By Ted Klein
In his closing statement, Burns ended with the words, “Remember: George Ryan.” Like Burris, Poshard, and Schmidt, Burns is presenting himself as the only Democrat who can beat Ryan in November. But first he has to win the Democratic primary, and right now he’s running dead last.
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But Burns isn’t reassessing anything; he says “the hardworking people who play by the rules every day” want a governor who will “restore faith and confidence in government.” As U.S. attorney, Burns prosecuted bribe-taking legislators and aldermen and uncovered ghost payrollers in City Hall. He promises to end vice and graft in the state capital, too, and if he’s serious he’ll have his hands full: Illinois has one of the most corrupt political cultures in the English-speaking world. Drag a dollar through Springfield and there’s no telling what’ll stick to it; in the last 30 years we’ve seen two governors go to prison and a secretary of state turn up dead in his hotel room, alone except for $800,000 in cash stuffed in shoe boxes. Even Governor Edgar, who doesn’t have enough imagination to be a crook, has been embarrassed by the MSI scandal: Management Services of Illinois saw its state contracts jump from $409,000 to $11.2 million after bribing bureaucrats in the Department of Public Aid. “There is a certain history here, not only in Chicago but in state government as well,” Burns says. “I think we want to look at some time-honored practices.”
“People are cynical about their leaders,” he said at the candidate forum. “They want strong, independent leadership that can dissuade them of this notion that–it’s almost like lawyer jokes–All politicians, oh, they’re a bunch of crooks, or they’re a bunch of scoundrels. We cannot have that kind of public attitude, because the things we need to get done to fight crime and make our streets safer and get rid of the scourge of drugs and the attendant violence, the things that we need to do in terms of our infrastructure and many, many other issues that must be done and done quickly, it will be so much easier to do it if you have a public that has some faith in their government and in their leaders and believe, even if they disagree with you–much as they used to disagree with Paul Simon–if they believe you’re doing the right thing and doing it based on principle.”
Behind a microphone Burns often seems stuffy, but acquaintances say he’s funny and relaxed in private. He follows football and basketball–especially Northwestern–and he reads history and political science. “He’s a wicked wit, and very good company,” says author Scott Turow, who met Burns in the 70s, when Burns was chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney’s office. “He’s very quick and very playful, sort of the way men in competitive situations play the dozens on each other.”
Frias is not just an alderman, he’s a minority alderman, as were Evans, Streeter, and Medrano. Burns loves to convict minorities, Frias says, because he doesn’t think he needs them to get elected and because it looks good to the downstaters and suburbanites who would cast the deciding votes in a race against George Ryan. “Out in suburbia, alderman’s a bad word,” Frias says sardonically. “And then a minority. That has to be bad.”
According to Lassar it’s “a common thing” for targets of the U.S. attorney’s office to suggest a political motive. State senator Bruce Farley, indicted by Burns for accepting $172,000 in wages and benefits in an alleged ghost-payrolling scheme at the Cook County treasurer’s office, has also accused Burns of playing politics. “People always say that, no matter who the U.S. attorney is,” says Lassar. “‘They’re out to get me.’”
