Word: scandalousness
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...boys like 1950s State Secretary Orville Hodge, who embezzled around $1.5 million in state funds to buy private jets and cars, or former Democratic Rep. Mel Reynolds, who served time after his conviction in 1995 for 16 felonies involving campaign finance fraud. Even the unsuccessful have courageously toyed with scandal: Jack Ryan, Republican contender for the Senate in 2004, never lied or embezzled, but his campaign was nonetheless scuppered by allegations from his wife that he tried to get her to publicly perform indecent acts for his buddies at a sex club...
...Matteson (governor from 1853-1857), who tried to cash $200,000 of stolen government scrip he "found" in a shoebox. Matteson pulled a "how-did-that-get-there?" excuse and escaped indictment by promising to pay it back. (Oddly, this isn't Illinois's only shoebox-full-of-money scandal; after former secretary of state Paul Powell's death in 1970, a search of his home revealed shoeboxes full of hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks made out to him by unsuspecting Illinois residents who thought they were paying license plate registration fees...
...subsequent investigation, called Operation Safe Road, took years to complete; when it was done, 79 people were charged, including Ryan. The former governor was found guilty on 18 felony counts, including racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud, tax fraud and lying to the FBI. In addition to the license-for-money scandal, Ryan had exchanged government favors for family vacations, tickets to events and other gifts. He is currently serving a six-year prison sentence in Indiana. In 2005, he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his most famous act as governor: commuting the death sentences of over 160 Illinois...
...prison; the Prison Review Board member who voted to free notorious mobster Harry Aleman in exchange for getting his son a Las Vegas singing job; and the city employee who ran a heroin distribution ring out of Chicago's Department of Water Management. In Chicago's Hired Truck Scandal of 2004, trucking companies on city contracts were discovered to have links to city employees, convicted felons and the mob. And of course there was the time Mayor Richard M. Daley hired John "Quarters" Boyle - a man previously convicted of stealing $4 million (in quarters) from the Illinois Toll Highway Authority...
Read "GOP Targets Dem 'Scandal Babies...