I’m from Kankakee. That accident of
birth automatically put me on George Ryan’s A-list. Everybody
from Kankakee was given special treatment. Ryan treated me
differently than he did many other reporters. But being from Kankakee also had its
downside. Kankakeeans were supposed to be “on the
team,” and I clearly wasn’t. Ryan thought I should have
given him more breaks, and he wasn’t shy about telling me so.
I kept writing, he kept complaining, and we’d forgive each
other during the lulls. I’ve always been torn about George
Ryan. I was proud that someone from my family’s hometown had
made it all the way to the top. I was also particularly pleased
that Ryan seemed to rise above much of what made Kankakee such an
embarrassment, especially its harsh racism. Through it all, though, in the back of my
mind I was constantly wondering whether Ryan had moved away from
that other dark spot on Kankakee’s soul — its
corruption. Gov. Len Small, a Kankakeean, forged an unholy
political alliance with Al Capone’s organization in the
1920s, and that brought the mob to town. Small’s disgustingly
corrupt ways set the tone for how the city and county operated for
the next half century. For instance, Ryan’s political mentor
Ed McBroom, who ran the local Republican Party for decades, made
big bucks from selling state and municipal jobs. If you wanted a
government job, you had to buy a car from McBroom’s auto
dealership —- the better the job, the nicer the car. Ryan himself was investigated in the early
1980s, while he was still speaker of the House, for an alleged
shakedown attempt of local nursing homes. Ryan was a pharmacist,
and nursing-home owners were allegedly encouraged to overcharge for
drugs and then kick back the difference to Ryan’s stores.
Those who wouldn’t play ball were allegedly threatened with
visits by a wide array of state and local inspectors. The
investigation quietly disappeared after Ryan was elected Jim
Thompson’s lieutenant governor in 1982, and many of us hoped
that Ryan would be scared straight by the experience. Despite what you read in the papers, things
have changed in Illinois. We’re a lot cleaner than we were
even 20 years ago. What Ryan was convicted of last week would have
been dismissed as penny-ante stuff in the 1970s or even the
’80s. Maybe that’s why Ryan seems so sure of
his own innocence, even after being convicted on all counts. He saw serious corruption
firsthand in Kankakee and is convinced that he never approached that
level of lawlessness as lieutenant governor, secretary of state, or
governor. But the times changed faster than Ryan was
willing to accept. He fudged his taxes just enough, he cadged just
enough dough from friends, he steered just enough sweet contracts
to his pals that, barring a successful appeal (and the lying by
many of his jurors may mean he’ll never do a day in prison),
he is now facing 20 years or more behind bars. I happen to think that George Ryan was one of
the most natural political leaders this state has ever produced. He
knew how to get things done, and he knew what he wanted to do. But I keep coming back to those six dead
Willis children. The children died in a fiery car crash after their
father ran over a chunk of metal that fell off a semitruck driven
by someone who had paid a bribe to get his license. Their deaths
led to the licenses-for-bribes probe that eventually ensnared Ryan
himself. Ryan didn’t invent the
licenses-for-bribes scheme — it goes back decades — so
it’s very possible that even if someone else was secretary of
state, those Willis children would have suffered the same fate. But Ryan not only didn’t clean up the
office when he was first elected in 1990, he actually made the
situation much worse in his second term, immediately after those
kids were killed in ’94. Instead of wiping the slate clean,
Ryan installed the vigorously corrupt Scott Fawell as his chief of
staff, ramped up the licenses-for-bribes program beyond anything
seen before, harassed whistleblowers and shut down all
investigations that attempted to root out the corruption and get to
the truth about why those children died. For that, he should rot.
This article appears in Apr 27 – May 3, 2006.
