What does it take for someone with political aspirations to voluntarily remove themselves from public life in Illinois? “A lot” barely scratches the surface. This is a state where being caught red-handed only means you get more media coverage, and it takes an impeachment proceeding and/or jail time to be truly rid of a politician. You have to be extraordinary. You have to be Scott Lee Cohen.
The Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor quietly ended his run while most eyes were glued to the super bowl (Spoiler alert: Saints won), and sneakily slithered back into his pit of iniquity. It had been a long couple of days, after rumors started circulating alleging that Cohen
abused anabolic steroids, went into fits of rage, sexually abused his then-wife, got behind in child support payments and held a knife to the throat of a former girlfriend who is a convicted prostitute.
You know, the kind of things it would have been nice for both party officials and Democratic voters to know before the state’s primary. It isn’t as though the Dem establishment could have run a cursory background check on the former pawn broker to see if he was the kind of individual they wanted to support. That was not an option. Nor was just looking at his neck and surmising that steroid abuse would explain a lot. No, their hands were tied in the matter, presumably allowing Cohen to slip through the good old fashioned (Chicago) way: Nepotism and bribes.
