I see that Bush lost WI by only 5,000 votes in 2000 (as opposed to losing IL by 570,000 votes). I will see if I can get the Lake County GOP interested in setting up some checkpoints at the border. Is there really a problem with Illinois residents voting in Wisconsin?
Note to myself: Make sure that my God Child, who is currently enrolled in Marquette and has picked up the bad voting habits of his parents, votes in Illinois with an absentee ballot.
The GOP has a fighting chance to retain Fitzgerald's Senate seat. None of the Democrats have caught fire, though I suspect that Dan Hynes (the son of a hack) will get the nomination. I was hoping that Carol-Moseley Bruan would give it another shot.
On the GOP side I am leaning toward Jack Ryan, who has the distinction of having been previously married to a Borg (Jeri Ryan).
chicagotribune.com
Ryan crosses traditional GOP lines
By Liam Ford
Tribune staff reporter
February 8, 2004
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jack Ryan clapped to the gospel music last Sunday at the Progressive Baptist Church near U.S. Cellular Field.
The congregation welcomed a newly baptized member and hugged in greeting. And then Ryan, a conservative Republican who quit investment banking to teach, took to the pulpit of the all-black church.
After talking up his teaching at Hales Franciscan High School, an all-boys school on the South Side, Ryan told the congregation that his ideas would give their children a better chance at a good education "right now."
"We're going to the voters the Democrats think they own, with the issues they think they own, with our solution of giving people choice, so they're not forced to send their children to failing schools," Ryan said.
Ryan, who is no relation to indicted former Gov. George Ryan, seeks out black churches wherever he travels in the state in his bid to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald.
He clearly hopes some black voters will respond to traditionally Republican themes promoting tax cuts and school vouchers and, even if they don't vote in the March 16 GOP primary, will choose him in November should he win the nomination. His focus on urban problems has helped attract attention among conservative circles in Washington, including a flattering piece by conservative columnist George Will that Ryan now uses as a campaign handout.
Progressive's pastor, Rev. Christopher Alan Bullock, said Ryan is acknowledging that the GOP has to reach beyond its base.
"It's unusual for a primary, but these are unusual times," Bullock said.
Though Ryan's quest for black votes is given little chance of success by his rivals or Illinois Democrats, it helps distinguish him from the rest of the GOP contenders, most of whom are affluent whites.
The third of six children, Ryan grew up in Wilmette and attended New Trier High School.
Like many who grow up in Irish Catholic families, the Ryan kids were close in age and proximity. In the room Ryan shared with two brothers, the beds were only an arm's length apart, giving the three ample opportunity for mischief.
"If you threw your hand over the side you could hit your brother," waking him up, causing a ruckus, and "getting him in trouble," Ryan said.
At Dartmouth College, where he majored in government, Ryan played two years of football and spun what was known as "progressive rock" as a disc jockey on the college radio station, then went on to Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, finishing in 1985.
After graduate school, Ryan was set to begin work at Goldman Sachs & Co., but took a detour to work for six months in a Central American refugee center in Houston that is part of the activist Catholic Worker Movement. Ryan's family has a history of charitable undertakings--for example, his mother helped to save Josephinum, a girls' Catholic high school on the West Side. Ryan thought it was his turn.
"We grew up in a family where you measured your success by how you helped others' success," said his younger brother, Doug Ryan.
Ryan's duties at the center, Casa Juan Diego, were anything but glamorous.
"My job during the day was really to drive around to restaurants with these big, white buckets, and go to the back door of restaurants and [get] the food they didn't use the night before," Ryan said.
He left the center in 1986.
"My parents said, hey, goofball, you better get to work, because, you know, you have no money," Ryan said.
When he joined Goldman Sachs, Ryan spent two years in New York, then moved to the Chicago office. In Chicago he worked with Fortune 500 companies in the Midwest, as what he calls a "relationship manager" helping with mergers and acquisitions.
In 1991, he married Jeri Lynn Zimmerman, a former Miss Illinois, and they have one son. Jeri Ryan went on to a successful TV career on "Star Trek: Voyager" and "Boston Public" and moved to Los Angeles with their son while the couple were still married.
Ryan said he began thinking about changing careers at least as far back as 1998. When his marriage broke up the next year--bringing plenty of unwelcome publicity in the tabloids because of his wife's celebrity status--he took an even more serious look at leaving the financial world.
He considered running for Congress after veteran North Shore House member John Porter announced his retirement in 2000, but decided to go into teaching instead.
It was a choice that those who knew him at Goldman Sachs said fit him well.
"I think it's a more true picture of who Jack Ryan is," said Mike Birck, CEO of Tellabs, a telecommunications equipment company in Naperville that Ryan represented for several years. "Perhaps it was another side of Jack Ryan emerging, but a real side."
Since Ryan lacked a teaching certificate, he sought a job in the Chicago Catholic school system, where one was not needed.
At Hales, Ryan taught English, U.S. history, prelaw and preparation for college entrance tests. Former students said he kept them on their toes.
`High expectations'
One, Haamid Johnson, 19, a freshman at Georgetown University in Washington, said Ryan's "high level of expectations" helped to inspire him. "As soon as he would hit the door, we knew OK, we had to get down to business," Johnson said. "No one wants to be the kid who doesn't know one of Jack Ryan's vocabulary words."
Ryan, who is on leave from Hales, received $20,000 a year while teaching at the school but also continued to supplement that with hefty investment income and salaries from corporate boards.
While at Hales, he tapped his wealth to help keep the financially struggling school afloat. He donated about $250,000 to the school--out of a total school budget of about $3 million a year--according to Hales' former development director, Ian Jipp.
"He was very positive. He was concerned about the school, and creating opportunities for our students," Jipp said.
It was soon after Ryan began teaching that he joined the board of K12 Inc., a private, for-profit education company in Virginia founded by William Bennett, secretary of education in the Reagan administration. Founded to provide curricula for home-schooled children, K12 has branched out to work with taxpayer-funded charter schools in several states.
Ryan's campaign manager, Jason Miller, said that Ryan has received "not a penny" in earnings since joining the company. And Bennett, who is on Ryan's fundraising committee, said Ryan's stake in K12 means he's "put money at risk" to further ideas he espoused before he joined the company.
`Unusual for a Republican'
"What he knows about, is ... unusual for a Republican. Republicans usually are talking about education by looking at talking points, by having someone else tell them what to say," Bennett said.
Last May, Ryan announced his candidacy at Hales Franciscan, with an introduction by Johnson and to the cheers of his former students. Among the nine-man Republican field, he is one of seven candidates who has never held public office. He's poured more of his own money into the race than any other GOP candidate--$1.25 million.
Though it is unclear if anyone has emerged as a frontrunner, Ryan is clearly trying to portray himself as one. His frequent visits to black churches and his willingness to launch attacks at the policies of Democrats seeking their party's nomination for the post indicate he is thinking beyond the primary.
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CANDIDATE PROFILE
Jack Ryan
REPUBLICAN
Age: 44
Raised in: Wilmette
Lives in: Chicago, Wilmette
Current job: Teacher, Hales Franciscan High School (on leave)
Former job: Managing director, Goldman Sachs
Bio: Divorced, one son; graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School
Senate committee preference: Appropriations, education
-- Chicago Tribune
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