It’s the day after the March primary and the sun is barely up. Democrat Rod Blagojevich said he’d only managed a catnap–40 minutes–the whole night long. Pumped? That barely described Blagojevich’s ebullience as he shook hands with rush hour commuters at Union Station in what has become a Chicago post-election cliche.
Only blocks away, Jim Ryan, the GOP primary winner, was working another election tradition. By 6 a.m. he was at Lou Mitchell’s, in time for the early breakfast rush. At their tables, the breakfast regulars waited eagerly, hoping to mingle with the candidate over coffee and double-yolk eggs.
That never happened.
Ryan stuck hard by the Milk Duds and doughnut holes at the front of the restaurant doing media interviews. When those were done, he hopped in his waiting van and headed off.
The contrast between the Democrat and the Republican running for governor was stark and telling.
At another time, in different circumstances, style and tone might have mattered less.
But in this election year, filled with scandal and economic jitters, voters were eager to embrace a candidate who reached out to them, who claimed to embody change. Ryan’s image as a steady but restrained leader didn’t sell to voters looking for someone to shake things up.
The bottom line was this: The Blagojevich campaign had the appeal of presents in sparkly bows on Christmas morning; Ryan mustered all the allure of a parking ticket outside the dentist’s office.
The events that brought Blagojevich to the train station and Ryan to the nearby coffee shop on that post-primary morn began long before, and would continue for many months to come, culminating in an Election Day where voters put an end to a generation of Republican dominance in Springfield.
It took a confluence of aggressive strategy, hard work, Republican missteps and getting all the breaks to pull off that feat.
Blagojevich, married to the daughter of clout-heavy Ald. Richard Mell (33rd), gambled that he wouldn’t face high-profile, lavishly funded competition in the primary. He didn’t. He set out early to raise a mountain of cash. He did. That scared off the most fearsome Democratic challengers in the early going and allowed him to dominate the airwaves later on.
Blagojevich also had the extreme good luck to draw a Republican opponent who had the extreme bad luck to bear the same last name as the most unpopular Illinois governor in recent history. And try as he might, Jim Ryan just couldn’t erase the tarnish that–fairly or not–had rubbed off on all Republicans, thanks to the scandal associated with George Ryan.
And there was more good fortune for Blagojevich, who wound up running the same year that the powerful Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan took on the holy crusade of electing his daughter, Lisa Madigan, as Illinois attorney general. There was no love lost between the two candidates, but each benefited from the well-funded and intricately choreogaphed efforts by their Chicago machine relatives to get voters to the polls.
All of this–the skill, the work, the luck–came together in spite of a Republican tide that washed across the rest of the nation. One more lucky break for the 45-year-old Blagojevich: that adage of the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill held true. On Election Day, in Illinois, in 2002, all politics was local.
Blagojevich’s plan
On primary night, the little-known three-term congressman from the Northwest Side had bested two better-known opponents by having piles of cash and the foresight to go prospecting Downstate for votes.
At the time, the conventional wisdom had been that the “good old boys” Downstate could never bring themselves to cast a ballot for a man with an anti-gun reputation who also had made an influential enemy in popular Downstate pol Glenn Poshard, the Democrat who lost to George Ryan in 1998.
Then there was the thought that Downstaters would never buy a name so markedly ethnic as Blagojevich.
It turned out that the opposite was true. To this day, they still can’t pronounce Blah-GOY-a-vich, and it doesn’t matter. It comes out Bag-loy-a-vich, Bally-og-a-vich, even Bag-a-chips–and after listening to his stump speech a few times, it was even Blow-hard-a-vich. But they still voted for him.
As Blagojevich told them in union halls and smoky bingo games in VFWs, if his Serbian dad had settled Downstate instead of in Chicago, Rade Blagojevich would have been a coal miner instead of a steelworker. That, plus a promise to create new jobs or help them keep ones they had, was critical to his winning strategy.
Some of the earliest conversations about the governor’s race were the “what-if” strategy talks that Blagojevich had during the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles with Rep. Jay Hoffman (D-Collinsville), who shared an apartment with the Chicago Democrat a decade ago when they served in the legislature.
The question became, quite simply, “Where are we gonna get the votes?” The answer, equally simple, was go Downstate, where Hoffman, a lawmaker whose district includes shuttered coal mines and angry laid-off miners, knew that promises of jobs and economic development would sell.
With little name recognition, Blagojevich began the year trailing opponents Roland Burris, a former Illinois attorney general, and Paul Vallas, the former Chicago schools chief.
Still, Blagojevich had a wagonload of the mother’s milk of politics: cash. Using the influence of his wife Patti’s dad and unions whose support he cultivated regularly, he entered the primary with $4.1 million to spend. That was more than four times then-front runner Burris’ war chest and it overwhelmed Vallas’ negligible $332,000.
With all that money, Blagojevich was the first Democrat on TV, debuting commercials Downstate in late January, stressing his message of “opportunities for working people” and his family’s immigrant roots: “My name is eastern European, my story is American.”
By lining up organizational support from the AFL-CIO and early backing of Downstate party chairmen, the Blagojevich campaign amassed 55 percent of the Downstate vote, enough to eke out a slim win over Vallas, who won the suburbs, and Burris, who won the city.
Raising the money, getting the endorsements (especially from big-spending unions), working Downstate, having a plan and sticking to it with a white-hot intensity. It worked in the primary and it became the blueprint for the rest of the campaign as well.
The Republicans
Ryan, 56, the two-term Illinois attorney general, played the front-runner game in the primary, shying from controversy and taking as few stands as possible. His lesser-known rivals, state Sen. Patrick O’Malley on the right and Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood on the left, screamed for attention by ripping into Ryan’s character and competence.
The Rose Garden strategy suited the temperament of Ryan, whose entire public life–10 years as DuPage County state’s attorney and the last eight as Illinois attorney general–was built on a deliberate plodder’s approach.
The back-slapping bonhomie of retail politics never came easily to Ryan. He confided that he found it “presumptuous” to go up to strangers and glad hand.
Although he was way ahead of Wood and O’Malley in the polls, Ryan launched an ill-advised and expensive TV ad campaign that siphoned off cash–as did a bloated primary campaign payroll–that left him scraping for money when he really needed it. One staffer who joined the campaign after the primary joked it was like “joining an Ethiopian relief mission–without the food or the water.”
Ryan swamped his primary opponents, but their attacks took a toll. His popularity ratings went down and so did his fundraising.
By the final weeks of the fall campaign, the Ryan camp was so broke that campaign staffers would make forays to the state GOP’s offices to swipe toilet paper for their headquarters on Randolph Street.
But that’s getting ahead of the story.
Primary election night
Blagojevich didn’t stop to savor his primary night win. Instead, he used his victory speech to pick up where Ryan’s primary opponents left off.
“Jim Ryan’s fellow Republicans have it right,” Blagojevich bellowed from the winner’s stage. “At a moment when leadership was needed most to fight corruption, the attorney general cut and ran.” This claim, that Jim Ryan as attorney general did nothing to investigate the unfolding scandal of selling driver’s licenses for bribes when Republicans ran the secretary of state’s office, had been O’Malley’s theme song.
The two nominees had survived one of the most raucous, divisive, nasty–and obscenely expensive–primary elections. Now, Blagojevich was making it clear that there was more invective where that came from.
“He hasn’t even thanked his supporters and he’s already attacking me,” Ryan complained.
For the general election, both sides would need hip boots to slog through all the mud.
The sleaze factor
“They’re angry and you can’t blame them,” Ryan said of the voters. “They’re tired of all the misconduct, all the corruption. They’re tired of our fiscal irresponsibility. They want us to change the way we do business in Springfield.”
Making it clear that Jim Ryan was the total opposite of Gov. George Ryan was so essential to the Republican game plan that a sign on the deputy campaign manager’s wall read, “It’s about George, Stupid!”
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Now, Jim Ryan was left to try and make the case that he, a member of the governor’s own party was the instrument of the change that those angry voters yearned for. And every time he thought he might be making some headway, along came another GOP debacle to remind voters of Republican misdeeds.
Just a month after Jim Ryan’s post-primary visit to Lou Mitchell’s, the feds unveiled a sweeping indictment outlining a crude and illegal scheme to get George Ryan elected governor that reached to the core of the governor’s inner circle.
As Jim Ryan tried, with limited success, to distance himself from the woes of his party, Blagojevich was crowing about his record cash haul in the first half of the year.
The ultra-disciplined Democrat was paying so much attention to raising money that one well-connected, and impressed, Downstate Democratic activist said the word was out that Blagojevich wouldn’t show up at a fundraiser unless you could promise he’d come away with $30,000 or more.
“His people told me they’d had to raise $33,000 each day, every day of the week or, `We’re not going to win.’ They budgeted $15 million for the general and they broke it down by the day.”
Similarly, Blagojevich was focused on the message he was selling: Time for a change and education. Jobs. Prescription drug coverage for seniors. Health care for poor children. Reprioritizing the budget.
With a possible $2.5 billion budget shortfall, exactly how would he pay for all this? Blagojevich ducked and dodged and all but declared, “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Only rarely was he compelled to deflect attacks from Ryan, largely because the measured, lawyerly Republican, to the chagrin of his handlers, was reluctant to fire direct shots at his opponent–at least in person.
Ryan’s campaign wasn’t as reserved as the candidate, however. In what may be the earliest start for a general election ad campaign in an Illinois governor’s race, Ryan began airing spots Downstate that tried to paint Blagojevich as an opponent of gun rights but a defender of gay rights and abortion. Aimed at conservative Democrats, the message was concise: This guy is just too liberal for you.
The ad sent the Blagojevich forces into emergency campaign mode, with a strategy for counterattack drafted by the candidate and top staff as they gathered around a beat-up table in the rear of their spartan campaign headquarters next to a runners’ shop on North Lincoln Avenue in Lakeview.
“We’re not going to let any negative go unanswered,” senior adviser David Wilhelm said. And for the rest of the campaign, they didn’t.
Within 48 hours, Blagojevich was hitting back with his own TV campaign that featured split-screen images of Jim and George Ryan and then launched into what would become a campaign mantra: “Jim Ryan didn’t lift a finger” as the state’s top lawyer to investigate the licenses-for-bribes scandal that was consuming Republicans.
As Blagojevich was firing back, Ryan’s Republican party continued to implode.
In June, House Republican leader Lee Daniels was forced out as state GOP chairman after questions were raised about his legislative staff members doing campaign work on state time.
What followed was even more humiliating as Republicans conducted a frantic and public three-week search to find someone willing to replace Daniels. Jim Ryan’s first choice, former Gov. Jim Edgar, couldn’t be persuaded to take the captain’s job on the Titanic. Ryan’s second and third choices also said “no” before businessman Gary MacDougal, not exactly a household name, agreed to take the job.
Struggling to distance himself from the scandals engulfing his party, Jim Ryan stepped up his public criticism of George Ryan and all but called for the governor to resign.
While all this was going on, Jim Ryan’s campaign was adrift. What the campaign lacked was “someone to set a theme, make decisions,” recalled Allen Grosboll, the campaign’s policy and issues director.
Finally, after months of miscues, political pro Carter Hendren came on as campaign manager in mid-July. Though it seems rather basic, it was only then that “the focus became a specific idea of what the candidate was going to do that day, that week,” Grosboll said.
In the midst of the GOP disasters, President Bush made a brief and non-political visit to Argonne National Laboratory intended to highlight the White House fight against terrorism. Said one Republican strategist, “It’s ironic that President Bush is visiting Illinois to discuss `homeland security’ at a time when Illinois Republicans need him to protect us from ourselves.”
The State Fair I
Traditionally, the election season doesn’t get under way until after Labor Day, but the big preview event is always the Illinois State Fair in heatstroke August. This is when each party gathers in Springfield at its own special day to preen for the voters amid the prize hogs, ear-rattling tractor pulls and fanciful fried foods served on skewers.
Republican Day presented the GOP with the opportunity to show off its candidates, parade party unity, to shift the focus from Republican scandal.
“I’m the Republican nominee and this is my party,” Jim Ryan declared to assembled Republicans. “Now we have to look forward, not back. That’s what I’m doing.”
Maybe so, but he was the only one.
Even before the day’s events got under way, a top Jim Ryan campaign staffer confided, “We could run Jesus Christ and he’d lose as long as George shoots his mouth off.”
Then George shot off his mouth.
Emerging like some bestirred creature surfacing from the primordial ooze, Gov. Ryan reminded voters of GOP scandal, infighting and disarray. The corn dog and funnel cake stands had barely opened at the fair when he began chewing out top GOP officials and members of the Republican ticket for harping on corruption instead of touting his accomplishments.
With the crusty governor spouting off, it was as though Jim Ryan had been tied to a stake atop a woodpile and George Ryan suddenly lit the pyre with a stick of TNT. As the party collapsed around him, Jim Ryan was left to feebly declare that the governor was “entitled to his opinion, but I can tell you people are demanding change.”
The State Fair II
Picking up where the feuding Republicans left off, state Democrats stood in a circle the next morning and started firing. Democrat Day at the fair saw party leader and House Speaker Mike Madigan responding to a Blagojevich charge that Madigan was displaying “arrogance” by steering state grants to a college classmate.
“I don’t plan to be critical of Blagojevich,” Madigan said, then proceeded to do precisely that. “I could talk about some of his indiscretions, but I don’t plan to do that because I plan to be a strong party chair and work to bring all the Democrats together.”
He refused to elaborate.
Blagojevich tried to simultaneously minimize the rift as “family squabbles” and to continue his criticism of Madigan and the pork-barrel budget process in Springfield. What better way to sell himself as the candidate of change than to take on the much-feared House speaker?
In the end, the Democratic spat at the State Fair proved more a sideshow that did little to impede the well-organized, well-funded Blagojevich campaign. The Democrat spent the summer months rolling up endorsements from big-spending special interest groups, many that usually back Republicans but sensed the winds were shifting.
The biggest coup for Blagojevich? The decision by the Illinois State Medical Society, long an unshakable financial ally of Republicans, to support him.
The general election
It was just two days after Labor Day, and George Ryan was at it again. He got a lot of people to sit up and focus on the election when he erupted at the attorney general.
“Jim Ryan’s been a lousy candidate,” George Ryan said. Jim Ryan shot back, “Gov. Ryan presided over probably the worst scandal in Illinois history. So, I don’t need any suggestions from Gov. Ryan about how to run my campaign.”
What set off the governor this time was Jim Ryan’s explanation that he was doing poorly in the polls because voters think Jim Ryan is the scandal-scarred George.
The name confusion, however, was not the key reason Ryan had gone from even in the polls in April to 17 points behind in late August. Said a top Ryan campaign staffer, “Blagojevich came out of the [primary] campaign running at 150 miles an hour.” After the slow pace of the Rose Garden primary strategy, “Jim Ryan came out of the primary at 20 miles an hour–in a school bus.”
Ryan campaign staffers complained that their man would insist on extensive study of an issue “like preparing a case for trial” before holding a news conference. “And then he still doesn’t use it. He requires a high burden of proof. If there’s any doubt, he won’t use it.”
Late in the campaign, after much cajoling from spokesman Dan Curry, Ryan agreed to shake hands for 30 minutes with bystanders on a cold afternoon outside Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue. After five minutes he got back into the van and dryly told Curry, “I got 10 votes and double pneumonia.”
Another problem was money. For August and part of September, the better-financed Democrat had the airwaves to himself and launched a series of ads–all of them issue-oriented efforts aimed at telling people how he would solve their problems.
Ryan picked up his personal appearance schedule hoping for free TV coverage when he noted that even during treatment for three different bouts with cancer, he went to work. In contrast, he accused the frenetically campaigning Blagojevich of blowing off his real job in Congress. And for good measure, Ryan went Downstate and warned that under Mell’s son-in-law, the state Capitol would become an “annex” to Chicago’s City Hall and that the Democratic ticket was trying to export the city’s worst ward hacks to Springfield.
Throughout the campaign, Mell uncharacteristically kept his mouth shut so he wouldn’t undercut Blagojevich’s chances. But a rumor-filled Republican whispering campaign about the Democrat, fed by the House speaker’s “indiscretions” comment at the State Fair, led Mell to break his silence.
Mell phoned a Chicago radio station and went on the air to decry the “gutter stuff that is being put out there by the opposition.” But he horrified Blagojevich’s campaign by proceeding to repeat for listeners across the Midwest one of the rumors. For the first time, the Democrat’s tightly scripted campaign operation had lost control of its message and aides went into a frenzy of spin control trying to talk the news media out of reporting Mell’s comments.
The debates
Even if the problems George Ryan created for the GOP nominee had never existed, Jim Ryan had a political weak spot that Blagojevich was just aching to exploit. It was only a matter of finding the right time to do it.
His opportunity came after a polite joint appearance before the Commercial Club of Chicago, when Blagojevich used a sidewalk talk with reporters about death penalty reform to hammer Ryan for the bungled DuPage County murder prosecution of Rolando Cruz.
Cruz was twice sentenced to death after being convicted of the murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico before he was found not guilty in a third trial amid allegations that police and prosecutors had manufactured evidence against him.
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To hear Blagojevich tell it, Ryan had no credibility to fix a faulty system of capital punishment.
Ryan, ever the prosecutor, would only acknowledge the courts had found Cruz not guilty and that his prosecution was based on what he knew at the time. No apology. No remorse.
Yet Ryan, always looking for a way to demonize Blagojevich over his ties to Chicago politics, tried to blunt the Democrat’s attacks over Cruz with a diversion. If Blagojevich was so concerned about faulty prosecutions, Ryan said, he should also attack his general campaign chairman, a former Cook County prosecutor who also happens to be the mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley.
For weeks Ryan tried to fend off the Cruz attacks with stock answers delivered with index-card precision. He did it through two broadcast debates with Blagojevich and was doing so in a third, three weeks before Election Day, when the Democrat decided to shift gears.
Nearing the end of their hourlong faceoff, Blagojevich began a narrative with, “Let me tell you a story …” as he tried to connect Jim Ryan to the death of six children in a horrific traffic accident linked to the licenses-for-bribes scandal. Ryan, showing more emotion than at any time in the campaign, was outraged by the baseless charge and he fired back, “Have you no shame?”
The Ryan forces were ecstatic. They thought Democrats finally had given them an opening, one that stirred the staid Ryan to display some fire.
Those in the Ryan camp convinced themselves that momentum had shifted their way, a feeling bolstered when a St. Louis newspaper poll on the final Sunday of the campaign declared the race a tie and their candidate got some brief face time with President Bush.
There was finally an energy and smile to the campaign–even though it was based more on emotion than fact. That became evident shortly after the polls closed at 7 p.m.
“Well, that’s it,” Ryan said when aides handed him partial vote totals that showed he couldn’t catch up. He called Blagojevich to concede at 9:19 p.m. Tuesday, spoke to his supporters in a hotel ballroom and was ushered out the back door to a waiting van.
The following day, Ryan stayed out of sight, at home in Elmhurst.
Gov.-elect Blagojevich, who had slept only an hour after declaring to Illinois voters that his heart contained “nothing but a whole bunch a hunka-hunka burnin’ love for each one of you,” was back at a commuter stop for the morning rush. This time it was the CTA Blue Line’s Jefferson Park station at 6 a.m. As if the campaign had never stopped, Blagojevich was grabbing voters by the hand, diving into the crowds, signing autographs on anything he was handed, even dirty scraps of paper picked up off the platform.
“You can call me Rod,” he told one jubilant supporter. “I’m here to stay!”
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For additional photos, go to chicagotribune.com/govphotos.