An Interview with Governor Jim Edgar Volume III (Sessions 11-16) Interview with Jim Edgar # ISG-A-L-2009-019.11 Interview # 11: November 17, 2009 Interviewer: Mark DePue COPYRIGHT The following material can be used for educational and other non-commercial purposes without the written permission of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. “Fair use” criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. These materials are not to be deposited in other repositories, nor used for resale or commercial purposes without the authorization from the Audio-Visual Curator at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, 112 N. 6th Street, Springfield, Illinois 62701. Telephone (217) 785-7955 DePue: Today is Tuesday, November 17, 2009. My name is Mark DePue, the director of oral history at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, and we are in with another session with Gov. Jim Edgar. Good morning, Governor. Edgar: Good morning. DePue: We’ve had quite a few of these, and it’s been quite a while since our last one, when we talked about the 1990 election. And there were a couple things I know you wanted to say about the 1990 election, but let’s start with this question: what was it about that election, do you think looking back at it now, that made the difference for you and your campaign? Edgar: First of all, I don’t think I should have won that election. People wanted a change. We had had a Republican administration for fourteen years. His [Gov. Jim Thompson] numbers weren’t real good at that point, and I was tied to him. I had a Democratic opponent who was a pretty good campaigner, very well known. I think what made the difference was my ten years as secretary of state, just being out there—people knew me. They knew me differently than just another Republican politician. Now, I’m sure [some] thought of me that way, but a lot of folks, they knew who I was, they knew a little about my family, and there was a connect. I think that connect is critical in any election, at least in the United States, in the state of Illinois. And I think that fact of being out and about much more than my Democratic opponent had been out and about. He was known—his name recognition was almost as good as mine—but he hadn’t been out to all the groups as many times as I had been, because he started well-known. I started as an unknown when I first became secretary of state, and I think I always knew that I had to keep up that pace. Particularly with ethnic groups, a lot of associations in the Chicago area where I shouldn’t have been that strong, I ran very strong. So I don’t think it was because Jim Edgar Interview # ISG-A-L-2009-019 VOL III we were Republicans; in fact, I think [I won] in spite of being a Republican. Just all those nights out away from home, all those weekends and festivals, and spending all the time with those different ethnic groups, I think made the difference in that election. Also, I think we were better organized on getting the vote out, which was important. I think Carter Hendren, the person who headed up my campaign, did a very good job of making sure we did the absentee votes, the voter registration, and then on election day, get the votes out—more so than the Democrats. There wasn’t quite as much enthusiasm in some of the Democrats as I think there was among the Republicans. And because we’d had the office so long, we should have been more complacent; they should have been hungrier. They were hungry, but I think we were just as hungry to hold on. But all that aside, again, I go back and just think that in ten years as secretary of state, I had developed an awareness on the part of the public, which made the difference. The other thing that I think didn’t hurt as much as they thought it was going to hurt—and it definitely helped me as governor; I think it made me as governor—was my position on the temporary income tax. The fact that I had said before the election I wanted to make that permanent, there’s no doubt that probably hurt in some areas. It gave the Democrats a chance to tie me to what they were—the theme on [Jim] Thompson was more taxes, more taxes—but it also, I think, solidified my support among groups like teachers, maybe more of an intellectual group out there that wasn’t always voting for Republicans in this state. But because I did that in the campaign, I survived, then, when I had to make it permanent—and we’ll talk about that later—people didn’t get upset, people didn’t get mad. They knew it was coming; in fact, made it much easier to do it. I think that helped establish that you can trust or you can believe Edgar. So that was a very important thing in that campaign, which many, particularly the Republican side, thought would cost me the election. It didn’t. It probably didn’t help me all that much in the election, but it didn’t cost me the election. And I think because I had developed a rapport with the voters as secretary of state, and they had some kind of an impression with me, all the stuff that went on in the campaign didn’t change that. They felt comfortable, even though they wanted a change, that I was enough of a change. DePue: Let me echo a couple of comments that I’ve heard from some of your lieutenants about that question. And their view, especially on the surcharge, is that you ultimately were much more credible than Neil Hartigan was, that they [the voters] believed what you were saying. The public understood, we’re going to take the surcharge but there will be no new taxes, and they [didn’t think] what Hartigan was 518 Jim Edgar Interview # ISG-A-L-2009-019 VOL III saying would add up. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t coming together. And that was the comment that I consistently got from some other people. 1 Edgar: I believe that, too. I do think that people didn’t trust Hartigan on that. And there’s no way you can ever figure out just how many, because of that, trusted me and voted for me, versus how many still were mad about the taxes and just tied me in with taxes and the argument they were making about the Thompson administration and Republicans in general. It’s hard to say. I think I could have probably won the election if I’d have been against the surtax; I don’t think I could have governed successfully if I’d have been against the surtax, and I don’t think people would say, “Gee, what a great governor you were,” today. I think I’d have been just a one-term governor that probably lied to them and had trouble getting the budget back in shape. I don’t think there’s any doubt. We did polling, too, and it showed that people believed me and didn’t believe Hartigan. I’m sure that that offset a lot of the negatives that were out there about I was just going to be another expensive Republican. You have to remember back then that the Democrats—and I think a lot of people had bought it—that Thompson was a spendthrift. He’d run taxes up; I mean, he’d tried a couple times… Now, the surtax wasn’t his—that was Madigan—but still, he had that image out there. And they had, I thought, a very effective commercial that we talked about before, talking about, during the Republican reign, they’ve raised eighty-four taxes—I forget how many; it was every little thing. But that’s what they hammered away early in the campaign, which tightened up the race. And again, I look back, and I just think, I shouldn’t have won that race, because there was that kind of negative feeling toward Thompson. I don’t think it was because he was bad; it was just he’d been in there fourteen years, and I think any time you’re there that long, there’s a tendency—you begin to lose your welcome. And the tax issue, I thought they used very effectively. I kind of played into that to some extent, but we also talked a lot in that campaign about property tax caps, and I do think there was much more concern about property taxes than there was about income tax. Now, a lot of people didn’t give my property tax proposal much credence, and I don’t know if the media ever took it very seriously, but I do think we probably were able, in the suburban area, to give some hope to some voters who maybe weren’t crazy about the surtax position but were more worried about their property taxes. I was out there, really the only one, talking about a specific proposal. I’m not one who thinks that issues often carry the elections, but I think it probably helped me, because we ran very well, particularly in the suburban area—much better than I did downstate.