It is nearly Christmas, but I cannot bring myself to forgive George H. Ryan. Not yet.

After spending little more than a year in prison, Ryan wants to receive a presidential pardon from George W. Bush. Ryan was sentenced to serve six and half years for his corrupt practices, but he wants to be released early, citing his advanced age and his wife’s frail health.

Perhaps, if he had served more

of his sentence or showed any genuine contrition for his actions, I could bring myself to feel differently, but it is too early to release the disgraced and unapologetic politician now. Both US Senator Richard Durbin and Governor Rod Blagojevich have publicly supported Ryan’s request for a pardon. I think that they are off base.

I met former Governor George H. Ryan once, more than a decade ago, in 1998. He was Secretary of State at the time and was campaigning to become the next

governor. Ryan was making the rounds at a political picnic held in Oak Park. The former Cook County Republican chairman, Manny Hoffman, was following his

political patron around the park like an obedient lap dog.

Ryan defeated the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, US Representative Glenn Poshard, by running an aggressively negative campaign. The bipartisan combine

was fully engaged in the costly campaign which featured one of the ugliest political advertisements to ever air on local television. Ryan ran a commercial suggesting that Poshard’s support for the Second Amendment rights of law

abiding gun and rifle owners would permit hordes of armed criminals to terrorize the streets while armed with combat assault weapons.

It was a thoroughly dishonest move, but the campaign featured a curious

assortment of strange bedfellows as gay rights activists and abortion proponents

who threw their financial and political support to Ryan in opposition to

Poshard, a pro life Democrat from Southern Illinois.

Throughout the campaign, there were whispered rumors about Democratic

committeemen in Chicago and suburban Cook County who were prepared to cut certain

Democratic candidates on election day to benefit George Ryan and his political

ally, State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka. Prior to the 1998 election,

Republican officeholders held all of the state constitutional offices. Afterwards,

the Democrats picked up Ryan’s former office as Jesse White, the Cook County

Recorder of Deeds, defeated former State Representative Al Salvi and political

newcomer Dan Hynes, the son of the former Cook County Assessor , Tom Hynes,

dispatched State Senator Chris Lauzen in the race to replace Loleta

Didrickson as Comptroller (Didrickson had lost the US Senate nomination to State

Senator Peter Fitzgerald in the primary). Reports circulated that Ryan had

sacrificed these two members of the Republican statewide ticket to further his own

candidacy as part of bipartisan deal with the Democrats.

During the campaign, unsettling rumors had begun to circulate about

pervasive corruption in the office of the Secretary of State particularly in the

driver’s licensing and commercial truck driver licensing departments. Following

his tenure as Lieutenant Governor under Governor James R. Thompson, Ryan had

served two terms as Secretary of State. Ryan’s underlings, including Dean

Bauer, managed to quash internal investigations into licenses being issued in

return for bribes until the election was over. Ryan’s candidacy received a big

boost when the complacent US Attorney for Northern District of Illinois, Scott

R. Lassar, a Democratic appointee, took the unprecedented step of issuing a

brief statement which almost amounted to a clean bill health for Ryan prior

to the election by declaring that there was no investigation pending against

Ryan or his office. This comment helped Ryan check criticisms that were made against him by Poshard in the closing days of the election.

Once inaugurated, Ryan began repaying his political friends with lopsided spending plans and calls for higher taxes and fees. After passing a odious budget larded with political pork, Ryan and his cronies celebrated by dining on roasted pork sandwiches at the Governor’s Mansion while mocking their critics.

Throughout his term, Ryan functioned as if he had been sent to Springfield to act as the best friend and point man for Chicago’s City Hall.

Despite the best efforts of Ryan to stymie the investigation of corruption in the Secretary of State’s office which had occurred under his watch, private attorneys employed by the Reverend Scott Willis and his wife, Janet, continued to accumulate compelling evidence that an unqualified truck driver, who

lacked the ability to speak English, had been issued a commercial driving license after paying a bribe to an employee of the Secretary of State’s office. In a catastrophic highway accident, the six Willis children had been burned to death when an unsecured trailer hitch assembly fell from a truck driven by the illiterate man, who had been unable to understand repeated warnings as to the potential hazard. When the oversized part fell off of the truck trailer onto a Wisconsin highway, the gas tank of the Willis van was punctured. The children were incinerated while the parents suffered severe burns. Ryan steadfastly refused to address any and all questions related to the tragedy.

Throughout his one term as governor, Ryan’s press secretary had to block more shots than a veteran goalie in the National Hockey League. Scandal after scandal became daily fodder for the press. US Senator Peter Fitzgerald performed one of the most selfless and statesmanlike acts of any Illinois politician in recent memory by pressing for the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as US Attorney to replace Scott Lassar (who promptly accepted a position at the prestigious law firm of Sidley and Austin where he currently defends politicians accused of public corruption and white collar criminals).

Senator Fitzgerald incurred the collective wrath of the entire political class in Illinois in making his selection. Democrats and Republicans alike, with prominent persons such as Governor George Ryan, US Senator Richard Durbin, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and many others complaining that a pliant “see no

evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” local attorney be selected for the position. Fitzgerald would have none of it and pressed forward with the appointment which ultimately cost him his renomination. Ryan’s accordion playing friend, Judy Baar Topinka, in her capacity as State Republican Party Chairman, helped scuttle Fitzgerald by refusing to endorse his candidacy for reelection as an incumbent. Fitzgerald bowed out of the race and did not seek a second term which helped clear the way for the accession of Barack Obama, who succeeded Fitzgerald in the US Senate for a brief period of time.

The most obscene canard issued in Ryan’s lengthy political career occurred when he claimed that his decision not to seek reelection was the result of the actions of those activists on the far right wing of the Republican Party. The members of this vast right wing conspiracy had driven him from office or so Ryan wanted the public to believe. He never referred to his own corruption or the public opinion polls that suggested that virtually all Illinoisans had lost all confidence in their governor. He also did not allude to the fact that Attorney General, Jim Ryan (no relation), had confronted him and threatened that if Gorgeous George did not retire in 2002 that the former DuPage County prosecutor was prepared to challenge him for the Republican nomination.

In the waning months of his administration, Ryan continued to sabotage the Republicans. He encouraged his lieutenant governor, a former one term state representative from Lake County, Corrine Wood, to challenge Attorney General Jim Ryan in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Wood never had a serious chance of securing the nomination, but she caused Jim Ryan to waste precious campaign dollars and helped pave the way for the election of that noted reformer Rod R. Blagojevich as governor. Politically, the state Republican Party has yet to recover from the damage that George H. Ryan helped to inflict on the GOP brand.

In one of the most flagrant political stunts of all time, Ryan declared a moratorium on the death penalty (which remains in place) and commuted the sentences of all inmates on death row. Despite the labors of prosecutors, judges and jurors who presented and examined the evidence following trials and appeals and the efforts of the Illinois Prison Review Board to review all of the files, Ryan issued a blanket commutation order in a manner that suggested that he never bothered to review any of the individual case files. If a dozen death row prisoners had been wrongfully convicted out of a total of one hundred and sixty-seven death penalty cases than the entire system of capital punishment was irreparably flawed according to Ryan. Cynics observed that Ryan was trying to obtain some favorable press from the liberal media in preparation for his expected public corruption trial with a view to influencing prospective jurors.

As sorry as I am for Lura Lynn Ryan, I cannot help, but wonder why her adult children are not available to assist her while her spouse completes his prison term. Unlike Reverend Willis and his wife, the Ryans still have their

children.

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Daniel J. Kelley is a regular contributor to “The Chicago Daily Observer.”