. Hull spent at least $29 million
on the campaign; the Tribune estimates he paid $260 for each vote he received. Hull’s undoing
was a story that broke less than a month before the primary. His ex-wife had sought an order of
protection against him during their divorce in 1998. Hull tried to keep the divorce records
sealed, but pressure from journalists and opposing candidates forced him to release them. The
papers revealed that his ex-wife alleged that Hull had threatened her life, and that a physical
altercation between them had led to his arrest for battery, though no charges were filed. An
established politician with a reputation and a track record might have survived such publicity.
But Hull was a political novice. Not only had he never run for office before 2004, he hadn’t