Bill Clinton goes on a media blitz to promote his memoirs, and
wouldn’t you know it, a genuine nineties-style sex scandal
erupts.
Illinois Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald is retiring, and
Jack Ryan is the Republican nominee running for his seat. (Ryan is
no relation to former Governor George Ryan, former gubernatorial
candidate Jim Ryan, or, for that matter, to the Tom Clancy
protagonist of the same name.) With a politically attractive
biography — he ended a lucrative investment-banking career to
teach in a inner-city school — Ryan had the best shot of any of
the candidates he trounced in the GOP primary to go up against
Barrack Obama, the smart and fresh-faced Democratic nominee, a
liberal state senator who was the first black president of the
Harvard Law Review.
The Chicago Tribune and Chicago TV station WLS,
outdoing even the vast right-wing conspiracy that so cruelly dogged
the My Life author, sued to have Ryan’s divorce papers
unsealed over the vigorous objection of him and his ex-wife,
actress Jeri Ryan (best known as either Ronnie Cooke on Boston
Public or Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager,
depending on how nerdy you are). There were rumors of embarrassing
revelations, and the Illinois media was on a roll: divorce papers
had already felled Blair Hull, the frontrunner in the Democratic
primary whose support collapsed amid news that he’d physically
abused his ex-wife.
It turns out that Jeri Ryan alleged that her husband insisted on
taking her to sex clubs during trips to New Orleans, New York, and
Paris, where he asked her to perform public sex acts and she
angrily refused. Jack Ryan disputed the charges in court, saying “I
did arrange romantic getaways for us, but that did not include the
type of activity she described. We did go to one avant-garde
nightclub in Paris which was more than either one of us felt
comfortable with. We left and vowed never to return.” Ryan stands
by his statement in court now; Jeri Ryan, for her part, won’t
comment except to say that she now considers her ex-husband a good
man and a good father.
As soon as this tawdry tale became public, there was talk of
Ryan dropping out of the race. But Ryan has vowed to stay in, and
anyway it’s hard to see who could take his place and have a serious
shot at winning, except perhaps the popular former governor Jim
Edgar, who ruled out a run back in the primary season.
Ryan was already the underdog, and this scandal doesn’t help
matters. The next senator from Illinois will likely be Barrack
Obama. Born to a Kenyan father and a white mother, raised middle
class, and Ivy League-educated, Obama doesn’t come from the Jesse
Jackson school of political rhetoric; as a tested black politician
with a mostly-white electorate behind him and mainstream voice,
he’s likely to be a perennial favorite for speculation about
Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidacies.
Illinois is one of several Republican Senate seats that look
vulnerable; the others are in Alaska, Colorado, and Oklahoma. (Some
analysts would also include Pennsylvania, but I’m not one of them.)
Since Democratic seats are vulnerable in Florida, Georgia,
Louisiana, South Carolina, and South Dakota, a Democratic Senate
remains unlikely. For the Illinois GOP — still smarting from heavy
losses it took in 2002 while Republicans prospered elsewhere —
that’s small comfort.
