exactly, nothing has really been proven. he made some bad decsions. in the end it all turn out to be pretty minor, but the republicans cut him loose.
at least most of the democrats stood behind bill clinton.
It's much deeper than a few bad decisions. The national media covered very little of the story.
George Ryan was always known as a deal-maker, going back to his days in the legislature. He carried that culture of deal-making to the Secretary of State's office. An attitude in the office that mirrored the old Chicago machine was well known, and the huge number of jobs are an attractive source of patronage.
The arm-twisting to get campaign contributions through various local drivers licensing branches resulted in a plan that gave out commercial truck licenses for bribes in the form of campaign contributions. This has been established and proven. It isn't the only example of illicit campaign activities, just the one that caused deaths.
As it unfolded the only question many of us IL Republicans were asking was whether Gov Ryan would be indicted while still in office, or if they would wait. Loyalty is misplaced when the weight of the evidence indicates serious wrong-doing, as it did even early in Ryan's term.
