Scott Lee Cohen's brother tries to fill in blanks on past
February 5, 2010
BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter
Larry Cohen didn’t vote for his younger brother — he says he was busy with other things and it slipped his mind — but he says the embattled Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor is a great guy who is just what Illinois needs.
"I support him 110 percent," said Cohen, 55, who, like his younger brother, is in the pawnbroker business. "I feel he will do better than anyone else who's been in that office."
Larry Cohen, who lives in the northern suburbs, supports his brother, even though he sued him in a dispute over the proceeds of a will following the death of the Cohen brothers’ father in February 1995. Larry Cohen eventually won a $195,000 judgment against his brother.
But Larry Cohen said the legal filing was something recommended by their attorneys — a "mutual agreement" between the two brothers.
Asked about his brother’s previous relationship with a woman later convicted of prostitution, Larry Cohen said: "He doesn't run around. He doesn't run around with hookers."
Larry Cohen said his brother never made any mention of a 2005 relationship with the prostitute, although the younger Cohen did briefly talk about a live-in girlfriend who he had arrested for allegedly destroying his apartment that same year.
"He basically said she was some wacko," Larry Cohen said.
"Basically, I really didn’t have too much conversation" about it.
The elder Cohen didn’t want to discuss the specifics of his brother’s divorce — which includes allegations that just two months ago, Scott Lee Cohen owed $54,000 in back child support — but said all divorces are messy.
"Listen, it was a divorce," Cohen said. "It wasn’t a pretty divorce by any stretch of the imagination." Despite mounting pressure on Scott Lee Cohen to get out of the race for lieutenant governor, Larry Cohen said his brother shouldn’t quit.
"No, 'cause you want know something?" he said. "What he did ... maybe [it] kind of got out of hand or whatever, but the fact of the matter is, you can’t look at what he did as a negative. You have to put it aside."
Larry Cohen compared his brother’s missteps to those of former President Bill Clinton.
"The bottom line is: Forget about what you did yesterday, because that's history," Cohen said. "It's what you can do tomorrow."