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Kenyan-born US Senate
hopeful, Barrack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate
seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on
Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.
The allegations that
horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy
to implode in four short days have given Obama a clear lead as
Republicans struggled to fetch an alternative.
Ryan’s campaign began to
crumble on Monday following the release of embarrassing records from
his divorce. In the records, his ex-wife, Boston Public actress Jeri
Ryan, said her former husband took her to kinky sex clubs in Paris,
New York and New Orleans.
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Barrack
Obama
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"It’s clear to me that
a vigorous debate on the issues most likely could not take place if I
remain in the race," Ryan, 44, said in a statement. "What
would take place, rather, is a brutal, scorched-earth campaign – the
kind of campaign that has turned off so many voters, the kind of
politics I refuse to play."
Although Ryan disputed the
allegations, saying he and his wife went to one ‘avant-garde’ club in
Paris and left because they felt uncomfortable, lashed out at the media
and said it was "truly outrageous" that the Chicago Tribune
got a judge to unseal the records.
The Republican choice will
become an instant underdog in the campaign for the seat of retiring
Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald, since Obama held a wide lead even
before the scandal broke.
"I feel for him
actually," Obama told a Chicago TV station. "What he’s gone
through over the last three days I think is something you wouldn’t wish
on anybody."
The Republican state
committee must now choose a replacement for Ryan, who had won in the
primaries against seven contenders. Its task is complicated by the fact
that Obama holds a comfortable lead in the polls and is widely regarded
as a rising Democratic star.
The chairwoman of the
Illinois Republican Party, Judy Topinka, said at a news conference,
after Ryan withdrew, that Republicans would probably take several weeks
to settle on a new candidate.
"Obviously, this is a
bad week for our party and our state," she said.
As recently as Thursday,
spokesmen for the Ryan campaign still insisted that Ryan would remain
in the race. Ryan had defended himself saying, "There’s no
breaking of any laws. There’s no breaking of any marriage laws. There’s
no breaking of the Ten Commandments anywhere."
—AP
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