So much for America, the melting pot. One guy named Ryan is stepping down as Illinois governor, another guy named Ryan is instantly running to succeed him and a third guy named Ryan is mulling a Senate race.
Folks know George, the beleaguered governor, who showed signs of Castro-like windbaggery in his seemingly endless announcement last week that he would not run for another term.
Then there is Jim, the popular Republican attorney general who has battled cancer and appears to be an early favorite.
Under the radar screen comes Jack Ryan, a little-known North Shore Republican who is tinkering with a formidable notion, namely running as a relative political novice versus incumbent Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin in 2002.
This Ryan’s name has surfaced just once previously in the baiduhai, in the Inc. gossip column. But a small but influential group in the capital knows him as a serious fellow with an interesting story and boatloads of money, which explains a Washington-based process one might tag the Courting of Jack Ryan.
“Chris Dudley, who is Midwest coordinator for the Republican Party, heard I was going to Washington for the Bush inaugural and put me in contact with the head of the GOP Senatorial Campaign Committee,” Ryan recalled Friday.
So he watched the festivities on a TV at the campaign committee office, and its top official spent more than two hours asking him lots of questions about his life. It’s the sort of chat that both parties hold many times as they seek to cultivate potential candidates.
The reasons the Republicans were intrigued by Ryan, 41, included the following: He’s young, vibrant, very handsome (when he surfaced in our bureau, female heads turned), very wealthy and has what consultants would call a “good story.” Further, they don’t have anybody obvious to take on Durbin, even though the incumbent’s camp has been worried about potential vulnerabilities, such as soft name recognition in some areas.
The personal story goes like this: He grew up on the North Shore; attended Dartmouth College and Harvard Law and Business Schools; worked at a refugee camp for Central Americans in Texas; spent 15 years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, where he made millions of dollars; and then split to teach at the all-black, all-boys Hales Franciscan High School on the South Side for $26,000 a year, making a hefty donation when it faced financial troubles.
He’s not a complete political novice, having been a precinct captain in New Trier Township, run twice as a Steve Forbes delegate to Republican national conventions and donated to the campaigns of Illinois House Minority Leader Lee Daniels (R-Elmhurst).
But it was clearly the turn to teaching that caught the attention of his party, and has been exploited by him. He knows that “I fit the Bush compassionate conservative theme,” along with supporting free trade, school choice and certain forms of affirmative action and being against the McCain-Feingold campaign finance proposal.
He clearly impressed the GOP’s Senate campaign staff. “There’s definitely interest due to the story he has to tell,” one aide told me. “He brings a different experience to the table.”
He also brings a big bankroll. He concedes that he would be willing to finance some of a campaign, but nothing like the self-financing that former Goldman Sachs chief executive Jon Corzine relied on when he used his huge fortune to essentially buy a Senate seat from New Jersey.
“This would not be Jon Corzine 2,” Ryan told me.
Upon returning home after the inauguration, he ratcheted up his exploration, including chatting with party stalwarts such as former Republican Govs. Jim Thompson and Jim Edgar, and spending a few thousand dollars on focus groups to gauge potential interest.
He hit the road to meet the party hardcore at three dozen Lincoln Day Dinners statewide, pressing the flesh of activists and generally condensing his life and potential political aspirations to the five minutes generally allotted.
Would the rank and file, especially south of Springfield, go for a rich Dartmouth-Harvard pretty boy from the North Shore (who is the divorced father of a 6-year-old boy)? He was not discouraged by his reception.
He sat down in a west suburban hotel lobby with Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a remarkable heart-transplant-surgeon-turned-politician who oversees the GOP Senate campaign group. Frist accentuated the possibility that his lack of a political background, as was true for Frist, could be a strength. After all, Frist beat a popular incumbent, Jim Sasser, in 1994.
Last month, Ryan’s musings got more serious with a series of meetings here, including one at the White House with Ken Melman, right-hand guy for Karl Rove, President’s Bush’s top political strategist, and discussion with the GOP campaign committee.
“They would like a credible candidate in Illinois and asked what would I need in terms of help and what forms of help, be it visits [by prominent Republicans] or assistance in raising money, they could provide.”
There were visits with various A-list Republicans such as Jack Kemp and William Bennett, as well as a trek to the offices of political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, a very astute political insider who turns out a newsletter on political campaigns nationwide.
“In some ways, Ryan reflects the kind of candidates party insiders have been recruiting for a number of election cycles,” Rothenberg said. “He has a lot of money, doesn’t have a record to pick apart and could run as an outsider who could change the system.
“On specifics, he’s about as close to typical Republican candidates as Mercury is to Neptune,” Rothenberg said. “If you look at him, you might think he’s the typical white-shirt, blue-suit, button-down candidate. But he talks of the inner city and helping the less well-to-do and is somebody who likes the idea of new ideas and approaches, whether or not they fit the party orthodoxy.
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“I thought he might be terrific as a candidate except in one area: He may be too intellectual. He’s kind of a high brow. Anybody who starts referring to Milton Friedman and Adam Smith, you wonder whether he can talk to the guy in the corner bar.”
Hmmm. That comment reminded me of some give-and-take between announcers Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall during a meaningless White Sox game long ago. Mike Marshall, a star and idiosyncratic relief pitcher with a graduate degree from Michigan State, came in for the other team and Caray groused about how “in this country you work hard to send the kids to good schools and, now with this guy, the rap is that he’s too smart! It’s crazy!”
So what will Ryan do?
For starters, he will return to the classroom Aug. 20, teaching English Lit to freshmen. The conventional wisdom is that he would really have to fish or cut bait soon, around Labor Day, unless he were to hold off and run as an independent, which doesn’t seem part of the calculus.
He is committed to teach through the fall. He’s done the focus groups, which don’t make clear whether he’d be a potential hit or disaster.
“I was hoping the research would make things clear,” he said. “But the conversations with friends and family, and the polls, haven’t.”
“I’m conflicted,” he said. “I think I’m doing a reasonable job at Hales. Do I leave that for 14 months and make a huge financial commitment? And any reasonable person feels shy about asking people for money. I’m not Jon Corzine. I was two levels below him at Goldman Sachs. “
Then, of course, there is the Durbin Factor.
Make no mistake, the incumbent appears to be working his butt off. Press releases touting achievements and comments on various matters are escalating, as have TV and radio appearances back home. If he was conceivably a bit blase before, suggestions of low name recognition in places may help explain a seeming renewed aggressiveness as he protects his ongoing rise in the Democratic Senate hierarchy.
Ryan does not seem given to hubris. He can cite the precious few incumbent senators not involved in scandal or other real travail who have lost seats in recent years.
“Is it possible to beat an incumbent? Yes. Is it difficult to do? Yes.”
Will the kids at Hales Franciscan have their devoted English Literature teacher, say, next winter? Despite the arm-twisting here, that answer may be yes, too.