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As part of the battle to secure clemency for her husband, the wife of former Gov. George Ryan penned a short note to President George W. Bush that U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood hand-delivered to a presidential aide.
In the note, Lura Lynn Ryan said, she reminded the president of the long friendship between their two families and spoke of her husband's efforts to help both the president and his father win election to the White House. She also told the president that she is ill and could use her husband's support at home.
"I asked him to please let him come home because I needed him because of my health," Mrs. Ryan, 74, said Friday from her Kankakee home in a telephone interview. "He knows both of us. We worked very hard for him, as we did for his father."
Mrs. Ryan said she suffers dizzy spells caused by an aneurysm four years ago and wears a medical alert necklace in case of an emergency.
Mrs. Ryan said her husband is not optimistic about the chances of Bush commuting his 6 1/2-year sentence to time served. Ryan, who has spent more than 13 months in prison, is scheduled to be released in mid-2013.
"Nothing would make him happier than to be able to come home and be with me," said Mrs. Ryan, who speaks by phone almost every day to her husband in federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.
LaHood (R-Ill.) said Mrs. Ryan first sought a meeting with Bush during the president's visit to Peoria in July, according to LaHood's spokesman, Tim Butler. LaHood, who was nominated Friday by President-elect Barack Obama to be transportation secretary, declined to set up a meeting but passed a note from Mrs. Ryan to a key adviser to the president.
"It was a courtesy to Mrs. Ryan," said Butler, who noted LaHood opposes Ryan's commutation bid.
Former Gov. Jim Thompson, Ryan's attorney, said he was not aware of Mrs. Ryan's note to the president. But Thompson said more than 200 letters from Ryan's family, friends, neighbors and former colleagues accompanied Ryan's clemency petition, including letters from physicians for Ryan and his wife.
"The only thing left to do is wait for the president's action," said Thompson, who declined a Tribune request to interview Ryan.
The sensational corruption charges against Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the ensuing national political furor complicate Ryan's bid to win clemency in the final weeks of Bush's presidency, experts say.
Further clouding the former Republican governor's chances, Ryan was never particularly close to President Bush. The two disagreed over the death penalty and relations with Cuba, and Ryan initially backed former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) over Bush in the 2000 Republican presidential primary.
"The current political situation makes it virtually impossible for Gov. Ryan to secure a commutation," said Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos, whose client Susan McDougal won a pardon from then-President Bill Clinton for her conviction in the Whitewater scandal.
Charles Wheeler III, a longtime Illinois statehouse reporter now at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said the public opposed Ryan's commutation bid even before Blagojevich's arrest.
"And the Blagojevich stuff certainly doesn't help Ryan," he said. "It just sort of rubs salt in the wound for people opposed to George getting a commuted sentence."
Since his 2006 conviction, Ryan has maintained his innocence. But earlier this month, he broke years of silence and apologized for "mistakes" he made in office and for the first time acknowledged the "unimaginable pain and loss" of Rev. Scott and Janet Willis.
The deaths of six of the Willis children came to symbolize the licenses-for-bribes scandal during Ryan's tenure as secretary of state. Their minivan erupted in flames when it struck a piece of debris that fell from a truck whose driver paid a bribe for his license.
Ryan, whose signature moment in office came when he issued a blanket clemency to all Death Row inmates in Illinois, is now seeking clemency for himself from a president who has long supported the death penalty. Ryan's strongest advocate in his clemency petition is Illinois Democratic senator Dick Durbin, but two of the state's most prominent Republicans, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk and Illinois Republican Chairman Andy McKenna, oppose the former governor's early release.
The scandal surrounding Blagojevich adds to the sense "that public officials that are convicted need to be held accountable," McKenna said.
Ryan's petition for commutation was filed several months ago with the Office of the U.S. Pardon Attorney at the Justice Department, which reviews the case and makes a recommendation to the White House. Ryan's six-page application hasn't been made public but is said to include statements from the former governor and his attorneys, Thompson said.
Although Ryan may face long odds, legal and political experts say presidents are often unpredictable on granting commutations or pardons in the final days in office when the political fallout is limited.
Durbin's support for Ryan's clemency also provides Bush with political cover, said Margaret Love, the U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997.
"He's a respected senior senator," Love said. "It gives the president some sense of reassurance about the likely political response."
Despite Ryan's recent apology, his wife was adamant that he had never done anything improper in public office.
"It's very frustrating for someone who has done so much for the state and then to be incarcerated," she said. "I just don't feel that George is where he should be."
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