Illinois Governors on Parade, 1913-2014

Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne (1913-1917), Democrat

Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne, was a governor from 1913-1917 and a Democrat.  His father has been an Irish Nationalist who emigrated after an unsuccessful rebellion.   He was born in Watertown, CT.  His mother was daughter of a prosperous contractor who had built the docks of Galway.    His father became a successful businessman and an ardent supporter of the Fenians.  Edward attended Trinity College in Dublin, but had to leave because of financial reverses in his father's business.  He finished his education at the Union College of Law in Chicago, and became a successful Lawyer.  He served as judge of the Circuit court from 1892 to 1905, then was elected mayor of Chicago.

As Governor from 1913 to 1917 he supported progressive causes such as Women's suffrage, and expanded the role of the state government.  He helped create the Public Utility Commission, and oversight functions in workmen's compensation, and teacher's pensions.  

After serving as governor he returned to his law practice.  he died in 1937.  
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Frank Orren Lowden (1917-1921), Republican.

Lowden was born in Minnesota, and grew up in Iowa, attending Iowa State University  and then the Union College of Law in Chicago, received his law degree and was admitted to the bar in 1887.  He married the daughter of George Pullman and was a law professor at Northwestern.
He served in the US Congress from 1906 to 1911, replacing a member who had died and, reelected in succeeding terms, stepped down in 1911.   

He was elected governor in 1917.  During his term he reorganized state government, introduced the idea of a state budget for state spending, frustrated efforts to abolish the death penalty by vetoing the bill, favored women's suffrage, opposed the League of Nations, supported the Volstead Act.  He was praised for his handling of the Chicago Race Riots of 1919 and the transit strike.   

In 1920 he was a major candidate for President on the Republican ticket, deadlocked with General Leonard Wood, but in a smoke-filled room, Harding got the nod.  In 1928 he tried again, but this time Herbert Hoover had it in the bag. 
He died in 1943 in Tucson, AZ, and was buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.  
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Lennington Small (1921-1929), Republican

acquitted under suspicious circumstances

Small was born in 1862 in Kankakee County.  He attended Northern Indiana Normal School and began his career as a school teacher.  He invested in real estate, became eventually an owner of a bank and the local newspaper.  He served in the Illinois senate from 1901 to 1905, Illinois state treasurer from 1905-1907 and 1917-1919, and was elected governor in 1920, and re-elected in 1924.  He was indicted but not convicted of embezzling a million dollars but was acquitted.   The fact that 8 of the jurors got state jobs subsequently led to a suspicion of jury tampering.   At one point he required state workers to contribute to his "defense fund" raising $650,000. After losing a civil suit against him requiring him to repay $1 million he struck a deal with prosecutors to allow him to repay the $650,000 he had raised from state employees.  He also pardoned around 1000 convicted felons, including notorious bootlegger Spike O'Donnell, in 1923. 

After two malodorous terms as Governor he was defeated in the Republican primary by a reform candidate in 1928.  He died in 1936.  
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Louis Lincoln Emmerson (1929-1933), Republican

Emmerson was born in Albion, IL in 1863.  Emmerson started out as a merchant and banker in Mount Vernon, IL.  He ran first for state treasurer in 1912, was unsuccessful, but four years later he was elected Secretary of State, and remained in that office for 12 years.  In 1928 he defeated Len Small for the Republican nomination for governor and was elected the same year.  In 1929 the great depression set in and in the tribulations brought on by that event, he eased the penalties for late tax payment and instituted a gas tax to help pay for better roads around the state.   He also started the first unemployment commission in Illinois and received a grant to complete a Lake Michigan to the Gulf Waterway.  Republicans were not popular by 1932 and he chose not to seek reelection.  Emmerson died in 1941. 
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 Henry Horner (1933-1940), Democrat

Horner was born in 1878 in Chicago.  He went to the University of Chicago and became a lawyer.  From 1915 to 1932 he served as a probate judge.  As governor, faced with a fiscal shortfall he instituted the first Illinois sales tax of 2%, which he increased to 3% in 1936.  He was a reform candidate who was opposed to graft and stoutly opposed the Nash-Kelly machine in Chicago, but was reelected in 1936 anyway owing to support from downstate.  In 1938 he suffered a stroke and spent the last two years of his life as an invalid.  He died in October of 1940, in office. He was buried at the Mount Mayriv Cemetery in Chicago. 

Horner was a collector of Abraham Lincoln memorabilia and donated his collection the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield.  A park in Chicago is named Horner Park, and the housing project Henry Horner Homes is also named in his honor.  
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John Henry Stelle (1940-1941), Democrat

Stelle was born in 1891 in McLeansboro, IL.  He was Lieutenant Governor of the state when Governor Horner died, so served the remaining 3 months of his term.

Stelle received a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.  He became state treasurer in 1935 and became Lt. Governor in 1937, which he held through most of Henry Horner's second term as governor.  In that short time he spent as Governor he lavishly rewarded his friends and supports in the state.  In one example, he appointed George E. Day as state purchasing agent, and then authorized the painting of yellow lines on all state highways to denote unsafe passing zones.  Day was a paint dealer and bought the paint from his own firm, to his great financial benefit.  

He was a fervent supporter of the military, and promoted the GI Bill of Rights later in the war.  He supported and campaigned for John F. Kennedy, who won Illinois with a narrow margin of 11,000 votes.  He died in 1962.  
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Dwight Herbert Green (1941-1949) Republican

Green was born in 1897 in Ligonier, IN.  He went to college at Wabash College and then went to law school at the University of Chicago.   He served as US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois from 1931-1935 and was one of the prosecutors who finally put Al Capone away.  After failing to win in an election to mayor of Chicago, he went on to be elected governor of Illinois in 1940 on the strength of his reputation as a prosecutor and opposition to the Democratic Chicago machine.  While he was a popular governor, he was held responsible in regulatory negligence for the deaths of 111 miners in Centralia, IL, and was defeated in an upset in 1948 by Adlai Stevenson.  He died in 1958 and was buried in Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.
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Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (1949-1953), Democrat.

Adlai Stevenson II came from an illustrious Illinois political family, his grandfather having served as vice president under Grover Cleveland.    He was born in Los Angeles, CA in 1901, but grew up in Bloomington, IL.  He attended University High School, but transferred to Choate, an exclusive private school in Connecticut,  from which he graduated in 1918.  Although he enlisted in the Navy shortly afterwards, it was too late to participate in the First World War.  He attended Princeton University and went to Harvard where he did poorly and withdrew.  A while later he had a renewed interest in law and got his law degree at Northwestern University in Chicago, was admitted to the Illinois Bar and worked for a law firm in Chicago.  He and his wife built a home on a 70 acre tract of land in what is now Mettawa, IL., but what was at the time Libertyville, IL.   He and his wife had three sons, one of whom became Adlai Stevenson III.  

In the first term of the Roosevelt Administration he took positions in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and then in the Federal Alcohol Control Administration, but left in 1935.  In 1940 he returned to government service as counsel and assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox.  Postwar he worked in the Foreign Economic Administration and in the State Department in efforts to establish what became the United Nations. 

In 1949, put forward as the Chicago Democratic Organization's candidate, he was elected Governor over the incumbent,  Dwight Green.  The same year his wife divorced him.  He never remarried.

As governor, he reorganized the state police, removing political considerations and introducing a merit system for employment.  He vetoed a bill that would have made it a felony to belong to a "subversive group" and required "loyalty oaths" for anyone working for the state.  He famously vetoed a bill passed by bird lovers declaring that letting cats run loose was a public nuisance.   He was a character witness in favor of Alger Hiss in 1949.  

In 1952-1960 he made what would be three consecutive runs for the US presidency, losing twice to Dwight Eisenhower, and failing to get the nomination a third time, when John F. Kennedy got the nod from the Democrats.  In later years he served as ambassador to the UN.  He died in 1965.  
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William Grant Stratton (1953-1961), Republican

acquitted of tax evasion

Stratton was born in 1914 in Ingleside, IL he was son of William J. Stratton.    He attended the University of Arizona, where he majored in political science.  He served one term in the US congress in 1941-1943 and another in 1947-1949.  He was elected state treasurer in 1943-1944, served as lieutenant in the US Navy 1944-1946.  He was elected again for state treasurer in 1950-1952.  In 1952 he was elected Governor of Illinois, reelected in 1956, but defeated for reelection in 1960 by Democrat Otto Kerner. 

He was acquitted of a charge of tax evasion in 1965.  He attempted a return to the Governor's mansion in 1968, but was unsuccessful.  He maintained a home in Morris, IL and operated a livestock farm in Sangamon County.  He died in 2001. 
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Otto Kerner, Jr.  (1961-1968), Democrat

sentenced to 3 years

Kerner was born in 1908 in Chicago.  His father served as Illinois Attorney General and as judge on the Seventh Circuit of the US Court of Appeals.  He graduated from Brown University in 1930, and attended Trinity College in Cambridge before receiving a law degree from Northwestern University in 1934.  He married the daughter of Anton Cermak, the Chicago Mayor who had been fatally shot in 1933.  In the second world war, he served in the army in Italy where he made the acquaintance of Jacob Arvey, who was the leader of the Cook County Democratic Party.  Later he joined the Illinois Army National Guard, where he retired in 1954 as a major general.  

In 1947 he was appointed the US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and became a judge in the Illinois circuit court of Cook County until 1961 when he was elected governor,   denying Stratton a third term and was re-elected in 1964.   Illinois won with his efforts the contract to build the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, IL.  He worked to expand international trade in Illinois products.  He reformed the mental health system run by the state.  In the wake of the race riots of 1966, he served as chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, having been appointed by President Johnson.  

In the last year of his second term, Kerner resigned his governorship to become a judge for the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.  

In 1973 Kerner was convicted of 17 counts of mail fraud, conspiracy, perjury and related charges.  He was sentenced to three years in Federal Prison, but served only 6 months, being released because by that time Kerner was suffering from lung cancer.  He died in 1976.  
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Samuel S. Shapiro (1968), Democrat

Samuel S. Shapiro was born in Estonia in 1907 and emigrated with his family to America as a small child.  He got his law degree from the University of Illinois and practiced law in Kankakee, IL.  He became state's attorney for Kankakee County in 1936, served as a state representative from 1947 to 1961.  In 1961 he was elected Lieutenant governor along with Otto Kerner as governor.  When Kerner left his position as governor in 1968, he succeeded him as governor.  His special interest as legislator and as Lt. Governor was mental health, which he sought to reform.  After being narrowly defeated for governor by successor Richard B. Ogilvy, he returned to his law practice.  He died in 1987.  The day he died he was supposed to be in court in Kankakee, and was only discovered to have died, when police were sent to his home to investigate why he had not been in court.  He was buried in Jewish Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, IL.
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Richard Buell Ogilvie (1969-1973), Republican

Ogilvie was born in 1923 in Kansas City, MO.  He attended Yale and then entered the army in 1942, serving as a tank commander in France, and then finished his studies at Yale, graduating in 1947 with a degree in American History.  He got his law degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology Kent College of Law in Chicago in 1949.  From 1950 he practiced law, became a US attorney in 1954 in Chicago, and in 1958-61 served as special assistant to the US Attorney General, and was in charge of a unit fighting organized crime in Chicago.  In 1962 he was elected Cook County sheriff.  In 1967 he became president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

He was elected governor in 1968 along with  Lt. Gov.  Paul Simon, a Democrat who later went on to become a US Senator from Illinois.   Aided by large Republican majority in both Senate and House in the state, he was able to call a constitutional convention in the state, instituted the first income tax for the state, and increased social spending.  The income tax resulted in the voters sending him home in 1972.  

After serving as Governor he practiced law in Chicago, where he was considered for the position of FBI director by President Nixon before giving the job to Patrick Gray.  He served as a trustee for the bankrupt railroad, the Milwaukee Road in 1979, which became as a result the Wisconsin Central.  In 1987 he was on a committee to study the feasibility of shutting down Amtrak, which never happened.  He died in 1988 and was interred at Rosehill Mausoleum in Chicago.  The Metra commuter rail station in Chicago is named in his honor.  
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Daniel Walker (1973-1979), Democrat

convicted, sentenced to 7 years

Dan Walker was born in 1922 in Washington, DC, and grew up in San Diego, CA.  He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1945 and served in the Navy during World War II and in Korea.  He graduated from Northwestern University with a law degree in 1950.  He served as a law clerk for US Supreme Court Justice Vinson, an aide to
Governor Stevenson, served as a deputy commissioner in the US Court of Military appeals.

In 1968 he served as head of a study team for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, looking into the messy violence surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention.    His report was critical of the Chicago Police Department and earned him the lasting enmity of Mayor Daley.  Later as candidate for governor in 1972 he won the Democratic nomination over the Daley and the Chicago Machine favorite, Lt. Gov. Paul Simon.  During his campaign he hit upon the gimmick of walking around the state, covering over 1000 miles during his campaign.  He was elected governor, defeating Richard B. Ogilvie by 51 to 49%. 

 As Governor he clashed with both the Chicago Democratic machine and Republicans in the state.  Nevertheless he instituted some reforms against certain corrupt practices and passed a campaign finance disclosure law.  He was defeated in the state primary in 1976, and left office in 1977. 

In 1980 he started a chain of oil change shops and bought two troubled Savings and Loans Associations.  As owner of one of these banks, he committed bank fraud by borrowing $45,000 from a borrower from his bank. He subsequently pleaded guilty to bank fraud, perjury, and filing false financial statements and was sentenced to 7 years in federal prison in 1987.   After 18 months Walker was released from prison in 1989.

He later went on to become an author, writing about early Church history, San Diego History, and his memoirs of his time in Illinois state politics.  He now lives in Rosarito, Baja California in Mexico.  
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James Robert Thompson, Jr. (1977-1991) Republican

Thompson was born in 1936 in Chicago.  He attended the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Washington University in St. Louis.  He earned his law degree from Northwestern in 1959.    He served for the Cook County state's attorney, taught at Northwestern Law School, and became a US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in the early 1970s. It was as a federal prosecutor that he succeeded in convicting former Governor Otto Kerner Jr. for influence peddling in connection with the racetrack industry.  He also succeeded in gaining convictions of some of Mayor Richard J. Daley's top aides as well as some prominent Republicans in Cook County.  

In 1976 Thompson was elected governor with an overwhelming plurality.  At this time the terms of governor were adjusted to fall on non-Presidential election years, so his first term was only for two years.  He beat Michael Bakalis two years later for a second full 4 year term, and then defeated former senator Adlai Stevenson iii, son of the former governor twice in 1980 and 1984.  

After leaving office in 1991 he joined and later headed the law firm of Winston and Strawn.  As part of that law firm he has focused on corporate law and government relations, as well as  defending former Governor George Ryan in the "licenses for bribes" scandal. 

He served on the 9/11 Commission in from 2002-2004, when the commission released its report.  
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James Edgar (1991-1999), Republican

called to testify

Edgar was born in Vinita, OK in 1946 and grew up in Charleston, IL.  He attended Wabash College and graduated from Eastern Illinois University circa 1968.     In 1976 he was elected to the Illinois House from someplace in the state, and was reelected in1978.  Governor Jim Thompson appointed Edgar as his legislative liaison, and when Alan Dixon left to become US Senator, he was appointed by Thompson to fill his term as Secretary of State.  He was subsequently reelected at Secretary of State before being elected as governor of Illinois in 1990.  He served two terms as governor before leaving office in 1999.   While he was called to testify in his role in the Management Systems of Illinois scandal, he was not charged, while a number of Illinois state employees were convicted.

Citing health problems, specifically his heart surgery, he has stayed out of politics since leaving office as governor.   For example, although he was thought to have been a strong candidate for US Senator he chose not to run for the seat that Barack Obama won in 2006.
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George Ryan (1999-2003), Republican

convicted sentenced to 6 1/2 years

Ryan was born in Maquoketa, IA in 1934, and grew up in Kankakee County, IL.  He worked in his father's drug stores, and attended the Ferris State College of Pharmacy in Michigan.  Ryan was drafted and sent to Korea during the Korean War and served 13 months as a base pharmacist there and then returned to build his family's pharmacy business into a lucrative state-wide business. 

He served on the Kankakee County Board from 1968-1973.  He then served in the Illinois House from 1973 to 1983 where he rose to become minority leader and then speaker.  Then he served as Lt. Governor under James Thompson, then as secretary of state from 1991-1999. From 1999 to 2003 he served as governor.  

As governor he followed the usual path of being in favor of education spending, road construction, and mass transit.  More controversially he led a trade mission to Cuba, and was the first sitting governor to meet with Fidel Castro.  He also opposed the death penalty in Illinois because he felt it was arbitrary and too many questionable verdicts had led to the death penalty.  As a result he commuted all death row inmates (about 160 or so) at the time he left office in 1999.  

It was only after leaving office that he started to encounter his legal problems, for things done before he was governor, when he was secretary of state.  

Willis Mini-van

  His problems stemmed from a tragic accident in I-94 in Wisconsin in November 1994, where a piece of metal fell off a truck in front of a minivan where the pastor Duane Scott Willis, his wife and all six of their children were passengers.  Running over the piece of metal punctured the gas tank of the minivan causing it to burst into flames.  While Willis and his wife escaped with relatively minor burns, his six children were incinerated.   As it was subsequently determined, the driver of the truck whence the metal had fallen had obtained his Illinois drivers license through a bribe and was apparently unqualified to be operating a truck.

In the subsequent investigation into the Secretary of State's office it uncovered a pattern of bribery and corruption that ultimately led to George Ryan to be sentenced to 6 and 1/2 years in Federal prison after conviction on 20 of 22 counts of racketeering, bribery, extortion, money laundering and tax fraud (1).   Ryan has now been released to home confinement as of January 2013.    
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Rod Blagojevich (2003-2009) Democrat

convicted, sentenced 14 years

Blagojevich, born in 1956 in Chicago was the son of immigrants from Serbia.  He went to school at the University of Tampa then transferring to Northwestern, where he graduated in 1979 with a BA in history. He got his law degree from Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA.  He is married to Patricia Mell, daughter of former Chicago Alderman Richard Mell. He was a law clerk for Chicago Alderman Ed Vrdolyak, and then became an assistant prosecutor for Cook County for Richard M. Daley, then State's attorney and later mayor of Chicago.   In 1992 he was elected to the Illinois House from the North Side of Chicago.  In 1996 he was elected to the US Congress, taking back for the Democrats the seat won by Michael Flanagan over the disgraced longtime congressman Dan Rostenkowski, who was convicted of mail fraud.  He was reelected twice more as Congressman from the district.  Interestingly he was one of only 81 house Democrats who voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq in 2002.  He was alone among the Democrats in the state delegation to have done so.

As candidate for governor in 2002 he narrowly defeated two opponents, IL attorney general Roland Burris and Chicago Public Schools superintendent Paul Vallas.  Rahm Emmanuel, Barack Obama, and David Wilhelm in various capacities supported Blagojevich's run for governor.  The Republican candidate was Illinois attorney general Jim Ryan. Though no relation to George Ryan, Blagojevich successfully linked the two together and the need for "change".   

By 2006, the Blagojevich administrated had its own bad smells to contend with lone statewide Republican Judy Barr Topinka, state treasurer, running a campaign against Blagojevich that emphasized his corruption.  Nevertheless she lost the election.  

Some of the change that Blagojevich promoted was ethics reform, death penalty reform, state Earned Income Tax Credit, KidCare and FamilyCare heath care programs, sexual orientation discrimination bans.  The costs of these programs was borne by raiding the state pension funds and expanding gambling in the state,  rather than tax increases. 

Blagojevich faced mounting opposition even from his own party as he did things and said things that alienated them.  He refused to live in Springfield, and seldom talked to members of the legislature.   Mayor Richard M. Daley went so far as to say that Blagojevich was "cuckoo".  One could go on and on cataloging the legislative outrages of this governor but a fairly good summary is found here.

Wiretaps conducted by the US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, convinced him to arrest Blagojevich at his home.  As it appeared the governor had openly sought to "sell" the open seat left when Barack Obama was elected President, the Illinois governor being given the option to appoint someone to fill the remainder of Obama's senatorial term until the next general election.  On the tape he remarked that "I've got this thing, and it's fucking golden. I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing."  Subsequently he was removed from office on a 59-0 impeachment vote, and banned from holding political office in Illinois.  Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn succeeded him in office.   He was convicted in Federal court in 2011 of all charges associated with the sale of the senate seat, and for extortion relating to a children's hospital and a race track.   In the Federal trial for corruption he was sentenced to 14 years in Federal prison, and is now incarcerated in Englewood Colorado.  He will not be eligible for release until 2024.   
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Patrick Joseph Quinn III (2009-2015), Democrat

Quinn was born in 1948 in Hinsdale, IL.   He earned a degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 1971.  He received his law degree in 1980 from Northwestern University.   He served as an aide to Governor Dan Walker.   Early on he supported an initiative to increase the voter referendum as a way of influencing policy, but this was ruled unconstitutional by the Illinois supreme court.  Another initiative more successful was his effort to cut back on the number of members of the Illinois House, reducing the number from 177 to 118 members, and eliminating cumulative voting and multiple member districts.   Others have suggested however that the old multiple member districts produced a better legislature.  

In 1982 he became commissioner of the Cook County board of tax appeals.  After one prior unsuccessful run, he was elected state treasurer from 1991 to 1995.  He was critical of George Ryan and ran against him for Secretary of State in 1994.   In 1996 he ran for the open Democratic seat in the US senate vacated by Paul Simon, but Dick Durbin won that contest.   Quinn was an early teabagger, encouraging voters to express their displeasure with the approval of an increase in the salaries of state legislators under Jim Edgar by mailing in tea bags, and encouraged a similar protest against Commonwealth Edison's increase in rates.  

In 2002 he was elected Lt. Governor on Rod Blagojevich's ticket, but did not remain a supporter of Blagojevich, and by 2006 they were pretty much political enemies. In 2010 he narrowly won reelection in his own right against Republican Bill Brady, who in a Republican year was widely expected to win.    In a lame duck session after the 2010 election Quinn and the legislature passed a 66% personal income tax increase and also increased corporate income tax rates.  The new legislature coming in in January 2010 would never have approved these changes, so obviously it had to be done in this sneaky way.  In order to accomplish this the legislature actually stopped time and delayed the midnight hour a couple of hours past midnight.  

Businesses, owing to the tax structure of the state, one of the most confiscatory in the nation, are relocating outside of Illinois.  The most recent example of this is Office Depot's decision to locate its corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, FL.    However, so far, the teacher's unions, the SEIU and anyone else on the state payroll is well pleased with the governor although a crisis regarding pension funding still looms.   

In November 2014, however, voters had had enough of our boy Quinn and turned him out of office.  One hopes Bruce Rauner is an improvement and stays out of prison as seems to happen a lot with Illinois governors.  

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Bruce Rauner (2015-?)