Jim Ryan's only state election losses? Burris and Blago

Back when Republicans roamed Illinois' state offices, Jim Ryan won three straight elections as DuPage County state's attorney, and two consecutive terms as Illinois attorney general.

The only blemishes on his statewide record were his 1990 failed bid in his first run for attorney general, and his losing campaign in 2002 to become governor. The candidates who beat him?

Roland Burris and Rod Blagojevich.

"It's not something I go around bragging about," Ryan says, laughing as I tell him I'm writing a column about his political sweep at the hands of a ridiculed governor who's been impeached and tossed out of office, and a lying sorbet of a senator whose behavior has people clamoring for his resignation.

"That's what I need - another article about elections I lose," Ryan chuckles.

While I haven't always voted for Ryan, a devout Catholic whose stand against abortion clashes with my liberal ideas on that subject, I find him to be a decent and honest man. So how did he lose to two politicians on the opposite side of the honesty issue?

Burris, benefiting from widespread name recognition gotten by serving as comptroller, held onto an early lead to beat Ryan 52 percent to 48 percent in the 1990 attorney general's race.

"When I lost to him, I wasn't happy," says Ryan, who won the suburbs and collar counties. "But it was a fairly clean race."

Ryan easily defeated Al Hofeld in the 1994 election for attorney general. In 1998, Ryan was the leading vote-getter in the state, capturing more than 2 million votes and crushing Democrat Miriam Santos.

But that didn't prepare him to run for governor against Blagojevich.

"I realized very early on in the campaign that the guy was not legitimate and was all talk," Ryan says.

The Republican tried to warn voters that Blagojevich was just "George Ryan with better hair," says Dan Curry, a former Daily Herald colleague who left the newspaper to become Jim Ryan's press secretary.

Instead, Jim Ryan's lead in the polls vanished as Blagojevich spent millions on negative ads trying to link Ryan to the crooked governor named Ryan. Even today, Jim Ryan's biography on the dubious online encyclopedia Wikipedia falsely lists him as George's son.

That confusion was just part of the reason Ryan mustered only 45 percent of the vote to Blagojevich's 52 percent in the 2002 governor's race.

"I think I handled him well in the debates and everything - but I think he just overpowered me with money," Ryan says. "When you spend that much money on television commercials, you create your own reality."

A campaign highlight came during a debate on Channel 11, when Blagojevich said Ryan shared blame for a fatal truck accident linked to George Ryan's license for bribes scandal.

"Have you no shame?" exploded Ryan, a former Golden Gloves champion who looked ready to jump into a boxing ring with Blago. "Have you no shame?"

Had Blagojevich replied truthfully with a "No, sir, I have no shame," the election, and our state, might have turned out differently.

"If I'd been governor, I guarantee you the system would have changed. The leeches would have been pushed out away from the trough," Ryan says.

In his role as distinguished fellow at Benedictine University in Lisle, Ryan talks a lot about ethics, campaign finance reform and the value of honest people doing public service. His Center for Civic Leadership and Public Service has brought in speakers such as "Hotel Rwanda" hero Paul Rusesabagina, The Washington Post's David Broder and then-Sen. Barack Obama. On March 25, Ryan will host a free public lecture (see www.ben.edu for details) by Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman.

"You can't say you are pro-life and then not be for children after they are born," notes Ryan, who also says he no longer supports the death penalty he sometimes sought when he was a prosecutor.

A three-time cancer survivor, Ryan is a strong man who relies on his religious faith. His wife, Marie, nearly died from a rare virus in 1997, the same year their 12-year-old daughter, Annie, died from an undiagnosed brain tumor. Their son, Patrick, died in 2007 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 24.

I could see Ryan, 62, as a solid choice to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy if Illinois ever gets that chance again.

"I love government. I love public service," Ryan says. But Ryan says he has no plans to seek a public office, and jokes that his wife might overrule him if he did.

But wouldn't he like to say something to voters who picked Burris and Blagojevich instead of him?

"You mean, 'I told you so'? I guess a little, but I don't dwell on it. That's the reality of politics," Ryan says before adding, "We've got to change the politics in Illinois."