Remembering Former Lt. Governor Corinne Wood
Then-Lt. Governor Corinne Wood announces her campaign for Governor in 2001. Wood died Tuesday after a long battle with breast cancer.
Corinne Wood, the first female Lt. Governor in state history who bravely battled breast cancer for more than a decade, died Tuesday. She was 66.
From the Chicago Tribune:
As Corinne Wood campaigned to become Illinois’ first female lieutenant governor on the 1998 Republican ticket with George Ryan, her gender and moderate social views were seen as critical toward balancing Ryan’s conservative image.
She also was dealing with her recovery from breast cancer surgery. Donning a wig to counter the effects of chemotherapy treatments that made her hair fall out in 1997, Wood took to the campaign trail and dutifully visited each of the state’s 102 counties. Once in office, she was the force behind an income tax checkoff for breast cancer research.
Wood was a freshman House lawmaker when Ryan selected her as his running mate and made her the first woman selected by a leading Republican candidate for governor to run for lieutenant governor.
For Ryan, it was a move aimed at trying to soften his image to the electorate as an abortion-rights foe and opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment during his days as speaker of the Illinois House.
In Wood, Ryan found a social moderate with strong support of women’s issues, including support of abortion rights, and a hard charging candidate for an office with few defined responsibilities. Her desire was to be part of the decision-making in the governor’s office.
Wood was widely respected across political spectrums, and she never found a spot to return to public life after four years being tied to corruption allegations lobbed at then-Gov. George Ryan.
Our prayers are with her family.