Ryan Calls on McKenna to Withdraw

Jim Ryan

First it was Cheryle Jackson calling on Alexi Giannoulias to withdraw. Now Jim Ryan is calling on Andy McKenna to withdraw. The AP reports:

Republican candidate for governor Jim Ryan says Andy McKenna should withdraw from the GOP race unless he answers questions about improper behavior when he ran the state party.

The Ryan camp on Thursday also called on the Illinois Republican Party to release all documents related to its investigation of McKenna, who included his name in a poll to gauge voter interest.

A party investigation found McKenna acted improperly by including his name in the party-funded poll when he was state GOP chairman. He's since apologized.

The Ryan camp accuses McKenna of not cooperating with the investigation.

While this is all bluster, the story right now in the GOP gubernatorial race, at least among the frontrunners, is that guys like Ryan and Dillard are playing catch-up with the McKenna Team. They let McKenna get ahead of them and define himself to voters before they were able to define him. Candidates like Dan Proft were trying to do this months ago, but without the necessary bandwidth those efforts couldn't break through. With his greater resources, Ryan should have been hammering McKenna the moment he entered the race. Now, it might be too late.