Illinois culture of blending politics, state jobs in question

From The Daily Southtown:

Illinois culture of blending politics, state jobs in question

Monday, April 8, 2002

By Nicole Ziegler Dizon
The Associated Press

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In a city where federal prosecutors have made careers out of prosecuting political corruption, the indictment of Gov. George Ryan's campaign committee as a criminal enterprise broke new ground.

The U.S. attorney's office said it was only the third time a political campaign had faced federal charges, after Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign and organizations tied to Lyndon LaRouche's 1984 bid for president.

Yet much of what Ryan's committee is accused of doing — using state employees to do political work, rewarding loyal campaigners with raises and promotions — has been a quietly accepted tradition of Illinois politics. Now politicians are left to wonder whether their campaigns can hold up under similar scrutiny during a busy election year.

"It should be a wake-up call to everybody that they should be doing everything on the up and up," said Pat Quinn, the Democratic lieutenant governor candidate. "I think that it certainly makes everyone very careful."

In indictments Tuesday against Ryan's campaign fund and two of his former top aides, federal prosecutors portrayed a powerful Republican political machine dependent on state workers who were expected to sell fundraising tickets and do campaign work on the taxpayers' dime, reaping workplace benefits if they reached their quotas.

Some workers in the secretary of state office that Ryan ran before becoming governor have admitted they tried to meet fundraising goals by selling driver's licenses to unqualified truck drivers. Prosecutors, who started the grand jury investigation into bribery allegations in 1998, say at least $170,000 in bribe money ended up in the Citizens for Ryan campaign.

Ryan has not been charged with wrongdoing and has refused to answer questions about the indictments. The governor, who announced in August amid plummeting popularity that he would not seek a second term, said there is "absolutely no truth" to rumors he may resign before the November election.

Illinois has long been notorious for blurring the line between government and politics, most notably under the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. He presided over a political machine legendary for its ghosts — both on the city's payroll and voter rolls.

Former U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, an Illinoisan and former chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, went to prison in 1996 after admitting he used government money to buy gifts for allies and to pay workers for personal and political work.

Former Gov. Otto Kerner was convicted of bribery and income tax evasion in 1973 for trading political favors for racetrack stock. And when former Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell died in 1970, an unexplained $800,000 was found stuffed in shoeboxes in his Springfield hotel room.

"We assume in Illinois that politics is a dirty business and a little bit of corruption is just part of the cost of doing business," said professor Kent Redfield, a politics and campaign finance expert at the University of Illinois at Springfield. "Now I think people are going to be a lot more careful, a lot more circumspect."

Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, wouldn't comment on whether Ryan's campaign was indicted simply for following political tradition.

"If you look at the racketeering indictment, it consists of a pervasive period of activity of people routinely being diverted from state work to campaign work, people falsifying documents, making fraudulent documents to hide that fact," Fitzgerald said.

The government alleges that Ryan's former chief of staff and campaign manager, Scott Fawell, ran a criminal enterprise that illegally used state employees for campaign work and covered up the wrongdoing by firing internal investigators, shredding documents and lying to a grand jury. Also charged was Richard Juliano, a former Ryan aide who recently resigned from his job as the U.S. Transportation Department's liaison to the White House because of the investigation.

Fawell's attorney said his client "has committed no crime" and will plead innocent. Juliano is cooperating with prosecutors and will plead guilty to one count of mail fraud, according to his attorney.

Democrats hope the governor's woes will propel them to power in the Nov. 5 election. U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic candidate for governor, has tried to paint his Republican opponent, Attorney General Jim Ryan, as another cog in a corrupt GOP machine. The two Ryans are not related.

Ryan's campaign faced questions during the primary over the dual roles of spokesman Dan Curry, who had been working half-time in the attorney general's office and half-time on the campaign. He now is off the state payroll and works full-time on the campaign.

"It's a fanatical concern within our campaign" to keep politics and government separate, Curry said.

The Democrats' campaign practices also came under scrutiny during last month's primary.

State party chairman and House Speaker Michael Madigan was criticized for giving bonuses to House staffers who later went off the state payroll to campaign for his daughter, Lisa Madigan, the Democratic nominee for state attorney general. And Blagojevich is likely to face questions about campaign workers who may owe their city jobs to his father-in-law, Chicago Ald. Dick Mell.

The last major change in how Illinois politics are played can be traced to former Gov. James R. Thompson, who as a U.S. attorney in the 1970s prosecuted former governor Kerner.

Thompson was well known for hiring state workers based on their loyalty to fellow Republicans during most of his 14 years as governor. A challenge to that system made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1990 ruled against Thompson, severely limiting political patronage.

Mary Lee Leahy, the Springfield attorney who brought the case against state government, said things have improved in Illinois over the past decade. But state workers still face pressure from their bosses to do political work, as illustrated by the case against Ryan's campaign, she said.

"In a lot of parts of Illinois, particularly when the economy is bad, a state job is a very good job," Leahy said. "I think state employees are torn between knowing something is wrong and thinking ... 'Can I take a chance?' "