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Stories of the Governorship By the ORAL HISTORY OFFICE, SANGAMON STATE UNIVERSITY
Reprints of these excerpts are available at no cost from the Illinois Humanities Council, 201 W. Springfield, Champaign, Illinois 61820. Published memoirs will soon be available in selected libraries and archives throughout the state. Further information about the tapes and transcripts of these interviews and others from the Eyewitness project is available from the Oral History Office, Sangamon State University, Springfield, Illinois 62708. December 1982 | Illinois Issues | 13 The recent gubernatorial campaign is a vivid reminder of the determination with which candidates vie for the top executive position in Illinois. But victory carries with it the awesome task of managing the large and diverse state of Illinois. The following excerpts from interviews in the "Eyewitness Illinois" collection in the Oral History Office at Sangamon State University, illumine and humanize the day-to-day challenge of the governor's office. The interviews were conducted by Cullom Davis, vice president for academic affairs at SSU, and Marilyn H. Immel, director of the Oral History Office. Governor William G. Stratton Born at Ingleside in Lake County on February 26, 1914, and a graduate of the University of Arizona, he was elected to Congress from the state at-large in 1940 and as state treasurer in 1942. After serving in the Navy, he was elected again at-large to Congress, and in 1950 he was again elected state treasurer. On January 12, 1953, he was inaugurated as the 32nd governor of Illinois and served two terms. He is now vice president, Canteen Corporation. As a young Republican alderman in Chicago in 1952, Joseph P. Immel supported Stratton in the primary rather than the choice of his party, Bill Erickson, then president of the Cook County Board. He assisted Stratton's campaign manager, Charlie Fleck, in running the campaign in Chicago. Q: What was it that attracted you to Stratton? There were a number of other possibilities. Why did you and Charlie Fleck choose Stratton? IMMEL: I had a few talks with him before I made my move, I might say that. But I knew about Bill Stratton. First of all, Stratton had a name; name recognition that very few politicians have. His father had been secretary of state in Illinois at one time. And Bill, as a very young man, went from town to town with his father and his father was a great campaigner. They came out of the Waukegan area, Lake County, Illinois, which is north of Chicago, as you know. And he traveled the state with his father. He could walk into towns and walk into a drugstore or a gasoline station or a church or a pool hall and they'd all say, "Hello Bill, how are you?" Well, first of all, that gave him name recognition The other thing about it — Bill is a very dedicated politician. He's a knowledgeable man. I think he's probably as knowledgeable about state government as any man that I've talked to in all the years that I've known state government. He also had been state treasurer and a congressman. I haven't talked to them all, that's for sure, but I've talked to enough to know that Bill Stratton has a feel for politics and a feel for government. And he did know Illinois government; he did know the people. That was the number one thing. There were two things, recognition and knowledge. The other thing that I liked about him was his easy manner of approach. He did not set up a kitchen cabinet around him or any political organization that was dedicated to trying to rape the state treasury. Maybe that's a pretty strong statement, but I think some had that in mind, in running for office. He was oriented in the direction of trying to do a job for the state and also, of course, to further his own political image for which you cannot blame him. If you don't have a little bit of that, why, you shouldn't be running for public office in the first place. Immel goes on to talk about Stratton's accomplishments as governor. IMMEL: Stratton built a team so that when he went into office he had something. There's another reason I supported Stratton. Not only because he's Republican, but Stevenson was then the governor of Illinois. And, I know a lot of people respect Stevenson. As a man, I do. As an orator, as a man with a quip and a dilettante, I thought he was very fine, but as a practical man and a politician, he was a disaster. We had prison riots so strong that when he was out campaigning around the country on national issues for president he had to come home and try to quell the problems that were in the state prisons. Why was he responsible? Because he had poor administration in many of the levels of the prison system. We had mine disasters. We did not have a good mining law in the state of Illinois until Stratton was governor. He sponsored one of the strongest and best mining laws. The men, I think, will tell you in the mining unions that Stratton was their savior as far as getting good regulations. There was a lot of abuse in the mines, and it led to a lot of trouble and mine disasters. We had a poor road system. It was going down the drain. Bill Stratton probably was as good a road governor as we've had since I can remember. He also initiated and developed and built the tollroads around Chicago at a time when property was cheap enough to acquire. Had he not done it at that time I seriously question whether or not the tollroads would ever have been built in Illinois as they are today. And, with those it led to expansion of our industry and our work force and our viability as a great metropolitan area. Without that I think we would have been in very, very serious problems. He also assisted in many ways in building up a better and more viable hospital system in the state under Dr. Otto Bettag. Otto came in the campaign somewhere along the line, I don't remember when, but it was after we were going and all of a sudden I met Dr. Bettag and Otto was quite a man. And he did a hell of a job for the state of Illinois. I think the institutions were never run any better, and I think that he increased the visibility of better medical care and good administrative care in all these hospitals. And, all of his people that he appointed to office did a job. Governor Stratton was elected to a second term in 1956. During the summer before the election, the first news came out of the embezzlement of state funds by State Auditor Orville Hodge. The governor's administrative assistant, Edward G. Free, talks about the scandal and how Stratton handled it. Q: Well, what was the first hint that there was something wrong there [referring to the Hodge scandal]? PREE. Governor Stratton at that time and in that situation, performed what I thought was probably the finest act of statesmanship that I had seen during the time I was there or even since. As I say, the scandal was of such magnitude and had such publicity it was reported in papers all over the country and in fact, I'm told, in Europe. It was something that was just staggering in its publicity and in the effect it had and as I say, it was a campaign year, the year of 1956. And the Democrats were taking full advantage of it and were leveling their attacks on Governor Stratton. 14 | December 1982 | Illinois Issues Well, I remember Governor Stratton had some of the state police assigned to the auditor's office to guard it. Actually, we had state police guards there in the state auditor's office in the Capitol Building. And, Governor Stratton told me that when he forced Hodge's resignation that he never talked that way to any man in his life, the way he had to talk to Hodge. Apparently Hodge didn't want to resign and was reluctant to, of course, and apparently he wasn't ready to throw in the towel, but Governor Stratton apparently just demanded it and he forced his resignation as state auditor and as a candidate for reelection on the 1956 ticket and as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. As I remember, he had been selected to be a delegate and he resigned from everything. So, as I say, when the scandal broke and when Governor Stratton took these emergency measures and forced Hodge's resignation, the state government was in a very serious condition at that time. Public confidence had been badly shaken and the financial condition of the state was somewhat in doubt. You know, people didn't really know what to believe. They didn't know how deep and to what extent this situation actually had gone. And, one of the most brilliant moves the governor made, I thought, was to appoint Lloyd Morey, who was president of the University of Illinois, to become the interim state auditor.
So, putting a man like that in certainly was a big step toward restoring public confidence. Q: Do you know how enthusiastic Morey was about coming into that position? PREE: I met him the day he came over to be sworn in. He was a very kindly man. He was, I suppose at that time, in his late sixties. He was of retirement age at the university, but he was a very fine man to meet and a man who was just common, down to earth. He didn't put on any airs and I just received the impression that he came in there and was doing a public service and he didn't seem to be upset in the least. He was coming in on the powder keg in state government, but he seemed to be very calm about it and as I say, a very fine gentleman and I'll never forget meeting him when he was sworn in. Pree describes the popular Orville Hodge. PREE: Orville Hodge had been a very popular man. He had been in the state legislature before, in the House of Representatives, and I remember in the 1952 primary we had a big meeting here for Governor Stratton, kind of the final downstate campaign rally at the Abraham Lincoln Hotel. We had over a thousand people there, just jammed in there up in the Grand Ballroom and Orville Hodge spoke there along with many of the other state candidates. In fact, I believe most of them were there that evening. And Hodge made a first-rate speech. He was an experienced politician and he was a very fine looking man, a flashy dresser and a great personality. He'd see you in the elevator or something like that and pat you on the back and say, "Well, I'm just your bookkeeper." And he always referred to himself as "your bookkeeper." And the people liked him. He was very popular. Administrative chores in the governor's office before computerization are described here by Pree. PREE: When we first took office in January of 1953, he insisted that I personally sign his name to every important document. He permitted his personal secretary, Marion Keevers, to sign his name. But I was the only other one who could sign his name. And for the first weeks of the administration, I was signing all the notary commissions [laughs]. I remember, Herschel Blazer was the assistant secretary of state or he had one of the key positions under [Secretary of State] Charles Carpentier, and I can still see him bringing these stacks and stacks of notary commissions over, like at seven o'clock in the evening or after supper, and I'd sit there and sign them for two or three hours and he used to laugh about it. And then finally Governor Stratton authorized commissions to be signed, not necessarily by me personally, but we got that problem worked out, so that I didn't have to sign all the notary commissions. But, I signed thousands of them there the first few months. And as I say, I'd work all day, then I'd come back at night, and the secretary of state's office was always pressuring me. They'd say, "We've been getting calls from all over the state, 'Where's my commission?' " you know, and they couldn't get to me because we were swamped in the governor's office and I'd have to meet them after supper and I'd sit at the big table in the governor's reception room. It's now used by the governor as his personal office, but in those years Governor Stratton's office was on the northeast corner of the second floor. And so we had the big reception room and we had that magnificent table out there in the middle. And they'd bring all these commissions over and I'd sit down and sign them, I guess, until about midnight when I got tired. But I signed his name on the important documents. December 1982 | Illinois Issues | 15 The personnel code for state employees was implemented during the Stratton administration, but political patronage continued to be a legitimate and well-traveled route to employment. Every Republican in the state knew that if you wanted a job, you contacted Ed Free. Mr. Free and the governor had high expectations of patronage workers. Q: Did he ever turn anyone down flat who came with recommendations? PREE: One thing he insisted upon from the beginning was that there'd be no, so-called, political jobs where they didn't work. He said everybody that was appointed to a state position would be expected to work. And he said, "Ed, we're working. We're working as hard as anybody." And he said, "If they don't want to work, we don't want them." And he didn't want to have any of these so-called, patronage jobs, where the person was just going in to get a paycheck. He didn't want these so-called, payroll jobs that former administrations had had — I guess in other parties — where they put somebody on the payroll and he'd show up to collect his check or something like that. Or maybe not even that. They were all bona fide appointments and he expected people to work and to give good state service. And I can remember, specifically in the primary of 1956, when he was running for reelection and he had opposition in the state treasurer, Warren Wright, that two county chairmen were working for a particular commission or department — I don't want to mention their names or anything because it's not necessary and I wouldn't want to have anything reflect upon them. These two fellows are both very fine men — I knew them personally, and they were good Republican chairmen — but apparently, the governor got reports that they weren't working. And they apparently thought they had a job that didn't require them to work. As long as they were head of the party, why, they could justify their state check. Well, he had them both fired, right during the course of the primary. Now, you know how they'd feel being fired by the governor and right in the middle of a governor's primary campaign. But, he found out that they weren't working and he sent word to have both of them discharged. And that's how serious he was about it. Q: So, his firing of those two county
PREE: It might have as far as they were concerned. I think they were probably pretty sore about it. [laughs] And, they had been good fellows. There was nothing wrong with them, they just had the wrong idea. There were so many people that had the notion that we were going to have these payroll jobs like former administrations had. Governor Stratton's defeat in a bid for a third term as governor ended his political career. Ed Pree speculates on whether Stratton might not have had a much longer career in government if he had retired from that office after his second term. PREE: The one thing that I can never understand was that in 1948 when Bill Stratton was the candidate for secretary of state, the nominee for secretary of state, he was running on the same ticket with Governor Green. Governor Green was running for a third term. Governor Green got walloped! He lost by over a half-million votes in 1948 and took down the whole ticket including Stratton for secretary of state. And I could never understand why Governor Stratton let them talk him into running for a third term after that experience just twelve years before, being on the ticket with Governor Green. Of course I was not in on the campaign and I didn't discuss it with him, and really had nothing officially to do in the 1960 campaign. But I could feel it all over the state and I was still active, very active in 1958. To me that was one of the most tragic things in his whole career because, here is a man who was forty-six of age when he left the governor's office and with that marvelous background, just unsurpassed background, in government and politics, not even at the peak of his career really. He had so many years ahead of him and when he ran for the third term and was beaten so decisively, it really finished his career. And it was a real tragedy because he had so much to contribute, so much to give to the people of Illinois. And if he'd even gone on to the United States Senate, he would have made an outstanding senator as he was a congressman and a governor. And I've said many times that the people who were responsible for inducing him to run for a third term did a disservice not just to him but did a disservice to the state of Illinois because they concluded a career that should have had another decade or two. And today you meet him and see him, as I've done recently, and he's just as keen, as sharp, as he ever was. And [he] looks good and is active, doesn't show his years, and he could be in office today and he'd be just as effective as ever. 16 | December 1982 | Illinois Issues Governor Richard B. Ogilvie Born in Kansas City, Mo., on February 22, 1923, he enlisted in the Army in 1942 and was wounded in France where he served as a tank commander. He is a graduate of both Yale and Chicago-Kent College of Law. As special assistant to the U.S. attorney general in Chicago, he headed a special Midwest office on organized crime; he was elected Cook County sheriff in 1962 and president of the Cook County Board in The issue of a state income tax went public very early in the Ogilvie administration. Governor Ogilvie's secretary, Fred Bird, recalls the response to the governor's tax proposal. Q: Can you remember any particularly difficult controversies in the campaign that you handled? BIRD: Well, the worst one, of course, was the report that was due from some blue ribbon commission on the need for greater revenue for the state, all of which boiled down to the state income tax. Adamantly throughout the campaign, Ogilvie took a straddle on the issue, but it was certainly clear to anyone who studied the state finances that we'd come to the end of the line, so clear apparently that Ogilvie did not engage in any kind of softening up process; that is, to soften up the public. He in effect sprang it on the public or so they thought. And they resented it. Whereas, in Pennsylvania, Milton Shapp taking over from Governor Shafer said, "Well, you fellows don't want an income tax, guess we'll let state government come to a halt." So he had a few payless paydays and finally the people demanded to be taxed. Well, we didn't do that. Ogilvie, not being a politician at heart, suffered as a result of it. He was not. . . he was a lousy politician. He was a good administrator, he was a tough guy, he was an honest guy. But the devious kind of pactices that politicians indulge in were unpleasant to him. He wouldn't do it. Q: Did you advise him to soften up the public? BIRD: No, I was kind of dealt out of it. Others were the masterminds. I can recall, after the fact, being called in and being confronted suddenly by [president of the Senate, W. Russell] Arrington, Ogilvie, and others. Legislators screaming they were getting clobbered in their home districts because of the tax. And the question was, what could I as a press secretary do about it. I said, "Fine, go hire an advertising agency and do what you should have done before. You really have to mount a campaign. It's after the fact now. Don't ask me to do it. I cannot do it. I cannot do what needs to be done." Well, I didn't use the term softening up, but that was what had been lacking. It was passed after some negotiations through — actually with Daley. It was Daley's votes that passed it. But the onus, despite the fact that more Democrats voted for it than Republicans, the onus was Ogilvie's. And I think he suffered greatly as a result. But whether that caused his defeat — how can you say which barnacle slowed the ship? Ogilvie's attitude was, you put a ship in the water, it's clean, and the first day or two it's got barnacles and it keeps on picking them up until it won't perform as a ship anymore. Ogilvie's style in a news conference contributed to his relatively smooth relations with the press. Fred Bird gives an inside look at the preparation for those conferences. Q: How did you prepare for those press conferences? BIRD: Well, finally the technique we worked out, I would write a list of questions, and my assistant would write a list of questions. Then he'd put them together. Not only questions but suggested answers. I bet we hit ninety-five percent, literally. Of, say, thirty questions and answers we'd prepare, they might get into eight or ten or twelve. And then we'd take them into Ogilvie ten minutes before; that was all the prep time we allowed. He knew what he was doing and he was a quick study. If we had an answer that was a little tricky, we'd beg him to pay attention to it and he generally followed. He was a good actor. And as the impresarios of this thing we had a good man to work with. I used to tell him, "Now, Ira" — Ira, whatever his name was [Teinowitz] — "Ira's going to ask you a snotty question, and he gets such a thrill out of it because he thinks he makes you mad. So just smile at him and don't answer him." You could never figure what Ira will ask. And generally he behaved himself well at news conferences. If he got mad it might have showed. It was a human reaction. Bill O'Connell of the Peoria Journal Star recalled asking him about patronage. And Ogilvie's answer, according to Bill was, "Well, the only trouble with patronage is there's not enough of it." "Ah," Bill said, "How can you hate a guy like that." So literally ten minutes — we had it written down and sometimes we'd get it up there thirty minutes ahead of time. But generally, the news conference would be at ten. We'd come in at eight o'clock or so, did a lot of preparation for him, and December 1982 | Illinois Issues | 17 he'd give us maybe five minutes of his time to go through this. Q: At what time of the day did you prefer conducting those? BIRD: Generally in the mornings which, you know, made some problems with people with different deadlines. It generally worked out to be a morning news conference. One of the great, one of his great strengths was just to say, "I can't tell you," or "I won't tell you." "Well, why won't you tell us?" "Well, I won't, that's why." The man was honest. He wouldn't tell them. He didn't give them a half-baked answer that didn't tell them anything. He just said, "I won't tell you." And I think they respected him for it. Ogilvie's discomfort with the theatrics of politics is welI known, but his press secretary urged him to make the most of each media and personal appearance. Q: With which of the different means of communication was he most effective do you think? BIRD: Least effective in TV because of his rather stern countenance which was due certainly in great measure to his wartime wound. His whole face had to be reconstructed. But, he wasn't a very jolly type fellow anyway. He was even in person a little chilling to people. Frequently, at events either I or my wife and I would have to stand by him just so he wouldn't be isolated. People were that much in awe of him, a little afraid of him. He could be the oldest old shoe in the place but people didn't know this. So he came across as too stern on TV, too hard. Whereas, the gestures and the eye movements, everything of Reagan are designed to disarm; after that last news conference I was impressed with beaming smiles on the faces of chief persecutors. They like him. Well, the reporters liked Ogilvie, but he simply didn't come across well on TV. Q: Whereas his voice on radio was all right? BIRD: Well, they were brief cuts and they were very much on target. Anytime he would be on camera, why the sternness of his appearance was against him. He also disdained theatrical gestures and so forth. I can remember rehearsing
Well, I did have some acting in my background and I saw no reason that he couldn't be a little actorish on occasion. He didn't have to be stiff all his life. At the convention in Miami in 1968, I can remember being on my hands and knees because he was sitting on a low sofa, begging him to watch my gestures, you know, emphasis and so on. He was giving a seconding speech for guess who? Q: Did he follow your advice? BIRD: Yes, he was on camera, got about three words out and then they switch to the anchor booth. [laughter] Ron Michaelson, assistant to the governor, recalls the effects of the loose chain of command within the governor's office. MICHAELSON: There was obviously criticism of the staff by outsiders in those first couple of years which related to their youth, their inexperience, in some areas their brazenness, and being relatively inconsiderate and not adequately responding to, you know, phone calls, and letters, and so forth by people who had been around for awhile. Talking about county chairmen, or legislators, or what have you. There were some kinds of criticisms. They were not criticisms in terms of abilities as such, but those other kinds of criticisms. I guess, you know, the staff — there were some positives that resulted from it and reasons why nobody on the staff really got out in front in terms of trying to pull things together internally. One of which was that many staff people had direct access to the governor which, of course, they enjoyed and didn't want to lose. And under a more structured hierarchical arrangement that almost unlimited staff access would be diminished and, you know, I wouldn't have appreciated that. [laughs] So I suppose some others wouldn't have either. And in addition, most of the people on the staff knew each other before joining the staff either from working with the governor previously, or working on the campaign, or some of them came out of the legislative internship program and had made acquaintances. Relations between the governor's staff and the Bureau of the Budget staff, both in the executive branch, were difficult at best. Michaelson details some of the reasons for the clash. Q: . . . .At the same time that the governor was building a large personal staff of bright young people, he was also responsible for the creation of another bright large new staff of young people in the Bureau of the Budget. And they 18 | December 1982 | Illinois Issues were a little different. They weren't directly governor's staff although that office was kind of part of the governor's executive branch. What about the feelings and relations between those two staffs? MICHAELSON: There was a good deal of competition. See, the Bureau of the Budget people. . . a lot of them came from out of state. Obviously they all didn't come from out of state. But they came with different backgrounds. Very few of them came through political channels. They were all recruited as professionals, and very capable people, and they developed a very first-rate organization. There were some very obvious tensions between their staff and our staff. Some of it is inherent in the nature of the game. For instance, many of us had responsibilities as liaison to code departments. And in some instances we became advocates of the departments, and of new programs that the directors wanted, new legislation, and so forth. The bureau was often on the other side of the fence. They were concerned with the dollars and quite often we would find ourselves in competition with them for the governor's ear in terms of an ultimate decision. And this was obvously brought to a head during the budget review time when issues that could not be resolved at the staff level came up to the governor, and the bureau was arguing on the one hand their viewpoints and the governor's staff was arguing on the other hand their viewpoints some of which included political overtones and the like. And the bureau very rarely looked at things, or at least on the program level didn't look at things through political glasses. Now as they got up to the top with [John] McCarter [director, Bureau of the Budget] and the others, you know, they had a sense of the political. John eventually became very astute in terms of that and was obviously able to look at the big picture. And sometimes the competition wasn't too friendly. The governor's staff used to play the bureau staff in touch football games and basketball games. And unfortunately, the bureau people had more to draw from, and they had some pretty good athletes and usually gave us a pretty good pounding. I remember a basketball game over in the Armory. We had a black person on the staff by the name of Dave Reed, who used to play college basketball for Drake. He was added to the staff sometime during the term, and he was based in Chicago, and he was working in minority areas or something. And we brought Dave down for this ball game. John McCarter was the referee. And it was a pretty heated contest. And I got in a fight with one of the bureau guys during the game. I don't remember how everything came out, but among some people on our staff and their staff there were some very hard feelings. There really were! The creation of the Bureau of the Budget and, therefore, the executive budget, was one of the major achievements of the Ogilvie administration. The first director of the bureau, John McCarter recalls laying the ground work for the BOB. Q: . . . .What were the conditions or understandings between you and the governor-elect about your relationship or the nature of your work? That's in December 1968? McCARTER: Well, one, that we would found the Budget Bureau. Two, we started from an understanding, and the general public knowledge, that the state was going into a period of. . . a very tough financial situation with revenues not matching up to the expenditure levels, and that we were going to work on that. And that if one of the issues, if it came to the point where he and I both decided and others — I don't mean to say that he and I would decide alone — but he and I and others who were working on it decided that we should. . . that it made sense to go for an income tax, that he was not going to dismiss that out of hand. And that was about it. McCarter admired the qualities in Ogilvie that conveyed his strength and independence. Q: What was there about him that appealed to you so much? MCCARTER: Well, it was the willingness. . .you knew where he stood but he also had an open mind. And he and I, I think both. . . See, you know, the old pendulum swings back and forth, but Lyndon Johnson was an extremely strong executive. The Congress at the time was flat on its back. It was not an effective participant in the governmental processes, the initiative was with the executive. Ogilvie saw it the same way, that the initiative. . . that the governor stands up and is voted up or voted down and derives that authority from the people of a state in a general election. Legislators do the same in their individual districts, but the constituencies are very different and that when you have a large, complex, industrial state, involving a large city and then the collar counties and then downstate, somebody has got to stand up and be counted in terms of what the interests of the people, as a whole, are rather than the individual legislative districts or rather than those individual legislators who were very receptive to the particular ideas of a lobbyist or teachers' union or the hospitals or whatever it might happen to be that for one reason or another he has taken on as his particular special interest. I believe and continue to believe very strongly, that you need strong executives running these very complex executive branches. McCarter goes on to describe Ogilvie as a decisionmaker. Q: How about his presiding style in a meeting? Was it a listening style, or a tendency to dominate? MCCARTER: No, I think it was much more listening and there was never any question as to who the chairman [was], but he was not one who was fascinated by the sound of his own voice. Particularly in budget matters, he would hear everybody out and then would make a series of decisions. In others, in confrontational decisons or sessions with the mayor, and I referred to some of those earlier. . . . See, he was unusual among politicians; he was not pompous. He didn't think that he is the savior. And that to me is very refreshing. There are very few politicians I'd want to work for because of that whole public pronouncement and concept of how important they are. Ogilvie never had that. In some ways perhaps he was shy. But in other ways he saw he was the elected governor who was heading a political process that was taking place, and he wanted to make the best decisions he could, but those decisions did not require him to expound on urban mass transit or education or whatever it might happen to be. He wanted to understand what the issue was. He wanted to make a decision on it but there was none of the preening that a lot of politicians go through. He was not a legislator. He didn't come out of a legislative tradition. He came out of December 1982 | Illinois Issues | 19 an executive tradition. He behaved as an executive, not as a legislator. Ron Michaelson remembers Ogilvie 's reaction to his defeat in 1972. Q: How about Ogilvie during that period of time [after the election defeat]? MCCARTER: . . .So I came into the office about noon the next day, about noon here in Springfield. And I walked in and the troopers were there in the back area stationed where they usually were stationed when the governor is in the office. And I was astounded that they were there. "Is the governor here?" "Oh, yes. The governor's here." I guess I called Marianne who's one of the governor's secretaries. . . .I said, "Can I go in and see him?" "Sure, come on over." And I walked in, I didn't have in my mind what I was going to say to him. I walked in and there he was doing his paperwork. He was going through memos which really took me aback. I just couldn't believe it that he would be sitting there just doing desk work and what have you. And he looked fit, and didn't look tired, and he looked, you know, kind of chipper. And you know, I said something about, I don't recall what I mumbled but something about "Gee, how sorry I [am]," or something like that. And I'll never forget what he said. It just took me aback. And really said something about the person. He said, "Ron, don't feel too badly about it." He said, "We did the best we could. I don't regret anything." He said, "The only thing I regret," he said, "is the good people that I've taken down with me." He said, "You know I was governor for four years and it was great," you know, and so forth and so on. "But the many good people who were depending on me to win that I've let down, and they're going to now either lose their jobs, or their career changes," you know, so forth and so on. And he said, "That's what really bothers me more than anything." And I thought that was really remarkable and an unbelievable thing to say, you know, the day after an election when a person could have been so bitter, and so down, and so negative. And I know it was a short conversation because I didn't know what else to say, but it was a very meaningful one and one, as I say, I'll remember for a long time to come. Governor Dan Walker Born in Washington, D.C., August 6, 1922, he won appointment to Annapolis in 1940 through examination while in the Navy. He served during World War II and Korea; he is also a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law (second in class). He was president of the Chicago Crime Commission, director of the Chicago study of the violence at the Democratic National Convention and campaign chairman for Adlai E. Stevenson III's successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. Walker was inaugurated as Illinois' 36th governor on January 8, 1973. He is now chairman, Butler Walker Inc. Any name recognition Dan Walker had prior to his announcement for governor in 1970 was because he authored Rights in Conflict, the report on the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. It became known as the "Walker report." Q: The one thing that you were going to go ahead and talk about was . . . the violence at the National Democratic Convention and your part in the study after that. WALKER: What we did was first go to get all of the FBI statements that had been taken. There were a couple of thousand of these as I recall. And I met with the top people in Washington of the FBI and finally persuaded them to let me have the reports, the interviews, on a confidential basis. I then went to the networks, television stations and got all of their film that they had used, that they had shot. Then I placed advertisements in newspapers all over the country asking for people to volunteer to send me pictures or accounts or film that they had of what happened. We put together a massive amount of information. Then I broke the events of the week down and assigned them to different teams and had a team leader. One leader and his team had Lincoln Park. Another one had Grant Park. Another one had that very momentous march on the Hilton. Another one had the events preceeding, the events afterwards. And so we approached it on that basis and it was a monumental job. We finished it and I'll never forget the evening; I think it was about one o'clock in the morning — I took a hotel room downtown and lived downtown most of the time. Well, I was sitting there with Vic [de Grazia] and we were going over the summary; I wanted a summary. In brief writing and everything I've ever done of a written nature that was long, I wanted a summary at the beginning so people could read that and get a quick capsule view of what happened. The summary, I wrote personally. The chapters on the individual events I edited and some parts of them I wrote myself but a lot of that was a team job. But the summary I wrote and I wanted it my way. And Vic and I were going over the draft which was describing what happened and the really tense moments. I remember we were trying to decide whether we should describe it politely, the violence on the part of the police, or whether we should just be blunt. And I finally said, "Vic, let's just tell it like it was." And so, I used the phrase, "police riot" to describe, not all the policemen, but a minority of the policemen as I very carefully said. I had done a lot of checking to verify my own judgments as to what had happened. I hadn't just relied on what we had done. There was a reporter whose name I shall not divulge who left Chicago and was very close to a lot of people in the police department at the lower levels. I finally tracked him down on the East Coast, got him to come back to Chicago and spend two weeks just going around to the cops themselves, and saying, "Hey, what really happened out there?" And not for publication. Based on what he told me the policemen told him, it was even worse than I'd reported, so that gave me a sense of corroboration. I talked off the record with some of my friends at high levels in the police department. And they said, "You're right, we can't say it, but you're right in that conclusion." So I felt comfortable with the conclusion. Fresh from the corporate world and his activities in liberal causes in Chicago, Dan Walker began his walk through the state. His weeks in southern Illinois left a lasting impression. WALKER: To put it in context, southern Illinois, the area of the state I'm now talking about, is very southern in its tradition. The people are from the south. Indeed, it was southern Illinois that was first settled in Illinois, not the rest of the state. And the people came by and large from the Tennessee/Kentucky, 20 | December 1982 | Illinois Issues Virginia/Carolina area, so there's a lot of southern sympathies, southern talk, southern food and southern feelings in southern Illinois. They feel cut off from the rest of the state; they feel poor; they feel economically deprived; they feel that because the area is sparsely populated that they don't get "goodies," if you will, from state government. Interestingly, politically southern Illinois is very, very active. They play politics 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in southern Illinois. And lots of people, I don't mean just the politicians. It's unlike the Chicago metropolitan area where people only get interested in politics during a campaign. That's not true in southern Illinois. They're very patronage conscious, very job conscious because of the economy, I'm sure. And they have some different standards, many of them. They see absolutely nothing wrong with contract patronage and that kind of thing. They just have a totally different approach, really, to politics. They have an alienation, they feel alienated from state government. That is true in many parts of downstate. I found that very deep feeling when I walked through the state. It's particularly true in downstate Illinois. You can't really, I don't think, understand the downstate feeling — now I'm going beyond southern Illinois to include all downstate — unless you talk face to with people and lots of them. In ordinary campaigning you don't do that. You talk at people when you're campaigning. You give speeches on a platform, or if you do go into a town you shake hands and have idle conversation, but you don't talk with people. And that was one of the beautiful things about the walk, because I had so much time to just stand there and talk with people. You learn what farmers really are concerned about. You learn what businessmen are concerned about in the small stores because you have time to talk to them. And more importantly, that word that I savor so much, listen. There are very few people that know how to listen. Very few people that are willing to blank their mind when they're listening to somebody else and just listen and savor what's being said. Q: How did that go along with your liberal Democrat background?
WALKER: You cannot help but go through downstate the way I did without having it move you to the right. You just can't. And I don't mean because you're responding politically, it just moves you that way when you talk to this many people. The values are there and I used to remark on this in talks and it's very true. They still are not abashed or embarrassed to talk about love, Bible, those kinds of things that are looked upon as kind of corny in suburbia and they talk out in the open about them, and they think that those values are very important; that made a deep impression on me. The fiber of people. The walk was grueling. Walker's press secretary, Norton Kay, has vivid memories of the walk. Here he describes a press conference that wasn't, and Dan Walker's reaction. KAY: By the time we reached Shawneetown, Dan and both boys [his sons], but particularly Dan were in excruciating pain. Their feet were a mass of bloody pulp. It took him almost a full day to walk five miles into Shawneetown. Terrible place. But they had a great mayor — Pete Clayton. He ran a Texaco station, a general store and served as mayor. . . . Anyway, we arrived in Old Shawneetown and while Dan was shooting the breeze with Pete Clayton and his folk, I walked over to the old bank — still standing — to meet the reporters. It was awful. No one there. Middle of July, must have been around 100. Terrible humidity. If you just stood still in the middle of the road, you could feel the sweat developing, rolling down your forehead into your eyes, dripping down your back, your chest. Just getting wetter and wetter. I walked up to the building, up a hill, around the back, circled the building hoping I would find someone. No one. Nobody. I can't tell you how bad I felt. With all that pain, all that blood — I had made him walk an extra forty or fifty miles for nothing. I walked back to the Texaco station and joined the conversation. Finally Dan said to me,"Hadn't we better get started over to the press conference?" I said, "No press conference. No one's there." He couldn't believe it. He insisted on walking over to see for himself. He limped over and looked. Total disbelief. Nobody. About an hour later, a reporter for the Shawneetown weekly came over and interviewed Dan. Even he was late — in his town which is about two blocks or three blocks long and the same amount wide. There were no recriminations. No anger. No reaction from Dan other than could I say why no one showed. Later, I called the three TV stations to ask why they didn't show. The answer was — as it is always — we had more important things to cover. I did learn from one, however, that he thought it was a walk and listen: where a candidate walks through the town, but drives between towns. Fortunately, that was the only complete blank we drew. Just thinking about it today — twelve years later — I December 1982 | Illinois Issues | 21 can still feel that Shawneetown sun. Victor de Grazia, Walker's campaign chairman and deputy governor, remembers the same day's events, and his own response to Norton Kay's determination to end the walk. DE GRAZIA: One of the funniest things I remember is right at the very beginning, he had been walking I guess two days and Norty Kay [Walker's press secretary], who is one of the sweetest, nicest guys in the world, called me up and he was distraught; he said, "Dan's feet are bleeding. He's got blisters and he's bleeding all over in his shoes. He's got to stop walking. We've got to call this off." And I said, "Keep walking." And Norty said, "You can't do it, you're going to kill this guy." I said, "You're not going to kill him. Keep walking." He says, "How can you say that?" I said, "That's why we have generals and that's why there are people out in the trenches." [laughter] I said, "I can tell you to keep walking because I'm not down there. Keep walking." So, he kept
Walker's problems with the press are legendary. Even during the 1972 primary when he opposed Paul Simon, the choice of the regular Democrats, Walker experienced frustration as he met the press. Q: At one point in the campaign, in the clippings that I came across, you actually seemed to concede defeat. In March you said, "He," meaning Simon, "is threatening the Democratic party with defeat in the general election this fall by making this kind of outrageous proposal." And it must have been the tax. WALKER: Oh, sure. He was threatening the party with defeat in the fall election because of the position that he was trying to force the Democratic party to take. That's what I meant by that. The only occasion when I saw anything in the media that said that I conceded defeat was at an amazing press conference that I held in Springfield. I used to hate to go to Springfield because the press corps was totally pro-Simon, totally. And [they] made it very clear to me that they didn't expect me to win and didn't want me to win because they felt that Paul Simon, who was their favorite, was entitled to be the Democratic candidate, and I shouldn't be challenging him even. So I used to hate those press conferences. On one occasion the reporters kept pressing me, and I was very, very tired. "What are you going to do if you lose? What is your living going to consist of?" And I kept saying over and over again, "I'm not going to lose, I don't expect to lose. I don't let that thought go through my mind." I got so tired of it. I finally said, "Well, all right, to put this line of questioning to an end, if I lost I'd undoubtedly go back to the practice of law." The next day the Chicago Daily News ran a headline saying, "Walker Concedes Defeat." Running state agencies in a rapidly expanding and changing state government presented challenges to Walker that previous governors did not have. But turf problems go back as far as the administration of Solomon. Q: What were the cabinet meetings like? WALKER: I didn't have many. Cabinet meetings are mostly a waste of time at the state governmental level. Each person is concerned about his own domain. What's Pud Williams [former director of Agriculture] going to advise with respect to solving the really difficult problems of day-care in the Department of Welfare? What is a secretary of Transportation going to offer Children and Family Services? Your problems are not like they are in the federal government. Many of your problems are very basic. Your problems at state government level are much more localized to the individual department or agency and therefore the cross-pollinization of a cabinet meeting is not that fruitful. Q: So how did you deal with cabinet members?WALKER: I dealt with them in a one-on-one and a what I call a cellular basis. I would take the human service agencies and bring them together — subcabinet groups, because there there is cross-pollinization. Mental Health has a direct relationship to Welfare and Children and Family Services. And so does Public Health. So, I brought those directors together in what I called my health cabinet. And then I had a regulatory cabinet: savings and loan institutions, the currency exchanges, the banks. That was another subcabinet group or subgroup of cabinet members, where they had some of the same kinds of problems and we would meet and tackle them on that basis. As time went on, what happens is the turf problems overcome almost everything else. Do you know what I mean by turf problems? Q: No. WALKER: My domain, my empire. I am the director of Mental Health and I don't want Children and Family Services telling me what to do or taking some of my programs or infringing on my authority over my programs. This 22 | December 1982 | Illinois Issues is my turf. And it's one of the greatest problems that stands in the way of effective governance in our system, turf problems. The relationship between Mayor Daley and Governor Walker was a unique and fateful element throughout the Walker administration. Walker describes the dynamics of the struggle. WALKER: People said, "Why didn't you ever work with Daley?" Of course my response to that was, "Why don't people ask the question, 'Why doesn't Daley work with the governor?' " My second answer was, "Look at RTA." I work with Daley and we compromised and we got an effective package. It really commenced in terms of issues in the first legislative session, interestingly [it] also involved public transportation, CTA; this was long before RTA. Daley proposed a difference in the subsidy funding by the state government of CTA. And I don't understand some of the comments I've seen in the press recently about the state not subsidizing the CTA. The state did subsidize the CTA long before RTA came along. What Daley wanted to do was go from a one-to-one matching, one dollar to one dollar, up to a two to one with the state putting up two dollars for every dollar of the city. I said, "Absolutely not," for two reasons. Number one, this was the first legislative issue, as opposed to cabinet selection issue, that Daley had chosen to throw down the gauntlet on, and he threw it down. If we had just said, "Yes, Mayor," then that would have been the end of the ball game in terms of my having any real power with respect to what was going to happen on the Democratic side of the aisle in the legislature. Daley would have had the ball game. We had to fight, from a political, practical standpoint, we had to fight. Even if we lost we had to fight. We had to show them that we were willing to fight. It was a good issue to fight on, I thought, because substantively we were right, and what he was proposing, a very dangerous precedent for state government, because once you go to a two to one match on one program you're going to get stuck with a two to one match on another program and so on down the line. Mayor Daley had played a masterful game over the years of shifting costs of city to state government. Exactly the opposite of the game that Rockefeller played in New York state where he kept programs funded by the city of New York as opposed to the state. Both master politicians and at opposite ends of the power situation. For example, in New York City a large hunk of welfare is paid for by the city. In Illinois, Chicago is all paid for by the state. Community college programs: in New York City it's paid for by the city and in Illinois it's paid for by the state, totally. Public education: in New York while I was governor the state paid thirty percent. In Illinois the state paid forty-five percent of the cost of public education in Chicago. Those are very dramatic dollars there. And here's Daley trying to move in on public transportation in the same way. Interestingly, although I said it a hundred times, I was never able to get the substantive part of that issue across to anybody of consequence. It all became portrayed, as it was in part, as a political battle between Daley and me, with Daley wanting to establish the same role in Springfield with me that he'd had with Kerner. And I was drawing the line and saying, "You might as well realize early on, Mayor, I want to work with you and I'll work with you as a governor should with the mayor of the biggest city in the state, but I'm not going to let you run state government. I'm just not going to do it." And if I'd rolled over, he would have run state government in the sense that he ran it under Kerner. Not totally but anything having to do with the city of Chicago. Because of Walker's problems with Mayor Daley, as well as his rocky relations with the legislature, the media labeled him as a confrontationist. Walker gives his side of the story here. Q: How would you describe the image the press had of you? WALKER: The image? Confrontation, fighter. You can see it right now; you've read the columns I'm sure since I've said that I'll think about running. "He'll tear Thompson apart." How did Basil Talbott put it on the program today?* Almost as a gladiator going into the pit and taking a sword and just hacking people up. That's the image that comes through. Maybe I'm too sensitive. Q: Well, I think you are recognized to be a formidable adversary in a debate, but there is a difference between saying that and saying that you will tear somebody apart. WALKER: [laughter] That's what I think. But, no question about the fact that's my image, but it's not true, not true. And also controversial. Controversial. Controversial. It has slipped over into that in the minds of many people. And I evoke strong responses. I don't mean — I think I've said this to you before — I don't mean to put myself on the same level as Jack Kennedy, but he evoked strong responses. You liked the guy a lot or you hated the guy. Franklin D. Roosevelt the same. On the other hand you take an Eisenhower, nobody hated Eisenhower, nobody loved Eisenhower. Thompson. Nobody hates Thompson. Nobody loves Thompson. I'm exaggerating but I think that paints the picture. I am of the polarization school. I polarize people, no question about it. Q: That's true. I've never talked with anybody who is lukewarm about you. WALKER: Oh, there are some, I'm sure. But you're right; there are an awful lot that are not lukewarm. I am very intense — "He's a bastard," or "He's a great guy!" Walker's biggest surprise as governor was the difficulty of effecting change. WALKER: I've sometimes compared state government with a battleship. . . . I remember the first time that I was officer of the deck on the bridge of a battleship and you say to the helmsman, "Right hard rudder." And he takes that huge wheel on the bridge and just spins it like that to make the ship turn. And it seems like an interminable time before the ship even starts to come around. It's the momentum, the pressure of the water against a huge hull expanse. State government is very much like that. The momentum is fierce. The pressures of politics as usual, government as usual, the bureaucracy, are fierce. So, I can never say that I achieved, in the areas that I mentioned, certainly not ninety degrees, not forty-five degrees, not twenty degrees, not, oh gee whiz, if it was five degrees or four degrees of change, then I'd be proud of it but it was as little as that. *Basil Talbott, political editor, Chicago Sun-Times, questioned Walker on Lee Phillip's noon TV show July 19, 1981. December 1982 | Illinois Issues | 23 Remembrance of governors past MANAGING the state of Illinois has always been a big task, but since 1945 it has become dramatically more complex, expensive, intricate and fateful. Executive authority has grown significantly, as have its burdens and perils. As Illinoisans look ahead to another four-year gubernatorial term we can profit from some eyewitness historical glimpses of the office. A century ago it was relatively common for prominent public officials to provide this firsthand view in the form of a published autobiography. Even richer was the correspondence they received and conducted with political allies. Letters were the principal means of distant political
That is what prompted Sangamon State University, with support from the Illinois Humanities Council and several corporations and foundations, to embark two years ago on "Eyewitness Illinois: Memoirs of the Governorship." Eyewitness Illinois seeks to document, through a series of oral histories with the participants, the lively record of five recent governors: William G. Stratton, Otto Kerner, Samuel H. Shapiro, Richard B. Ogilvie and Dan Walker. The job is not completed, and perhaps should never end, but so far 20 knowledgeable informants (including one former governor) have produced 125 hours of taped recollections that fill over 4,000 pages of transcript. There are many gaps in the testimony, but nevertheless a few interesting patterns are emerging. The preceding pages of excerpts from three of the governorships offer but a taste of the story; the complete record will be published and distributed to selected libraries and research centers throughout Illinois. What have we already learned from Eyewitness Illinois? First, we have personal accounts of the striking growth and change in the office of governor. Gone are the days when a Governor Stratton could personally direct the state's executive affairs with a small staff of aides like Ed Free and Smokey Downey. Go forward 10 years to the Ogilvie administration and you discover a large and intricately organized executive office with a new budget bureau (headed by John McCarter) that effected fateful changes in the management of the state and the balance between governor and legislature. Second, we learn that parallel change has occurred with the substance of gubernatorial affairs. While some issues like apportionment and governmental ethics survive as hardy perennials, others come and go with the changing times. School consolidation, a heated issue of the 1950s, gave way in the 1970s to mass transit consolidation, a preoccupation of Govs. Ogilvie and Walker. When it comes to political and managerial style the pattern reveals not a trend and certainly not a mold, but rather boundless diversity. The testimony of those who were closest to these five former governors described five distinct personalities and styles, with no evident general trend. The executive office has been occupied by a crisp manager, an earnest combatant, a genial mediator, a wily administrator and an effective caretaker. Whatever a governor's style, he has had to confront the rapid growth of electronic media and a resulting emphasis on image in politics. Our informants document this change and indicate its impact on the nature of media relations. Through anecdote, characterization and personal memory, Eyewitness Illinois is yielding fresh information on the lively and instructive recent history of the governorship. It is an interesting story, and one that offers useful historical benchmarks as yet another gubernatorial term gets underway. 24 | December 1982 | Illinois Issues |
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This is a special section of excerpts from "Eyewitness Illinois: Stories of the Governorship, " an oral history project which was made possible in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional financial support was provided by Caterpillar Tractor Company, Arthur Andersen & Co., Canteen Corporation, Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation and Susan Cooke House Trust.
