Two-thirds of adults in Illinois (66%) are opposed to a presidential pardon for former Governor George Ryan, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state.

Just 23% say Ryan, the Republican convicted on federal corruption charges in 2006, should be pardoned. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.

According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, Illinois’ senior senator, has asked President Bush to commute Ryan’s 6-1/2-year sentence to the time he already has served. But Durbin, a Democrat, has stopped short of asking for a pardon which would erase Ryan’s criminal record. Ryan is imprisoned at a federal facility in Terre Haute, Ind.

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Bush granted more than a dozen pardons right before Thanksgiving and is expected to announce more before he leaves office in January.

President-elect Barack Obama, who resigned as Illinois’ junior U.S. senator shortly after Election Day, is staying out of the Ryan matter. Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. is the leading choice of Illinois Democrats to take Obama’s place in the Senate.

Some have been critical of Obama’s decision in the Ryan case since he actively championed ethics reform in the state following the governor’s fall from power. Nationally, however, Obama’s ratings as president-elect continue to move up in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index.

Twenty-eight percent (28%) of men favor a pardon for Ryan, compared to 19% of women. Seventy percent (70%) of whites oppose a pardon, compared to 22% who support it. Blacks are closely divided, with those opposed to a pardon having just a four-point edge.

Members of Ryan’s own political party are more unforgiving than his former political opponents. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Republicans oppose a pardon versus 59% of Democrats. Twenty-six percent (26%) of both parties favor pardoning Ryan. Among those unaffiliated with either major political party, just 15% support a pardon, while 77% oppose one.

Opposition to a pardon generally rises with income level.

Ryan, who served as governor from 1999 to 2003, became a darling of liberal politicians and many in the media for his opposition to the death penalty. He announced a moratorium on executions in Illinois in 2000 and just before leaving office commuted the sentences of all prisoners on the state’s Death Row to life in prison. Conservatives questioned whether his stance on the death penalty was intended more to deflect attention from the growing corruption scandals that beset him.

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