Ryan's paradox

In a classic tragedy, the protagonist's character
always prefigures his fall

by Dave McKinney

Paralyzed by scandal, yet one of the most active Illinois governors in recent memory. A polit-ical version of Donald Trump in his love of the deal, yet unable to focus on the all-important details. Loved by political insiders, yet increasingly mistrusted by much of the public. These are a few of the paradoxes that define George Ryan. The most poignant, though, is that this lifelong public servant had waited an entire career to become governor, yet was never able to become the leader he had hoped after moving into the Executive Mansion.

The dramatic arc of many tragedies can be traced to a turning point, one moment, clear in hindsight. And for Ryan it was January 27, 2000, two years into his term as the state’s 39th chief executive. That’s the day the Chicago Tribune ran a front-page story on an interview with Dean Bauer in the living room of Bauer’s Kankakee home. The governor’s friend of 40 years told the newspaper he expected to be indicted.

Ryan’s former inspector general denied doing anything wrong. But it was clear federal prosecutors had a sound case against Bauer for failing to expose illegal exchanges of commercial driver’s licenses for bribes, some of which ended up in Ryan’s campaign fund while he was secretary of state.

The morning the story broke, Ryan was hosting an awards ceremony in the ballroom of the mansion to honor heroism by Illinois police officers. Before the final award, aides were scrambling to summon the Statehouse press corps for a statement. And Jeremy Margolis, the governor’s special adviser, was anxiously prowling the hallway outside the ballroom, arms folded.

Bauer’s fate had been the source of intense speculation for months, in and out of Ryan’s administration. But on that morning the scandal moved right to the governor’s doorstep.

After the ceremony, aides ushered the press into the governor’s office on the ground floor. Ryan strode in about half an hour later. Looking stern, he sat at his desk and read from a sheet of paper. “I’m angered because this corruption case has overshadowed the good things we’ve done in the office,” he said. “But I’m angry at myself for not recognizing the problem a lot earlier. Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot I can do. As a matter of fact, there’s nothing I can do to change any of that except to accept the responsibility. This has been a very difficult lesson for me, but I’ve learned it and I’ve learned it very well.”

It was the most blame Ryan had accepted for illegalities on his watch. But the moment of contrition passed quickly, and he refused further comment. Reporters could ask, and ask again, whether Bauer personally reported to him or whether the FBI had interviewed the governor. No matter. Ryan would not answer.

In one sense, it was quintessential Ryan, full of gruff and bluff. And yet, no single day in more than 30 years of public service so clearly underscored his personal and political weaknesses. Throughout that meeting with reporters, he was combative and evasive. And, following the advice of his lawyers, including Margolis, he came across as a public official who was less interested in leveling with the voters than in making sure he said nothing that might be useful to hungry prosecutors. Though he accepted blame, he offered no convincing reason for forgiveness.

What’s the weakness in that? Simply put, it’s this: Throughout his career, George Ryan has seldom felt the need to explain himself. He sees no reason to explain himself now, though he has achieved the state’s highest post, and though a growing number of Illinoisans believe there are compelling reasons to know how he fulfilled his responsibilities.

Arguably, there have been other defining moments in Ryan’s tumultuous four years as governor. But after that statement at the mansion, after Bauer was convicted, Ryan’s job approval ratings plummeted to historic lows, never to rebound. A proud man, Ryan chose not to run for re-election. In August, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his disapproval rating was 69 percent.

After a lifetime devoted to public service, George Ryan used up what-ever benefit of the doubt Illinoisans had been willing to give him. What-ever sympathies they might have felt for an embattled governor dissipated in the cold January air.

The events of that day brought into sharper focus Illinois’ most complex, and arguably most flawed, political figure in well over a generation.

On paper, few Illinois governors could have stepped into the executive office with better credentials. Ryan had chaired his Kankakee County board of supervisors. He had served in the legislature, including a stint as House speaker. He had served two terms each as lieutenant governor and secretary of state. But character traits that were useful throughout this long career — his love of the grand plan, his distaste for details, his unflinching loyalty to a small circle of political friends and his penchant for wheeling and dealing — trailed him right into the governor’s mansion. Ryan was unwilling, or unable, to change, though his responsibilities changed, though Illinois changed. He remained an old-fashioned retail pol in a political era increasingly subject to media and voter scrutiny.

“If he’s failed in one area, it’s the way he’s tried to shrug off his responsibilities for what happened in the secretary of state’s office,’’ says John Pelissero, a Loyola University political scientist who specializes in Illinois and Chicago politics.

“No one has been buying his argument that he didn’t know what was going on, that he couldn’t talk about it because it was in the courts. He’s failed to address the very basic question people have about why, if his closest aides have been indicted or convicted in the scandal, he didn’t know anything that was supposedly going on in his administration. I think he might have adopted a more candid approach, assuming it’s true he had nothing to hide. Instead, he let the lingering questions and the continuing string of indictments drag him down.”

That isn’t the way Ryan had mapped out his governorship during his early, giddy days in office. He relished the role of dealmaker. He worked the brass rail, where lobbyists ply their trade. He strode about the Capitol and onto the floors of the legislative chambers, employing a Midas touch. In one day, he single-handedly settled two long-simmering legislative leftovers from former Gov. Jim Edgar’s administration: regulations for massive, environmentally troublesome hog farms and a managed care bill of rights.

By offering to broker a deal, Ryan later stole the stage in Decatur when Jesse Jackson took up the racially charged expulsions of high school students involved in a grandstand-clearing melee. There appeared to be little doubt in his first year that George Ryan was a governor on the go, an executive with a grasp of government.

From a policy standpoint, the Kankakee Republican managed to accomplish much in four years. His $12 billion bricks-and-mortar program known as Illinois First, aimed at remedying years of unmet needs, rebuilt Chicago expressways and constructed new schools through an increase in license plate fees and liquor taxes. He ended decades of political spinning-in-place over rebuilding the lakefront home of the Chicago Bears by brokering a deal among the team, the city of Chicago and the state legislature. He twice led humanitarian visits to Cuba and met with dictator Fidel Castro to position such Illinois companies as Decatur’s Archer Daniels Midland and Peoria’s Caterpillar for future trade with the communist country. He defied noisy suburban mayors who were opposed to expansion of O’Hare International Airport by agreeing with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley to build a new runway and realign others, breaking with decades of intransigence by Republican governors wary of losing political support in the GOP-dominated suburbs.

And, perhaps most important, he drew international acclaim for his efforts to reform the state’s capital justice system after 13 Death Row inmates had been wrongly convicted. His moratorium on executions and the possibility of a blanket commutation for everyone on Death Row has generated talk of a Nobel Prize.

Because of these accomplishments and others, his closest supporters insist this was far from a lost governorship. “I think the record for the last four years will speak for itself. The long list of thousands and thousands of good things that got done around the state by him, over time, people will recognize. They really set a record that will be hard to match for anybody in the future,’’ says businessman John Glennon, who was one of the main behind-the-scenes architects of Illinois First, serving as a finance adviser to Ryan.

“It was a contrast to the previous eight years, in terms of health care, education, transportation, really the basic issues government is supposed to address. I think his record is extraordinary.”

“In my view,’’ says former Gov. James Thompson, Ryan’s political mentor and personal lawyer, “and this is not popular to say, George Ryan has been one of the most effective governors in Illinois in my memory. The tragedy is his record from one office has precluded him from seeking re-election to the highest office, even though in four short years he’s been an extremely successful governor. That’s a tragedy. That is a political tragedy.”

But in a classic tragedy, the protag-onist’s character always prefigures his fall. A penchant for loyalty and an impatience with fine points are traits that were apparent early in George Ryan’s career. They helped him rise through the ranks. Yet such traits can hinder a leader at the top. Now, though their governor has not been charged with wrongdoing, voters are left to wonder whether he turned a blind eye to or took part in corruption in his secretary of state’s office, or whether he remained ignorant of illegal acts that took place on his watch.

Ryan refuses to explain.

Yet we do know how Ryan operated as he rose. He was able to amass his case of legislative trophies without displaying a strong mastery of details. And, as governor, it wasn’t uncommon for him to divert questions to aides, particularly if those questions involved specifics over financial issues. Former Gov. Jim Edgar, who put no issues above the budget in terms of importance, routinely attended budget briefings with reporters, tackling most if not all of the questions himself. Ryan never attended these off-the-record sessions, leaving explanations to his budget director.

Those who knew Ryan well over the years often described him as someone who was not hands-on, and at times aloof. “Even as a legislator,” says one top state Republican who asked not to be identified, “he wasn’t great on details of legislation. He was much more, ‘We have to get this done. We can sit down and give and take and move on.’ Those are the kinds of things that probably play better in the legislative branch than in the executive branch of government. I always thought that was part of his dilemma in the secretary of state’s office.”

At times, the principles on which Ryan stood were unclear. He often called himself flexible, but detractors built a case against him as a politician who would say anything to get elected. He raised taxes to support Illinois First after campaigning against tax increases. He contra- dicted himself when he helped put together a gambling deal that allowed owners of the shuttered Silver Eagle casino to move their operations to Cook County. In his campaign for governor, he did not favor opening Cook County to casinos, saying that amounted to an unacceptable expansion of gambling. As a candidate, he told suburban mayors he opposed expansion at O’Hare, including new runways, yet he changed once in office. What Ryan stood for, at times, depended on the moment and what was necessary to clinch the next big deal.

Partly because of his roots and partly because of his lengthy tenure in public office, Ryan embodied the archetypal cigar-chomping politician ready to do business in a backroom. The Kankakee Republican organization from which he and his older brother Tom emerged revolved around helping friends and family first, and maintaining an iron grip on power. Applicants for state jobs might get a boost if they car-shopped at the Cadillac dealership owned by the longtime county GOP chairman, Ed McBroom, a political tutor of Ryan’s. Kankakee’s politically connected could have traffic tickets torn up and could get the services of an on-duty police officer to shuttle them to and from one of Chicago’s airports during out-of-town trips. And, political fundraising tickets were distributed among public employees with the expectation they would sell them or cover the price themselves. This is the old-style political climate that produced Lennington Small, the state’s 26th governor, who was indicted and acquitted on charges of embezzling public funds.

Unwilling or unable to separate himself from his past, the governor brought what he learned to Springfield. He relished the perks of public office and the favors he could dole out to his pals. One of his initial concerns when he was handed the keys to the Executive Mansion was the possibility of installing an in-ground swimming pool, though a YWCA with a public pool was across the street. He also would mischievously bellow to reporters in his early days as governor, “Want a job?”

Beneath the surface, what went on in Kankakee looked like small potatoes compared to the corruption in Ryan’s secretary of state’s office. So far, federal prosecutors have convicted 50 people in the Operation Safe Road probe, which delved initially into the illegal exchanges of truck licenses for bribes that went into Ryan’s campaign fund. The investigation later shifted its focus to influence-peddling under Ryan and the alleged misuse of his state employees for political purposes.

Bauer was the first in Ryan’s inner circle to fall, and indictments are pending against Ryan’s former chief of staff and campaign manager Scott Fawell, close friend and businessman Larry Warner and former Springfield lobbyist Donald Udstuen. Ryan’s campaign fund also is under indictment for alleged racketeering.

“George Ryan has always been a very political animal,’’ says Pelissero, the Chicago political scientist who has observed Ryan’s career from afar. “He thought he understood how the political system worked in Illinois, that if you were going to be successful in political campaigns, there were certain things politicians did. It involved, certainly, having your people who’d come to benefit from your time in office continue helping you in your climb up the ladder. I think he surrounded himself with people who took that to an illegal level, in which there were huge conflicts of interest, the kickbacks, the bribe-taking, the use of state employees, the whole mess. Given his desire to get to be governor, I think he was willing to ignore too many of those likely infractions.”

Examples of his favoritism toward political allies abounded. Ryan’s secretary of state’s office accelerated the practice of handing out select license plates to campaign donors.

It also became a comfy place for out-of-work politicians. He put former legislators, including Republican Roger Stanley of Streamwood and Democrat Ted Lechowicz of Chicago on his secretary of state payroll briefly, allowing them to enhance their state pension benefits. (Stanley also is among those under federal indictment for an alleged payoff scheme that netted him $4 million in contracts from Metra, the suburban rail commuter agency.) Another friend Ryan helped was former Rep. Robert Brinkmeier, a Forreston Republican, whom Ryan gave a $35,500, three-year gig to promote the secretary of state’s speaker’s bureau.

And as governor, Ryan appointed Bauer to a $71,580-a-year job with the Illinois Department of Transportation that had been vacant for years. Like Stanley and Lechowicz before him, Bauer spent the exact amount of time it took to pad his pension before resigning. (He had to forgo that pension when convicted in the federal probe.) Of late, Ryan has taken heat for his desire to put chief of staff Robert Newtson and former press secretary Dave Urbanek in positions with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. To some politicians, such disclosures would merit embarrassment, but Ryan’s operation never backed off.

And yet it was his friends who caused problems for Ryan in the secretary of state’s office. His backers insist he was duped, that his intense loyalty was abused. But the Operation Safe Road investigation has put the onus on Ryan. After all, he chose and relied on Bauer, Fawell and Warner. Ryan didn’t inherit these people, all of whom were key members of an inner circle of advisers who have been either convicted or indicted in the federal probe. He handed the job of inspector general to Bauer in 1992, but Bauer admitted in a plea bargain with prosecutors to quashing investigations that would politically embarrass his boss and political patron. Fawell allegedly deployed state workers to Ryan’s political efforts and allegedly oversaw the corrupt fundraising mechanism in the secretary of state’s office. After engineering Ryan’s 1998 gubernatorial win, Fawell was tapped by Ryan for the $195,000-a-year job of managing McCormick Place and Navy Pier in Chicago. And Warner, dubbed by associates as the governor’s “right-hand man,” allegedly shook down contractors in the secretary of state’s office beneath Ryan’s very nose.

“Any governor, no matter how smart, cannot possibly have within his personal grasp every element, every statistic, every program of a state as large and diverse as Illinois. I don’t think Gov. Ryan delegated any more widely than his predecessors. You have to do that,’’ former Gov. Thompson says. “On the other hand, it’s fair to say George Ryan has trusted people who betrayed him. He’s a very trusting guy, a very loyal guy, a very human guy. I think it’s clear some people did take advantage of him.”

Anyone who has observed Ryan in action sees someone who sometimes finds it difficult to say no. That may partly explain the rapid growth of the state budget during Ryan’s four years and why his Illinois First program —which took political courage on the governor’s part to undertake — became the target of criticism for numerous pork-barrel projects sought by legislators and approved by Ryan’s administration. Saying no had been the hallmark of Ryan’s predecessor, Edgar, whose frugal ways helped the state weather recession in the early 1990s and left the treasury with a $1 billion surplus when he left office.

To someone completely enamored with the art of the deal, “no” isn’t a recognized part of the vernacular.

“I think Gov. Ryan’s strength was his legislative background,” Edgar says when asked about Ryan’s tenure. “He is a creature of the legislature, and I think that’s the person he is. That helped him in dealing with the legislature. But legislative skills aren’t always the skills people expect from a chief executive.’’

It has been said that in politics, sunshine is the best disinfectant. But for Ryan, openness wasn’t a strength, as his refusal to answer the most basic questions about Bauer demonstrated.

Edgar, for example, kept records of overnight guests at the mansion and filed lists in his annual statements of economic interest outlining who had given him gifts, down to T-shirts and chocolates. Both were ways to monitor who may be trying to influence the governor. But Ryan abandoned those efforts. Ryan’s public bill signings, a venue when he would come in contact with the Statehouse press corps, were kept to a minimum. Requests for interviews with his chief of staff, Newtson, were rejected. All were examples of a style within the administration that made the governor seem insular and secretive.

As Ryan heads into retirement, questions linger. Recent subpoenas of Springfield travel agencies for records related to him, his wife and another secretary of state official indicate a continuing interest by federal investigators in the Republican governor. Ryan has always insisted he does not believe he will be indicted but repeatedly has refused to answer whether he has been notified he may be a target.

Should he manage to remain out of the prosecutors’ scope, Thompson says Ryan could make a great lobbyist in Springfield. “I might have to retire,’’ jokes the former governor, who has assembled one of the state’s most impressive lobbying dossiers.

But before the book shuts on Ryan’s public life, words he spoke before a jammed civic center in Springfield on the day of his inauguration carry a poignant ring. These words speak to what George Ryan was during his four years in office and, regrettably, provide a reminder of what he failed to become: “I’ll be an advocate. I’ll try to formulate compromise and a deal. I hope very much it makes me a hero when I do it.”

Illinois Issues, November 2002

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