Political spouses have unique bond

One is sick and most likely dying, and would like to have her husband at her side.

While this plea failed, ...

The other died with her husband at her side, but apparently wanted to show the world she was severing her tie to her spouse.

WE’RE TALKING ABOUT Lura Lynn Ryan and Elizabeth Edwards, whose one thing in common is that they met in their lives a very young man and married him, then went along for the career ride as that man’s political aspirations powered the engine.

In the case of Ryan, we’re talking about how she became the first lady of Illinois, while Edwards was the spouse of a U.S. senator whom, had a couple of factors gone differently, would have been first lady of the United States.

Edwards, as those of us following the news reports know, died recently from cancer. Her last years of life were spent fighting her condition, while showing signs of dignity in the process.

Ryan is now undergoing her own illness, suffering from cancer throughout her body and lung problems and is now in an intensive care unit at a hospital in her hometown of Kankakee. Depending on whom one wants to listen to, Ryan has anywhere from “weeks” to “days” to live.

THE 76-YEAR-old woman is approaching the end of her life, and her wish is that she could have her husband at her side to provide a mental jolt.

Of course, her husband, former Gov. George Ryan, can’t just show up at the hospital after work, or take a few days off. He remains an inmate at the work camp that is part of the maximum-security federal correctional center in Terre Haute, Ind. He still has just under 2 ½ years to serve on his prison sentence before he can be released.

... will this plea succeed?

In short, it would take a true miracle for Lura Lynn Ryan to live long enough to be at her husband’s side when he is released from prison.

An appeal is now working its way through the Court of Appeals to get some of the convictions dismissed – enough that his time already served would be considered sufficient and he could be released now. But criminal appeals tend to work at their own pace. Nobody is going to speed things up because of anyone’s health – no matter how mortal.

WHICH IS WHY Ryan’s attorneys (including former Gov. James R. Thompson) are now trying to get Ryan a temporary release from prison so he can be at his wife’s side at the moment she passes away. One motion literally calls for him to be transferred to the Kankakee County Jail, where he would spend his time while not at the hospital with his wife.

No word on whether he’d be allowed to remain for the funeral, or whether he’d be whisked back to Terre Haute once his wife passes. Ultimately, it is up to the warden in Terre Haute whether or not George Ryan is permitted this move, and that warden does not have to give any public explanation for his decision – whichever way it turns out.

Of course, the hard-core Ryan critics are showing their callousness by insisting that he be deprived of even this moment. Which makes me think some people have a twisted sense of criminal punishment and rehabilitation.

Personally, I would think that Ryan being an inmate in Kankakee County’s jail would be the most humiliating experience for him – since he was once THE local political big shot. It would be the ultimate evidence of how far he’s fallen, and people who have known him their entire lives would get to see his decline.

EDWARDS: Supportive, until after the end

THEN, THERE IS the case of Elizabeth Edwards, whose husband, John, rose to the ranks of U.S. senator from North Carolina and was the vice presidential running mate in 2004 with Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. He tried running his own presidential bids in ’04 and 2008.

But ultimately, his undoing was infidelity with a campaign worker. He got caught when the worker had his child. Elizabeth stood by John’s side publicly in life. Even after they formally separated last year, she kept the criticism to a minimum.

But when her will was made public this week, we learned that she made last-minute changes less than a week before death. She cut her husband out.

Her property and wealth (including some real estate holdings and a trust whose contents cannot be disclosed) go to the surviving children.

THE RYANS AND Edwardses have some things in common. Lura Lynn met George when the two were in high school, and their married life together is more than a half-century. Which makes it all the more logical that she would want him nearby at the end.

After all, the Edwardses met while  the two were in law school and their marriage lasted a third of a century. Despite the problems and the split, even John Edwards saw to it that he was by his wife’s side in her final days of life.

All it really means is that George Ryan would like to have the same final perk as did John Edwards. It’s not the most unreasonable request to make.

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Another Sox “great” falls 2 votes short

I’m starting to wonder if this is going to become a trend among White Sox ballplayers when it comes to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. – two votes shy, and, “Yer out!”

Which means while many baseball fans on Wednesday were celebrating (or bemoaning) the elections of infielder Roberto Alomar and pitcher Bert Blyleven to the Hall (induction ceremonies to be held in July), and others were trying concoct a message from the 64 voters who said “yes” to Rafael Palmeiro (only 11 percent), my attention was flipping around those ballplayers who had some stints in Chicago.

THAT INCLUDES ALOMAR, who along with his brother, Sandy, Jr., played for the White Sox near the end of his career, and Palmeiro, whose career began with the Cubs and might have lasted longer in Chicago had it not been for certain personal indiscretions (Cubs fans of a certain era remember who and what I’m referring to).

But it also includes Harold Baines, who was a White Sox star in the 1980s and managed to do three stints with the ballclub before quitting as an active player back in 2001. For the past four years,, Baines’ ballplaying career has managed to gain just enough Hall of Fame support that he gets kept on the ballot for consideration to the next year.

Not this time.

For it seems that only 28 of the 581 ballots cast by Hall of Fame sportswriters included Baines as a selection – which comes to 4.8 percent. A ballplayer needs a clean 5 percent to be reconsidered.

SO BECAUSE HE didn’t get 30 votes, Baines is gone. He’s no longer a possibility to get picked for the Hall of Fame anytime soon. Maybe some year, one of those veterans committees that studies baseball executives and other causes will give Baines’ career a second chance. Then again, maybe not.

All I know is that the scenario reminded me all too much of Nellie Fox. The White Sox great second baseman from the 1950s worked his way through the years continually falling short of the number of votes needed for Hall of Fame induction.

The reason he gets remembered is because of 1985 – his 15^th, and final year of consideration. That year, he got 295 votes out of the 395 ballots cast. As in 74.7 percent, which rounded up is 75 percent – the bare minimum of support needed for actual induction (for what it is worth, Alomar on Wednesday got 90 percent support).

There were those who cited baseball’s traditions in rounding up percentages to allow ballplayers to achieve records or significant accomplishments. Not in this case.

FOX WOUND UP not making it into the Hall of Fame until 12 years later, when the aforementioned veterans committee picked him.

Which makes me wonder – will it be sometime around the year 2025 (he’d be 66 by then) that someone might take seriously the playing career of Harold Baines – which managed to overcome serious injuries that could have ended his playing career to last for two decades in the American League?

Because among White Sox fans, Baines is as beloved by his generation as the older fans were of Nellie. Now before anyone starts throwing lines of statistics at me to show me how inadequate Harold was, I am fully aware that Baines gets some exaggerated credit because he was the best ballplayer on what were some truly cruddy White Sox ball clubs back in the mid- to late-1980s.

He made six American League All-Star teams and twice finished in the Top 10 of the league Most Valuable Player voting, was 29^th all-time in runs batted in with 1,628, and also led the league in slugging percentage back in 1984. The stat that gets him closest to consideration was 2,844 – as in the number of base hits he got in his career, so close to the 3,000-tally that usually gets people all worked up into thinking “Hall of Fame.”

THEN AGAIN, PALMEIRO exceeded that 3,000 figure, and still is likely to never get in.

My point in rattling off those particular statistics is to indicate that Baines would be far from the worst ballplayer to get into the Hall of Fame, should it happen some day.

In fact, a part of me can’t help but think that the description of “good, but not great” that Baines’ detractors will use to describe him is also fitting of Blyleven – the pitcher from my childhood years who managed to hang on in baseball for so long that his overall career totals (at first glance) look impressive – 287 career wins, just short of 300 wins, the pitcher’s equivalent of 3,000 hits.

The same stat geeks who will bemoan Harold Baines are in love with Blyleven’s record, ignoring the fact that among their contemporaries while they played, Harold was thought more highly of than Rik Aalbert.

WHICH IS WHY a part of me wonders if a future generation veterans committee will be willing to give Baines a second glance.

But for the meantime, we get to celebrate the induction of Alomar (even though the peak of his career was playing for those Toronto Blue Jays teams that deprived the White Sox of an American League championship in 1993). Roberto was on the South Side for both 2003 and 2004, and has family ties to the White Sox strengthened by the fact that both his brother, catcher Sandy, Jr., and his father, infielder Sandy, Sr., also called Comiskey Park home for a stint.

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Oh, be quiet! They’re just finishing the term you elected them to – two years ago

Will the Capitol complex this week see honest government activity? Or the usual political cowardice passing for introspective thought?

We’re going to hear quite a bit of whining in coming days related to the government activity taking place this week at the Statehouse in Springfield.

The “whining” is going to be about that “dreaded” concept that some would claim is subverting the will of the people – otherwise known as the political lame duck.

WE’RE TALKING ABOUT those legislators whose current terms end this week, and are not returning for another term in the General Assembly next week either because they “retired” or they managed to lose a bid for re-election – either in the primary back in February, 2010 or in the general election in November of last year.

The idea being that these legislators are somehow out of control because they don’t have to fear the consequences of voters confronting them about their actions – they either are leaving voluntarily, or they already have suffered the greatest anguish (electoral defeat) that a government official can endure.

There also are those from the political opposition who seem to think that the replacement candidates who won either back in February or in November should somehow now be in  place in the Legislature – to prevent this political calamity from occurring.

¡Dios Mio! Whatever shall we do?

WHAT WE OUGHT to do is relax. These people, who also complained back when the Congress was in session in December under similar circumstances, are merely hypocrites. They’re really just too eager to get into office and start mucking things up. If anything, I’m wondering if these people are the last ones we should ever want elected to office.

For many of these “lame duck” officials, they were elected to their current terms back in the 2008 election cycle (although in the Illinois Senate, some were picked back in 2006). They were all chosen by a majority of voters to serve two- (or four-)year terms that would end the second week of January 2011.

All these officials are doing is fulfilling their final duties before they depart (although I won’t be surprised if at least a few of them try running for some sort of government post in the future). They certainly aren’t doing anything wrong.

In fact, I honestly believe this week might (and that’s a very big “might”) be the one time when we see at least a few of these legislators conduct themselves in an honest manner. Not having to worry about electoral repercussions. Having the ability to just “do” whatever they think is the right thing to do.

MAYBE NOT EVEN have to worry about how their respective legislative leader will “punish” them for not going with the partisan flow. After all, how “scary” can Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, be if he’s out of your political life after next week?

Because once the new state Constitutional officers get sworn into office on Monday for new four-year terms running through January 2015 (even though the next general elections for those posts will be held in November 2014) and the newly-elected General Assembly is sworn in in mid-week, things will return to normal – insofar as partisanship is concerned,.

A part of me thinks we ought to think of this week as a bit of political refreshment – similar to what we got from Congress when they convened in December. Aside from the DREAM Act (which the ideologues were determined to whack because it is immigration reform-related), things actually occurred in Congress.

Who outside of the hard-core activists allied with the GOP is upset? And the only reason they’re bothered is because the activity reflected well on President Barack Obama (who on Monday AND Tuesday had a “50 percent” approval rating from the Gallup Organization, his highest in months).

PERHAPS THAT IS the same problem that some people have with what could happen in Springfield this coming week.

There is talk that the death penalty may be abolished by the Illinois Legislature (I’ll believe it when I see it). There also is rhetoric about gambling expansion, and FINALLY taking some sort of action that could help reduce the size of the state budget deficit (which some economists estimate could reach $15 billion by the beginning of state fiscal year 2012 – a.k.a., July 1).

Some of that is talk of tax increases to raise revenue the state needs to cover its expenses, while there also is talk of some serious borrowing to get the money. That is not pleasant to hear.

But the fact is that we have ridiculously absurd financial problems that have become worse in recent years because of state officials who didn’t want to do anything except push the problem off to a future year – because they feared electoral repercussions. This might be the one week we don’t get that. Then again, maybe we do. Some elected officials have a cowardly streak when it comes to taking action.

AND AS FOR those who are going to claim their indecisiveness somehow reflects the mood of their particular constituents, I’d argue that people are split and that part of the job of an elected official is to make tough decisions – even if it leaves one politically unpopular.

So for those people who are going to complain about the “lame ducks” voting for something they can’t stand, I’d have to say “Pipe down.”

Because after next week, the odds are good that your preferred officials will get their two-year chance to act in whatever manner they choose – and even they will get to stick around for a couple of months beyond the November 2013 election cycle.

Someday, they’ll get to be “lame ducks” too.

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EXTRA: Soon to be most popular video snippet on television and the Internet

DALEY: Soon to be the 'brains' behind Obama?

You just know that if President Barack Obama persists with plans to make William Daley his new chief of staff (replacing Rahm Emanuel) that we’re going to have to see, over and over, this particular video snippet from when Daley was announced as the new Secretary of Commerce  back in 1996.

That position set the stage for Daley to be one of the heavyweights behind the effort to get Al Gore elected president in 2000. Could it also be setting things up for the Daleys to play a heavy role in getting Obama elected to a second term – despite all the Tea Party types who are convinced that their electoral victories from November 2010 are merely the first step toward deposing Obama?

FROM HIS END, I could envision Daley wishing to return to Washington and to government service. I can’t envision his postion with JP Morgan Chase & Co. to be professionally rewarding – no matter what the financial compensation may be.

Besides, with older brother, Rich, stepping down from City Hall come May, I would think that many of the familial restraints about doing something that could reflect badly are now loosened.

So maybe we will get another Chicagoan as the guy who actually runs the White House staff for the president’s benefit. (I don’t want to hear any wisecracks about how Richard J. Daley made a president out of JFK through inappropriate political behavior).

Here’s only hoping the stage lights don’t get to William again when/if (it’s not definite, yet) an announcement is made.

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We’re in the Silly Season, alright

Where do things stand in the mayoral campaign as we enter the first full week of the new year? With the same nonsense talking points that created ridiculous campaign rhetoric during the old year!

EMANUEL: A Tuesday court date



Tuesday is the day that a Cook County judge is expected to issue a ruling as to whether a Board of Election Commissioners ruling that says Rahm Emanuel can be on the Feb. 22 mayoral election ballot was right or wrong.

NOT THAT THE ruling will bring any finality to the issue. The people who are determined to dump Emanuel are determined to take this on Wednesday to an Illinois Appellate Courts panel if they lose, while Emanuel’s campaign will have their attorneys go to the appeals court – if by chance the judge rules that the elections officials screwed up and he should NOT be regarded as a legitimate Chicago resident for purposes of this election cycle.

Now don’t take this as a prediction as to what the judge will do. But I won’t be surprised if the next step to the appeals court (located at LaSalle and Randolph streets across from the Thompson Center state government building) is taken by Burt Odelson and the people who want Rahm gone.

Keep in mind that at one time, the rulings of elections boards were considered sacrosanct. No one could appeal them in any court of law.

While the latter part has changed, the courts still tend to respect the rulings that these panels make. So the obligation is fully on the people who are challenging Emanuel to show exactly where the Chicago elections board screwed up, and how that screw-up would have resulted in Emanuel clearly not being fit to be on the ballot.

A MERE TECHNICAL screw-up, in and of itself, isn’t enough to boot Rahm.

I actually found a Chicago News Cooperative report about a legal brief filed Friday by attorneys on Emanuel’s behalf to be interesting. They argued that the elections board spent so much time on the Emanuel case compared to typical ballot challenges that that factor alone shows how careful they were in reaching their decision about Emanuel.

Will those three days of testimony, including nearly 11 hours of Emanuel himself on the stand, make the process legitimate in the eyes of the court? It might.

So even if there’s a lot of back and forth in coming weeks due to court rulings (he’s on, then he’s off, then he’s on again, then off again), I won’t be surprised if in the end, he winds up on again, and any votes cast for him on Feb. 22 being legitimate ballots that count.

NOW IF THIS were another candidate, he’d probably have right to be concerned that all his time was being spent in court – instead of out campaigning and trying to sway voters. Yet Emanuel has the advantages of name recognition and a head-start on fundraising that he’s probably the one person who can get away with spending so much time hanging around courthouses for word of his campaign’s fate.

If anything, being in court so much may save him from saying something stupid (or showing that famous temper) on the campaign trail.

That’s not the case for his opposition, where Gery Chico on Monday made a point of boasting of the $2.5 million his campaign has already raised (which could make him competitive with Emanuel). He also has another 47 fundraising events scheduled during the upcoming month.

He also boasts of the fact that 97 percent of all his contributions came from people who live in the Chicago area (including suburbs), which lets him take his own dig along the lines of Carol Moseley-Braun’s less-subtle charge that Emanuel is an “outsider” being helped by “outsider” Bill Clinton.

AND WHAT OF Moseley-Braun? That fundraising factor makes it clear why she was eager to be the lone “major” African-American candidate in this campaign. It seems that seeking donations from people to whom that factor is important means that in a large field, no one candidate will get that much money.

Even Moseley-Braun herself estimates a $5 million fund in total to get through the Feb. 22 election and an April 5 runoff against Emanuel. And no, she hasn’t raised it yet.

Chico already is half-way to Moseley-Braun’s desired goal and is likely to exceed her, as will Rahm.

So making an appearance with Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., at Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition on Saturday and with Rev. James Meeks at his Roseland neighborhood church on Sunday may have helped with unity. Although her initial insistence on Monday on following the lead of Jason Plummer and making an issue out of refusing to make public her tax returns brought back the memories of "haughty Carol" who thinks she is better than the rest of us.



VAN PELT-WATKINS: A year wiser?

WILL HER FLAKINESS (she ultimately said she woudl release the returns) cause so much negative attention that it will cause some hesitation among black people with a willingness to make campaign contributions to write out those checks to the former U.S. senator? Who knows. What option is there? Unless they plan to suddenly shift their allegiance to the campaign of Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins – who actually had a birthday anniversary on Sunday.

So Patricia, if you ever read this, Happy Belated Birthday. A part of me hopes you get a delayed gift of many thousands of votes cast for you on Feb. 22.

Because in some ways, I think that would be the perfect screwy ending to what is shaping up to be a twisted election cycle for ’11.

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Adventurous, or sore losers? What should we think of black consensus candidate?

MOSELEY-BRAUN: Does consensus tag hurt her?

In one sense, I can comprehend the desire by African-American activists and political people to do whatever it takes to ensure that “one of their own” winds up getting elected as mayor of Chicago following the Feb. 22 municipal election and likely April 5 runoff.

The Chicago population these days may still have more black people than any other one group. But the total is shrinking – at a time when the Latino and the Anglo populations in the city proper are on the rise.

HECK, SOME PEOPLE go so far as to imply that the African-American population in the city isn’t large enough to justify having three majority-black Congressional districts. Although those of us who understand the reality of politics realize that you don’t just zap out of existence a minority district at whim.

The point being that I can comprehend how black people who have no intention of joining their racial brethren in moving to the south suburbs (some towns in southern Cook County have become majority African-American in the past decade) or the South (Atlanta, in particular, is experiencing a black population growth) might feel they are losing control.

When combined with the resentment among some that has simmered for just over two decades in having another “Daley” as mayor rather than one of their own, it would create an ideal situation for political activists to do whatever they think needs to be done to bolster the chances that the “people” of Chicago pick a black person to serve as the chief executive of city government.

 So does it shock me that people were ultimately able to get Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., to drop out of the mayoral race, thereby leaving former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun as the only so-called major candidate who is African-American?

NO, IT DOESN’T surprise me. It doesn’t quite offend me either. But a part of me thinks it stinks. It reminds me too much of the whining that was heard from some white Chicagoans some 27 years ago when Harold Washington got elected mayor instead of incumbent Jane Byrne or then-state Sen. Richard M. Daley.

CHICO: Does Davis withdrawal doom him?



Those people complained that if only one white candidate had dropped out and it had been a head-to-head election in the Democratic primary of ’83, there’s no way Washington would have won. They’re right, but that attitude still stinks.

But with the latest actions of the African-American activists, it would seem that the same attitude exists on the other side of the racial divide. It comes across as mean-spirited for those activists to think they’re entitled to conditions meant to “ensure” their electoral victory.

Which means the ultimate payback, so to speak, could come if the Moseley-Braun campaign is unable to achieve victory – which in this case, means second place.

I’M GOING TO be eagerly awaiting the next round of polls – the ones that likely will be taken this week, to see how much the departure of Davis (and the Rev. James Meeks the week before last) has shifted the demographic of this election.



Because I remember the polls previously taken that showed Rahm Emanuel not only with a huge lead over every other candidacy, but also with more support than all the African-American candidates put together. In short, the racial breakdown means more than the overall breakdown.

I think it is safe to say that Emanuel, whose ties to the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama intrigue a certain segment of the population, will get more votes than any other candidate on Feb. 22. But I’m not sure it is a guarantee that Moseley-Braun now automatically finishes in second place and takes on Emanuel in a run-off election.

EMANUEL: Still the leader?

For one thing, we have the campaign of Gery Chico, the one-time public schools president who was aligned with Paul Vallas when he did his work in revamping the Chicago Public Schools in the mid-1990s.

HIS CAMPAIGN HAS taken on some significant support among those people to whom Emanuel’s political persona (and his ties to Obama and Clinton) are a serious turnoff. It is safe to say that much of the “Anybody But Rahm” vote is going to Chico. I wonder if his campaign has built up so much momentum that it is not about to be stopped by Moseley-Braun’s supporters.

Particularly since the whole process by black activists to create a consensus candidate became such a bungled mess that I can’t help but think it taints Moseley-Braun to be thought of as the officially-preferred candidate of black Chicago. After all, Davis WAS the consensus candidate. But he was too weak to shake off Moseley-Braun – who has her own detractors, not all of whom are as flaky as Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg.

The end result is that the whole process of picking a consensus candidate has made the African-American activists look weak and unorganized, which will reflect poorly upon their preferred candidate.

Now I know Moseley-Braun has her own qualifications. Personally, I think much of the rhetoric used against her is cheap and stupid and reflects more on the ignorance of her detractors than on anything bad about the candidate herself.

SHE MAY EVEN have believed herself when she told a gathering Saturday at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition that she has, “the most credentials and the most qualifications and experience of all the candidates running.” She is, after all, a former state legislator, Cook County recorder of deeds and ambassador to New Zealand – in addition to her six years in the U.S. Senate.

But Chico is a former mayoral chief of staff, head of the Chicago Public Schools and the City Colleges of Chicago, and of the Chicago Park District. Not exactly shabby. Then, there’s Emanuel with his presidential stints and time in Congress – during which he orchestrated the Democratic majorities that gave the city more influence in Washington since 2006 than it will have during the next two years.

Likely, whoever winds up becoming mayor in May will have their share of credentials to boast about during the campaign season.

DEL VALLE: Too quiet for own good?

What is means is a lot of rhetoric during the next two months – some of which will become nasty.

IN FACT, ABOUT the only person who won’t get into that mess will be Miguel del Valle, the city Clerk and former state legislator who also is running for mayor, even though his campaign seems to gain no attention once one leaves the Latino neighborhoods (which the population trends are showing to be much of Chicago away from the Lakefront).

It’s a shame. Because a part of me is starting to think that what this city needs is someone of del Valle’s quiet demeanor, rather than the blowhards who are likely to prevail.

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Is it a “win” that they’re even going to discuss issue of execution abolition?

My initial reaction to learning that some activists who want to do away with the death penalty think they have achieved a political victory by getting the General Assembly to even consider the issue when they return to the “Statehouse in Springpatch” next week is to say “Bull!”

Will abollition talk echo the halls of the Capitol?



I’m not one much for symbolic victories. I need to see some sort of action to convince me that anything has a chance of changing.

SO WHEN IT comes to the issue of the death penalty in Illinois and whether we’re going to continue the charade of having a capital crimes statute on the books, I don’t know what to think.

There is rhetoric that says a bill to abolish executions as a criminal punishment could be called for a final vote in the Illinois House of Representatives some time this coming week.

That bill already has received support from an Illinois House committee, although that committee’s support was purely on politically partisan lines.

So it is likely that for this measure to get through the Illinois Legislature and have a chance of being signed into law by Gov. Pat Quinn (which isn’t a guarantee, he's being very non-committal on this issue these days), it is going to have to be a Democratic majority willing to use its muscle to force this issue through.

THAT COULD HAPPEN. For the result of the 2010 elections in Illinois was to maintain solid urban, Democratic Party control over state government.

What could derail this issue is if its opponents decide to try to make this an “urban vs. rural” issue and try to get those Democratic legislators from areas outside the six-counties of metro Chicago to vote against it.

Try to make it seem that an execution is as “all-American” as apple pie or Chevrolet.

Yes, I’m mocking that sentiment. But that is what we’re going to hear in coming days if this issue comes up. Already, state’s attorneys from Peoria and Pekin say they’re urging local people to call up their legislators and make it clear that abolishing the death penalty is NOT the will of the people of Illinois.

NOT THAT THIS rhetoric surprises me. The two prosecutors in particular who are making these comments are long-time prosecutors who have no other professional interests besides criminal law. They also have been rather vocal on this issue throughout the years.

In short, I’d be surprised if the state’s attorneys for Peoria and Tazewell counties were NOT vocally opposed to abolishing the death penalty. Nothing they are saying these days is at all surprising.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out, since we just completed an election cycle in Illinois where the rural parts of the state were fairly strong in their support for Republican candidates (actually, they were downright negative toward anything Democratic Party-related, trying to label it as “Chicago”),

There were people who, to the very end, thought that rural Illinois was going to carry state Sen. William Brady, R-Bloomington, and his gubernatorial campaign all the way to victory. Instead, the urban vote of Cook County was strong enough to overcome that rural sentiment.

COULD WE VERY well get a repeat of that, with the urban legislators pushing a death penalty abolition all the way through into law? Or will this issue and its political failure become political payback for those people who are bitter about the fact that we now have Pat Quinn preparing to take the oath of office in coming weeks for his own four-year term as Illinois governor?

Anybody who has read this weblog in the past knows I am a death penalty opponent. I have just seen too many cases where the process winds up arousing the hatred of the public and does nothing to pacify the families of those people who were killed in violent manners.

Also, I’m skeptical of whether the concept of execution has any deterrent effect.

But I’m also aware that some people are determined to keep the capital crimes statute on the books, regardless of how flawed it is or how infrequently it is used. Don’t forget that Illinois lost its capital crimes statute in 1972 when the Supreme Court of the United States struck it down for the nation. When the high court set guidelines four years later for reinstatement, Illinois couldn’t wait to create a new capital crimes statute.

WE IN ILLINOIS haven’t had an execution since 1999, and the fact that Brady tried campaigning for governor (but failed) on the idea that he would repeal the stay on all executions that has existed since the days of Gov. George Ryan ought to be seen as some sort of evidence that a solid portion of the state population doesn’t feel the need for a death penalty.

This will be a tough political fight. It will arouse the kind of issues among Illinois politicos that immigration reform causes these days among those political people on Capitol Hill. “Common sense” will go out the window in many cases.

So will the Illinois House have the will to pass this bill? Will the state Senate have the nerve to follow through and back the abolition idea as well?

The Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has its “lobby day” planned for Tuesday. The activists likely will hold some sort of rally at the state Capitol to try to draw press attention, then will have their members fan out around the building to try to meet with every member of the Illinois House to talk one-on-one about the issue.

THE ONLY PROBLEM with that tactic is that every activist group on all sides has a “lobby day.” There is a sense when this week’s group of activist blends into last week’s and next month’s, and the issues sort of all merge.

Here’s hoping that at least a few of those activists are able to get through to the minds of our legislators. We all lose if this issue delves to the level of “Chicago” vs. “the rest of the state.”

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