Surprise! Guess Who’s on the List
Dutifully, perhaps maliciously, the Sun-Times broke out a media list from Fawell’s cast of characters. Sure enough, vanity plates were the penny-ante favor next to the names of most of these luminaries. While a heavy hitter like McPier board member Larry Warner went in Fawell’s book for “37 jobs, 28 contracts and 73 license plates,” all Fawell had on former WLS TV boss Joe Ahern was plate JA7. Steve Deschler scored BAMZOOM, Jim Rose CRJR and VETTEJR, Chet Coppock CCWLUP and CCLOOP, and Joel Weisman MW11 and MTW1. Rose told the Sun-Times he’d waited in line like everyone else, refused an opportunity to cut in front, and didn’t get the plates he really wanted. Weisman told the Tribune–whose coverage of the Fawell revelations was vastly more subdued–that he’d been waiting in line like everyone else when a secretary of state employee beckoned.
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I first heard grumping about where Margaret Pearson worked in 1997. When I asked Pearson about it back then he said his wife got the job entirely on her own, and her main responsibility was organizing the annual Illinois Authors Book Fair–“the least politically intrusive thing that’s done in state government.” A year later Ryan ran for governor against Glenn Poshard, and Rick Pearson was now the Tribune’s chief political writer. The Tribune, of course, endorsed Ryan, and the Poshard camp, unhappy with its coverage, carped about Margaret Pearson’s job–which she no longer held–as a token of favoritism.
Patrick Quinn, who just became Illinois’ lieutenant governor, called in 1998 and reminisced. There’d been legislative hearings on an “inspector misconduct bill” that Quinn backed, and in ’93 the Better Government Association and Channel Five had done a joint report on shakedowns in the secretary of state’s office. Quinn recalled the Tribune ignoring both these stories and not giving his campaign a fair shake when he ran against Ryan for secretary of state in 1994. “Was Pearson’s wife working for Ryan at the library at the time?” he wondered.
The Sun-Times made a big deal about Rick and Margaret Pearson last week, running a separate article on them. It noted Pearson’s service to Lis in court and had Ryan recalling that back in ’96 Lis mentioned to him that Margaret Pearson was looking for work. But Lis told the Sun-Times he hadn’t lobbied Ryan on the Pearsons’ behalf, and Rick told the Tribune (he and his wife didn’t speak to the Sun-Times) that he did nothing to help Margaret get her job.
A single unethical pea buried under a million mattresses is normally enough to vex the Tribune. A staff photographer crosses the line it draws simply by wearing a Chicago Fire Department T-shirt at Ground Zero. So it’s odd that Margaret Pearson’s employment history doesn’t.
