Pawnbroker, prostitute, police report

Pat Quinn, the just-elected Democratic nominee for governor, is a seriously overweight man who loves his breakfast bacon. He defeated Dan Hynes, a seriously underweight man whose appearance comes to mind when listening to nutrition zealots preach that those who consume the fewest calories live the longest. (I’d rather eat the risotto and sacrifice a few years.)

On Thursday morning when Hynes conceded the race to Quinn, voters woke to screaming headlines that voters had given the nomination for lieutenant governor — in Illinois, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run separately — to pawnbroker Scott Lee Cohen. In 2005, Cohen’s prostitute girlfriend called the police and had him arrested, charging that he had put a knife to her throat and had shoved her head against a wall. She had the abrasions to back up her charges, but when she didn’t appear in court a month later, the case was dropped.

Cohen’s divorce records feature charges by his now-ex-wife, who sought an order of protection that he had choked her, tried to force her to have sex and that, while using anabolic steroids, he had erupted in rages and threats that terrified his wife and children.
If Quinn has to run with Cohen, Illinois will likely elect a Republican governor in November.

Cohen has vowed not to leave the race, pointing out that he had told reporters every grimy detail about his past when he announced his candidacy early last year. Reporters were so bored by the very notion of covering the race for this near-meaningless post that they paid no attention. The lucky recipient gets a salary and a desk and does next to nothing unless the governor becomes disabled, dies or is impeached.

No one knows that better than Quinn, who was Rod Blagojevich’s lieutenant governor until Blagojevich was impeached in January 2009 and Quinn moved up.

The problem for the voter is not that Quinn, were he to win a full term next November, would ever be impeached. He may be ineffectual, but he’s honest. He is, however, as already noted, fat. The very thought of him this summer campaigning at the state fair and eating all those corn dogs and fried Oreos makes this Illinois resident extremely anxious. If the svelte Dan Hynes were the nominee, I’d worry less about Cohen being the proverbial heartbeat away.

By the time of the November elections, Quinn will likely be in even worse shape, especially if Cohen continues to refuse to budge.

Cohen came out of nowhere — he ran his pawnshop but never held public office. He does not look like a man who is about to return to nowhere. Not after figuring out how to best his six opponents on the Democratic side. Using $2 million of his own money, he advertised heavily on television and radio as the only candidate who would find jobs for the jobless in Illinois. Where he got the $2 million is anybody’s guess. According to the divorce records, he had major money problems, including a threat of foreclosure from his mortgage holder.

Divorce records seem to rear their ugly pages in Illinois politics all the time. In the 2004 U.S. Senate race, for instance, it was the sordid details of divorce records of Barack Obama’s opponents in the primary and in the general election that threw both contests to the man who is now president.