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Last week a latter-day reformer was about to be liberalized out of business before he even got started. He was George Ratterman, 34, father of eight and a onetime T-formation quarterback who was a bench-riding substitute for Johnny Lujack at Notre Dame, then for Otto Graham on the National Football League's Cleveland Browns. Although in his playing days he had never been noted for confining his antics to the football field, Ratterman was thrust forward as the candidate for sheriff by a local reform group called the Committee of 500. But fortnight ago. Newport's cops found Ratterman bedded down with a Brillo-haired stripper named April ("I'm an exotic dancer"') Flowers in Room 314 of the Tropicana.
This week April testified that Ratterman was trying to complete a pass when the cops showed up. Ratterman maintained that he had been drugged and framed. After a trial of five days, he was cleared on evidence that April's lawyer had been involved in a plan to photograph an unidentified man at the Tropicana under circumstances suspiciously similar to those that plagued Ratterman. This week a county grand jury will start poking into Newport, and next month a federal grand jury in Lexington will take up the chase with the backing of Attorney General Robert Kennedy himself.