Former Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan had success in politics despite never really being comfortable with the glad-handing that goes with it.
He once cut to five minutes a scheduled half-hour hand-shaking stop with voters on a chilly Michigan Avenue, telling an aide, “I got 10 votes and double pneumonia.”
A stoic politician whose life was beset by personal tragedies, Ryan rose from DuPage County state’s attorney to serve two terms as Illinois attorney general, but was twice defeated in bids for governor.
Ryan 76, died at his home Sunday “after several lengthy illnesses,” according to a statement from Dan Curry, a family spokesman.
“From the time I met him until his death, Jimmy always was striving to do the right thing and to help people,” said his wife of 54 years, Marie. “That was who he was and he was very successful at it.”
Ryan’s career was an example of the old saying that timing is everything in politics. After 10 years as DuPage County’s top prosecutor, he moved to the attorney general’s office, winning an open seat contest in 1994 on a Republican ticket headed by Gov. Jim Edgar as the GOP swept all statewide offices and took control of the General Assembly.
Four years later, Ryan was reelected in a landslide victory over Chicago city Treasurer Miriam Santos, 61% to 37%.
“He was an excellent attorney general,” Edgar said Sunday. “He didn’t play politics at all with anything in the attorney general’s office, sometimes to his detriment. He just was a very ethical, decent person.”
In a statement posted on Twitter on Sunday, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker called Ryan “a tireless advocate for the people of Illinois.”
“Jim’s most memorable qualities will forever be his integrity and the way he carried himself and his family through devastating personal tragedy with grace and compassion,” Pritzker said. “He was an example for us all, and may his memory be a blessing.”
In 2002, Ryan’s effort to become governor was clouded by scandals that occurred under the man he hoped to succeed, Republican Gov. George Ryan, who was no relation.
Only a month after Jim Ryan won a three-way Republican primary for governor, federal prosecutors unveiled a sweeping corruption indictment against George Ryan’s top aides. George Ryan would be indicted more than a year later on federal corruption charges. He was ultimately found guilty by a jury and served five years in prison.
During the general election campaign against Rod Blagojevich, a little-known but clout heavy Chicago Democrat, Jim Ryan’s political team believed it was so hobbled by the candidate’s last name that it sent out a missive to newspaper editors urging them to use “initials or full names in headlines and graphics” to make clear to readers whether they were referring to George Ryan or the attorney general.
Distinguishing Jim Ryan as a total opposite of George Ryan was so essential to the campaign that a sign on the deputy campaign manager’s wall read, “It’s about George, Stupid!”
It didn’t help that George Ryan, who chose not to seek reelection after one term amid the scandals, refused to leave quietly. He chided Jim Ryan and other GOP candidates for talking about corruption instead of his accomplishments in office.
“Jim Ryan’s been a lousy candidate,” George Ryan said as the Labor Day stretch drive to November began. 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.”
Jim Ryan said it was the corruption issue that added to his reticence to approach voters, once saying he found it “presumptuous” to go up to strangers and glad hand.
“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.”
Blagojevich sought to use the name confusion to his benefit, asking voters, “How can you replace one Ryan with another Ryan and call that change? You want change? Elect a guy named Blagojevich.”
Blagojevich proceeded to defeat Jim Ryan by more than 250,000 votes. He won a second term as well, only to be arrested in office, convicted of campaign finance corruption and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
After serving as an educator as a distinguished fellow at Illinois Benedictine University’s Center of Civic Leadership and Public Service, Jim Ryan attempted a political comeback in the 2010 Republican primary.
But his second bid was clouded, in part, by Blagojevich’s scandalous reign. Stuart Levine, a classmate of Ryan’s at Chicago-Kent College of Law who was Ryan’s top career donor, was found to have attempted to profit from influence-peddling, and eventually pleaded guilty. “Obviously, there was another side I didn’t know about,” Ryan said of Levine.
It was also during his second campaign for governor that Ryan apologized for the first time over his role as DuPage County prosecutor in leading wrongful prosecutions of two men In the 1983 kidnapping, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville.
The men’s convictions were later overturned and ultimately a jury convicted another man, Brian Dugan, of Nicarico’s death.
Ryan said prosecutors, detectives and law enforcement “acted in good faith” in the initial prosecutions “and still came up with the wrong result.” He said in those cases, “the system and I failed to achieve a just outcome.”
He went on to say after years had gone by that he had “grave concerns” about capital punishment.
Ryan finished fourth among six candidates in the Republican primary
“Although it was his life’s work, Jim never really felt comfortable in the field of politics,” said Stephen Culliton, a former chief judge in DuPage County and a 50-year friend of Ryan’s. “He always strived to do the right thing and to help make life a little better for others. And when the inevitable conflicts arose between the politically beneficial thing and the ‘right’ thing, he always did the right thing.”
Edgar said he always thought Ryan “could have stayed (as attorney general) forever and I think, continue to do a great job.”
“What he might have lacked in retail politics, he more than made up for with his integrity and his ability as an attorney general.”
Ryan was born in Chicago and grew up in Villa Park. His father was a homebuilder, his mother an Italian immigrant and homemaker. At 17, he won the middleweight division of the Chicago Golden Gloves novice division.
Ryan graduated from St. Procopius Academy, now Benet Academy, and what is now Illinois Benedictine University before getting his law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Ryan started his legal career with the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office and after three years was promoted to first assistant state’s attorney. In 1976, he left to enter private practice but in 1984 ran for county state’s attorney and won. He was reelected in 1988 and again in 1992, before winning the attorney general’s office in 1994.
While in his first term as attorney general, in August 1996, Ryan was diagnosed with Stage 2 non-Hodgkins large-cell lymphoma. He was undergoing aggressive cancer treatment when his 12-year-old daughter, Annie, the youngest of the family’s six children, collapsed in January 1997 and died of an undetected brain tumor.
Ten months later, in October 1997, Ryan’s wife, Marie, suffered a serious heart illness.
Tragedy struck again in 2007 when Ryan’s 24-year-old son, Patrick, the family’s second-youngest child, who had suffered from arthritis since childhood and struggled for years with the loss of his sister, took his own life at the family home in Elmhurst
After Annie Ryan’s death, the Ryan family’s parish priest, the Rev. Don McLaughlin, pastor of St. Charles Borromeo, said “the reaction of the parish community today was, `How much more can happen to one family?'”
In addition to his wife, Ryan is survived by three sons, John, Jim and Matthew; a daughter, Amy; and 11 grandchildren.
A funeral mass will take place at 11 a.m. Friday at Visitation Catholic Church, 779 S. York Road, Elmhurst.
Freelance reporter Bob Goldsborough contributed.
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