The voice is what you remember.
The booming baritone comes out of a face reminiscent of a grumpy bulldog. At times, it makes George Ryan seem gruff and stand-offish– those who don’t know him would say loud and harsh.
Other times, when he’s crammed a cigar into his mouth and kicks back in his Statehouse office, holding forth on how it’s nearly impossible to get things done these days, it makes him seem to be a relic of an era gone by, when politics meant loyalty and public service, a time when political backscratching was a form of currency and courtesy in Springfield.
That same voice promotes organ donation in television and radio advertising paid for with state money. And it is the same voice that opposes drunken driving, touts a hot line for senior citizens and, these days, George Ryan’s candidacy for governor of Illinois.
While the secretary of state’s office officially rules over the dull domain of driver’s licenses and license plates, Ryan has used it to become the spokesman for causes few could oppose. The office has become Ryan’s bully pulpit.
For Ryan, the job of secretary of state is much more than a line on a resume of a longtime aspirant to the governor’s office. It is a chance to bring his name and a host of benevolent messages into voters’ households.
In July, for example, Ryan’s name was printed on 503,000 refrigerator magnets advertising a seniors hot line. The cost to the state, including printing and mailing: $165,642.
Ryan, the Republican nominee in the Nov. 3 election for governor, brushes aside suggestions that he has used state programs for political gain.
“It’s called governing,” Ryan said.
George Homer Ryan Sr., 64, is an insider’s insider who came of age as a politician in the deeply embedded Republican fiefdom of Kankakee County. His brother, Tom, served as mayor of Kankakee, and Republicans there ran a farm club version of Chicago’s vaunted Democratic organization.
George Ryan rose through the ranks of the Kankakee County Board, becoming chairman. He then served 10 years in the General Assembly, moving up to House minority leader and two years as speaker of the last 177-member “Big House,” ending in 1983.
That time helped him assemble and then fine-tune a political and public relations machine that has touted him blatantly and subtly through his next two positions: eight years as lieutenant governor and eight years in the patronage-rich office of secretary of state.
“The secretary of state office is probably the greatest office in the United States,” recalled Jim Edgar, who used the office as his launching pad to the governor’s mansion, in a recent speech. “You don’t have all that many problems. You don’t get all that attention from the news media. For the most part, you don’t make many people mad.”
Now, the office pushes Ryan’s programs–along with his name–through posters, coasters, refrigerator magnets, bookmarks and leaflets. He is on television, movie screens, the Internet and coloring books.
In the last fiscal year alone, Ryan’s name appeared on 37 different types of brochures on topics ranging from vanity license plates to the office’s annual antique auto and sport car show.
To promote a family reading night scheduled for just weeks after the election, Ryan printed 1.2 million brochures, 1.5 million bookmarks, 500,000 postcards and 24,000 posters at a cost of $54,000. His name appeared on all of the items.
Overall, the office’s printing budget has averaged around $4 million a year, about what it was when Ryan took office.
Around the clock, callers who dial a toll-free number hear a recorded greeting from that familiar, authoritative voice: “Hello. This is Secretary of State George Ryan. Thank you for calling our touch-tone renewal system.”
Nearly a quarter of a million callers a year hear that message.
Larry Makinson, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C., think tank focusing on money in politics, said the efforts remind him of a sign he used to walk past on his way to grade school: “Welcome to Chicago, Richard J. Daley, Mayor.”
“You never forgot who the mayor was,” Makinson said. “There are perks to being an incumbent. One of them is that your name is out there 365 days a year, usually in connection with some service that you feel good about. In Illinois, in particular, politicians have carried this to a higher art form.”
“I don’t think I’ve gone overboard,” Ryan said, adding that using an official’s name is a standard practice.
“I know as I drive around the city of Chicago, I see Mayor Daley’s name on everything that he’s got,” Ryan said. “I think people are entitled to know who the secretary of state is, and that’s why my name is on it.”
Not everything Ryan puts his name on has been a success. Nor have all his programs and pet issues been new ones.
Edgar brought the state’s organ donor program to the forefront, but it was Ryan who appeared in promotional spots on television and in movie theaters throughout Illinois.
For three years starting in fiscal 1995, the secretary of state’s office spent $1 million on television spots for the organ donor program. The last fiscal year Ryan budgeted $1.3 million, an increase his staff attributes to rising prices.
Privately, though, Ryan staff members acknowledge that the state-paid spots saved the boss from spending political funds on biographical commercials in the governor’s race.
Likewise, Ryan picked up on Edgar’s crusade against drunken driving, fighting to lower the legal blood-alcohol level to .08 percent. There, too, he got his name before the public. As part of a designated driver program associated with the 1998 Super Bowl, Ryan distributed 100,000 drink coasters bearing his name.
Political foes have criticized Ryan, charging him with capitalizing on his office.
Only weeks before Ryan’s November 1994 re-election, Democratic challenger Patrick Quinn blasted the secretary of state for spending public dollars on 243,000 letters to parents of young drivers. The letters told of a law Ryan championed that would yank a youngster’s license for driving after even a sip of booze.
Though the letters came out just before the election, the law did not take effect until more than two months later.
In each case, Ryan defends the actions as justified and appropriate government functions.
The office has also proven a lucrative place to raise the other kind of political capital.
For example, a recent analysis documented that Ryan has a knack for generating contributions from donors with ties to his office. More than 800 of his employees have given nearly $750,000 to his campaign fund over the last four years.
Ryan insists there is no quid pro quo, however.
Other contributions to his campaigns have generated controversy, specifically charges that Ryan solicits the businesses he regulates. For example, Ryan has collected tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from the auto industry. In September, less than two months before the election, Ryan agreed to stop taking such contributions.
More recently, special state prosecutors began investigating whether Ryan’s staff got compensatory time off for doing political work to help legislative races during the 1996 campaign.
In a separate civil case, a former worker at the secretary of state’s facility in McCook said in a deposition she raised $82,000 in contributions, hitting up trucking companies that go through the office to get commercial licenses for their drivers.
Earlier this month, a federal grand jury indicted five people, including three former employees, after the FBI raided Ryan’s Melrose Park driver’s license facility in an alleged bribery scam involving truck driver permits.
Federal authorities say $150,000 in bribes were passed in the truck-license scandal and that tens of thousands of dollars were funneled to Ryan’s campaign fund. Authorities say Ryan is not a subject of the investigation.
Ryan denies any knowledge of bribe money going into his campaign kitty. But his campaign donated to a Chicago drug and treatment foundation $6,500 in contributions that had been made by two of the indicted workers over the past eight years.
Despite the poor political timing, “I’m happy these folks have been indicted and they’ve been caught,” Ryan said.
His personal finances have long been held close. Only this year did Ryan make public his income taxes despite that being customary practice by politicians seeking statewide office for years.
For 1997, Ryan and his wife, Lura Lynn, reported an adjusted gross income of $106,486. But that included $15,752 Ryan converted from his campaign committee to personal use for such items as tickets for Chicago Bulls games.
During previous statewide races, Ryan did not release tax returns covering the many years he was an officer with a family pharmacy and was raising six children, including triplets.
Those children and his 13 grandchildren all figure prominently in speeches, but his attempts on the campaign trail to demonstrate his concern for children often appear painfully forced.
At a Monday tour of a Harvey elementary school, he asked a 6-year-old girl, “What are you doing? Do you play baseball?” She did not respond beyond a puzzled look.
As his political fortunes have grown, many of his positions on volatile issues have moved toward the center.
During his stint in the General Assembly, Ryan often showed conservative stripes, such as general opposition to abortion rights legislation. But he also voted against–or did not support–bills to amend university civil service and public community college laws to ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Since then, his position on gay rights issues has evolved. He added sexual orientation into his office’s non-discrimination policy in 1996.
As speaker, Ryan opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, which failed in Illinois after a series of raucous hearings. He says now that he has no regrets because he believes he did what he thought was right at the time.
Now, as a candidate for governor, Ryan calls for boosting the percentage of state contracts for women-owned businesses. As secretary of state, he has supported legislation to crack down on child support deadbeats and backed literacy programs for abused women.
Another evolution in Ryan’s voting record deals with guns.
In his legislative days, Ryan described himself as a “longtime opponent of gun control” who supported tougher penalties for misuse of guns.
But as speaker in 1982, Ryan made a critical ruling that effectively killed a bill prohibiting local governments from outlawing handguns. The ruling ensured the bill’s failure–even though Ryan voted for it.
Later, as lieutenant governor, he pushed for an assault weapons ban–and frequently mentions that on the campaign trail, even though the proposal failed to become law.
Ryan’s position on gambling has also changed over the years, and cash has poured into his political coffers along the way.
As a gubernatorial candidate, Ryan opposes increasing the number of riverboat gambling licenses and allowing floating casinos into Cook County, the only county where they are banned.
“I’m not for the expansion of gambling,” Ryan said. “That means there would be no new boats, no new gambling operations. Now, if they transferred a license someplace from one spot to another, I guess that’s not an expansion.”
Money has come in from those who might want to keep competition out, as well as from those who might like to see gambling expanded.
In the first six months of this year, Ryan collected more than $150,000 from individuals and companies involved or in the market for gambling business.
For example, Ryan collected more than $60,000 in cash and in-kind contributions from the family and inner circle of Richard L. Duchossois, owner of the shuttered Arlington International Racecourse and a one-time aspirant for a riverboat license.
Ryan’s campaign maintains the donations have no influence on him.
But his gambling positions have changed over the years.
In 1994, Ryan suggested Illinois should “do it right” and put a land-based casino in Chicago because the state already had riverboat gambling.
In May 1995, Ryan proposed 10 new riverboat casino licenses for Chicago and its suburbs to help generate tax revenue aimed at paying off the state’s Medicaid debt. The proposal quickly ran aground, and Ryan said he has had second thoughts.
“That was when the state was in $300 million worth of debt,” Ryan said. “There were businesses in this state that hadn’t been paid and were closing up, and I had received a lot of complaints about that, and I thought there was an opportunity to generate some income.”
In the previous two years before Ryan’s expansion proposal, he had received about $71,000 in contributions from gambling interests while health-care providers gave him about $75,000.
His legislative letters recount other examples of Ryan’s political balancing acts:
As minority leader in 1978, he first defended a controversial $8,000-a-year legislative pay increase but later wrote to constituents how the General Assembly responded to the citizenry’s concerns by retooling and phasing in the pay hike.
Voter outrage over the pay raise helped fuel the Cutback Amendment that cut the House membership by a third–a move Ryan has long maintained hurt the legislative process. But Ryan now dismisses questions about whether the public’s backlash surprised him.
“It’s 20 years ago. I don’t remember what went on,” Ryan said. “I got re-elected, I guess. From that position, I went on and got elected lieutenant governor. So I don’t know.”
