More Top Picks Best Knee Sleeves For Squats
player ready...Apart from taking his remarkable 68 percent approval rating and going home, Gov. Jim Edgar has created a big problem for the Republican Party in Illinois. He has blown its cover on abortion.
For the last two decades it hasn’t mattered much that the official line of the GOP and the position of most of its leaders has been out of step with public sentiment in favor of abortion rights. It hasn’t mattered because the governor of the state was pro-choice and a Republican. Jim Thompson, and then Jim Edgar, supported abortion rights, and that established the party’s image.
That’s going to end now. In all likelihood, the Republicans will have a 1998 ticket headed by two men who believe women should almost never be permitted to have an abortion.
Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan is the front-runner for the U.S. Senate nomination, if he decides to go for the job. On Wednesday, he announced an exploratory committee to be headed by the most prominent abortion foe in Congress, Rep. Henry Hyde. Ryan opposes all abortion rights except to save the life of the mother.
Republicans have all but conceded the nomination for governor to Secretary of State George Ryan, who holds the same views on abortion but would also make an exception for rape and incest.
It’s possible that either Ryan could choose not to run, or could be upset in a primary. But it’s not likely. Both are well-liked in the party and considered in the party mainstream, so they will have broad support. And both are decidedly conservative, so it will be difficult for someone to steal the primary by running to the right of either of them.
And even if the GOP doesn’t feature two Ryans at the top, virtually the entire cast of alternatives is filled with abortion foes.
The lone pro-choice Republican in the mix is Comptroller Loleta Didrickson, who announced awhile ago she wouldn’t run for the Senate, but is thinking about a race for governor or secretary of state now.
Does abortion matter in Illinois politics? You bet. Democrat Dick Durbin, a former abortion opponent who switched positions, used the issue effectively against Republican Al Salvi in the 1996 Senate race. A poll by Market Shares Corp., taken late in the campaign, showed voters clearly preferred Durbin’s position in favor of abortion rights. Most dramatic was voter distaste for Salvi’s, and Jim Ryan’s, view that abortion should not be permitted in cases of rape or incest. Two-thirds of voters opposed that position and barely one-quarter supported it.
Even though they’ve been in politics a long time, the two Ryans have had pretty much of a free ride on the abortion issue up until now.
As George Ryan knows, one of the beautiful things about being secretary of state is you’re always on the right side of the issues, which generally comes down to being against drunk drivers. After that, who cares what the guy who signs your driver’s license thinks about abortion?
During his five terms in the Illinois House, Ryan didn’t generate much controversy on abortion, either. As speaker of the House in the early 1980s he got far more criticism from women’s groups for almost single-handedly stalling passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
As lieutenant governor for Jim Thompson’s last two terms, Ryan deferred to Thompson, who supported abortion rights. But Ryan was also valued by abortion opponents as their voice in the governor’s office.
Jim Ryan finessed his way through two campaigns for attorney general, arguing that he opposed abortion but as the state’s lawyer he would uphold laws protecting abortion rights. “It’s a red herring,” Ryan often said. “It’s a legislative issue.”
That answer won’t work in a Senate race, and that answer was phony anyway. Abortion is a legal issue, too.
It took Jim Ryan only 16 days after he was sworn in as attorney general in 1995 to get himself in the middle of an abortion issue.
A Cook County Circuit judge struck down the constitutionality of a state law that prohibited public funding for abortions except when the mother’s life was endangered. The judge’s order, in effect, would have permitted more public funding for abortions.
Edgar announced that the state wouldn’t appeal the ruling. But Ryan defied Edgar and tried to file an appeal anyway. Ryan had to pull off some legal gymnastics to do it. The defendant in the case, the Department of Public Aid, didn’t want to appeal, and the deadline for appeal had expired. Ryan asked the Illinois Supreme Court to allow him to bring an appeal, but the court turned him down.
Both Ryans recognize that their views on abortion are a political problem in a high-profile state campaign. Jim Ryan tries to appeal to women by talking about his work as attorney general and DuPage County state’s attorney on child welfare and domestic violence. George Ryan is looking for a pro-choice woman he can enlist to be his running mate.
But voters know lieutenant governors don’t sign laws–governors do. Abortion is a powerful issue, one that could seriously hurt Republicans if they send up a Ryan daily double at the top of the 1998 ticket.
More Top Picks Best Grinders For Home Use
Loleta, what say you?