George Ryan’s inauguration Jan. 11 will bring to an end the 30-year Springfield stint of fellow Republican Jim Edgar, who spent more time in Illinois public service than any governor this century and whose departure from political life was as startling as his arrival. Edgar stunned Illinois in August 1997 when he announced that he would seek neither a third term as governor nor a bid for the U.S. Senate. Edgar would have been favored to win either race as easily as he captured gubernatorial elections in 1994 and 1990 after equally easy triumphs for secretary of state in 1982 and 1986. Edgar, 52, has not closed the door to political opportunities, but for the immediate future will lecture at the University of Illinois, where his experience in the legislative and executive branches provides ample material for reflection. Some of those reflections will include how the political world has changed since he arrived in 1968 in Springfield. He shared his thoughts in a recent interview with the Tribune.
Q: It has been more than 18 months since you decided to step away from government. Regrets?
A: Ask me a year from now. I know there’ll be things I’ll miss. There’ll be an adjustment. One former governor said it finally hit him he wasn’t governor any more when he got into the back seat of a car and it didn’t move. Mine is that it’s been 18 years since I got into a cold car. Nobody should be in this business for the perks, but there are some very nice lifestyle things that go along with being governor. I got a kick out of meeting a Margaret Thatcher (former British prime minister) or Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. That’s pretty heady stuff for a kid from Charleston, Ill.
You don’t always win but you’re a player. People want to know your opinion. Your thoughts count. I’ll miss all this, just sitting with a reporter who is asking my opinion.
Q: Was the decision difficult?
A: Not intellectually. It seemed pretty clear. I didn’t think you should stay in an office like this forever. A friend told me, `You’ll never have a job in politics better than being governor. It’s like college. You’ll never have a better time in your life than college, but you can’t stay in college all your life. We had done most of the things I wanted to do. I had always thought it’s better to go out on top. It was difficult to do physically. It’s difficult to let go, particularly something you’ve worked to achieve all your life and you realize you’re walking away from it.
Q: Most political observers believed that if you decided not to seek a third term as governor you’d run for the U.S. Senate. Why didn’t you?
A: For Jim Edgar, in 1998, it didn’t seem like the right thing. Thirty years ago, when the Senate was more like a club, I would have gone. It’s much more a partisan body than a few years ago. You can be involved in major policy, deal in foreign affairs, but the way things developed (with the impeachment of President Clinton) it would be a terrible way to start off a Senate career. And there’s all the rules and regulations.
Q: About fundraising?
A: (The Senate) is like night and day. You spend all your time raising money. Bob Dole told me it was so bad that if the Girl Scouts from his state gave him brownies he couldn’t accept them or he’d be in violation of some kind of regulation. I was too old to figure out how to live with that. I’ll probably always wonder in the back of my mind what it would have been like. But as I looked at it and talked to some of the former governors, none of them told me they could say it was a better job than governor.
Q: Any other reasons?
A: I have to say I also enjoy surprising people. I take a lot of satisfaction out of the fact that nobody really knew.
Q: So you’re done with politics?
A: I don’t say that. Politics is a very fluid profession. At this point I have no plans for the first time in my life. I have been plotting and scheming and planning since I was in the 3rd grade to be in politics. I don’t have any more of those plans.
Q: When you were first elected to the legislature in 1976 were you plotting to become governor?
A: I thought I’d be in the legislature a long time, then run for some statewide office like comptroller. It was always in my mind to run for governor.
Q: But you only stayed in the legislature for two terms?
A: I was sitting a lot waiting for somebody else to decide what was going to happen. Then I ran for re-election and there was talk that I might be the newest guy in leadership but it didn’t happen. . . . I was stymied in the legislature and then (Gov.) Jim Thompson came along and offered me the job as his legislative liaison.
Q: Your background before the appointment as secretary of state was in the legislature, so why was there criticism that you were aloof and reluctant to engage with the General Assembly while you were governor?
A: I spent a lot of time with individual members. I did the most important thing they wanted, I went and campaigned with them. I did commercials for them. Some of them were pretty good friends of mine. It used to be that the governor dealt with individual members. Now–and it’s really changed from when Thompson was governor–you deal with the four leaders. When push comes to shove, if the leader isn’t there, the rank and file isn’t.
Q: Is that because the four leaders control campaign funds?
A: That’s a big part of it. They have the staff, that’s a big part of it. There is a different attitude toward the process than 30 years ago. Then it was not as partisan. Most people were friends. And now with the cost of elections, there is so much at stake. When I ran in 1976 I spent about $30,000 in my district. The representative who ran this time (1998) spent about $250,000 and the district is only half the size. There’s also so much emphasis on getting control (of the House and Senate) today.
Q: What about your personal relationships with the leadership?
A: It’s true I never once went down and had Jack Daniel’s with (Senate President) Pate Philip. I did let him drink a lot of Diet Coke and eat buffalo burgers in my office. We pushed the envelope a lot in the last eight years, and we made them do a lot of things the legislature didn’t want to do. They didn’t want to make the (income tax) surtax permanent. They did. Democrats didn’t want welfare reform. We got them to vote on it. Republicans, particularly the two leaders (Philip and House Minority Leader Lee Daniels) didn’t want to raise taxes to put money in poor school districts in the state. In the end, they did.
Q: But you couldn’t get them to shift the burden of school funding from the property tax?
A: We didn’t get everything. I didn’t get the tax swap although I had the votes. What matters is if you have the presiding officer, and I didn’t have Pate.
Q: You came to Springfield in 1968 as an intern to Russell Arrington, who was also an immensely powerful Senate president. Is anything really different?
A: Oh, how I wish I had had a Russ Arrington. He was the legislature. (Mayor Richard J.) Daley used to call him “Arrogant Arrington.” He was conservative, he was an activist. He wanted to solve problems. I remember right after we passed the income tax he failed to get the Republicans to budge on a gasoline tax to help the CTA, and he was in a terrible mood. He told me, “There was a problem, the CTA needed help and the legislature didn’t help. That’s what we’re here for.” That impressed me. I was 23 years old and I thought that was the way the process was supposed to work. I can’t say it has ever worked that way since.
Q: How would you answer partisan opponents who charge that the secret of success for Republicans who have won the governor’s office for seven straight elections is to not promise much and not do much?
A: We made the income tax increase permanent. We completely redid welfare, we did raise taxes–people aren’t supposed to raise taxes. We revamped the whole social service area. One of the things I’m proud of–even though we hired thousands of new prison guards and hundreds of new caseworkers for abused and neglected kids–when I leave office there’s going to be fewer state workers than when I entered office in January 1991.
Q: What were your disappointments?
A: I wanted a dramatic shift away from the property taxes to fund education. That wasn’t to be even though we had the votes. When we completely revamped the human services structure, Pate was adamantly opposed. I argued with him and fought with him and cajoled members of his caucus. We didn’t get to revamp Children and Family Services, but we got 85 percent of what I wanted.
Q: What were some of the things you thought were gutsy?
A: When we did away with general assistance, people came to me and said we were going to have riots in the streets. We didn’t. In my 1994 campaign I was at a ground-breaking in a really bad South Side neighborhood and a guy came up to me and said, “Are you Edgar? Know what you did to me?” I was thinking, “Gee, whatever I did I wish I hadn’t done it,” and he said, “You took away my welfare check. Best thing that ever happened to me.” It forced him into a job-training program and he got a job, not a very good job, but at least when he goes home at night he knows he did something.
Q: Is the public less willing to accept new programs to deal with social problems?
A: The public believes the solution is not bigger government. The Great Society was a noble undertaking, but it failed in many ways. At the time, people thought you could solve problems by more and more government. Today, that’s not true. We can make government more efficient. We can change how we spend dollars.
Q: You are satisfied with the job you did as governor? Any examples?
A: I’m sure there are a lot of things I’d have done differently. Some of it had do with timing. Chicago school reform would have never gotten past the legislature as we have it today. It took an all-Republican legislature to do it. But we would never have gotten the money for school funding if we had an all-Republican legislature in 1996.
Q: You began politics by campaigning at age 6 for President Eisenhower. Who were your other heroes?
A: Gerald Ford. I thought he came in at one of the most difficult times in the history of the nation and did a good job. I disagreed with him about pardoning Richard Nixon. At least I would have hoped he had waited until after the (1974) elections.
Q: You lost your first bid for the Illinois House in 1974, but how did that change your career?
A: I learned two lessons. One, you can always lose. Two, I never wanted to lose again. But I also always remember after that election all kinds of people came out and said, “Don’t feel bad, Lincoln lost his first election.” I would answer, “There’s all kinds of things about Lincoln I don’t want to duplicate. Lincoln got shot.”
———-
An edited transcript
