By ROBERT P. HOWARD
Author of Illinois: A History of the Prairie State, he is researching the careers of Illinois governors for a new book. He is retired State House correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.

Comparing him to other Illinois governors

Walker, a lone wolf governor

DANIEL WALKER, a brilliant lawyer and enigmatic populist who aspired to the presidency, is one of the most complex of the 36 men who have been governors of Illinois.

Tragically, he sacrificed prospects for a superior administration to an ambition to be the first president from the Prairie State since Ulysses S. Grant.There is no other explanation for four years devoted to the politics of confrontation, to efforts to organize his own Democratic faction, shove aside the mayor of Chicago and become a national figure. Certainly the governor did want to become president. He entered a1976 slate of national convention delegates in every Illinois district, and just before the primary Victor De-Grazia, Walker's deputy governor and campaign manager, told the Wall Street Journal that no other Democrat could carry the nation and that Walker was certain to become president, in 1980 if not in 1976.

The presidential odds were astronomical, but Walker had correctly gauged the mood of the country. In astrong position as a fiscal conservative who balked at tax increases, he avoided the congressional liberals who turned out to be miserable candidates in the primaries. Instead, he was an opponent of Washington-style government, just like Jimmy Carter and Jerry Brown. If Walker had been a favorite son, able to attract attention in other states, and if Carter had stumbled a few times, the Illinois governor might well have been a major contender at Madison Square Garden last summer.

Dan Walker is a lone wolf who has continually criticized party organizations and patronage politics. Although he belongs to the majority party, he has been a minority governor and has been continually at odds with other Democrats as well as the opposition Republicans. Usually chief executives do not behave that way and, had he been a party man. Walker could have had renomination without a contest. Perhaps he was trying to emulate Henry Horner, the depression era governor who, using bossism as an issue, won a second term by beating the Kelly-Nash Democrats in the 1936 primary.

His tactics and talents
Horner, it should be remembered, first got into political trouble because out of fiscal necessity he sponsored the original sales tax. In much the sameway, Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie courageously insisted that Illinois needed a state income tax, however unpopular it might be. On the other hand, Walker not only used the income tax as a 1972 issue against Ogilvie but, after reaching office, he opposed a tax increase lest it handicap his political future. Few Illinois governors have differed more in personality and performance than Ogilvie and Walker. As the record now stands, the laurel wreath for statesmanship has been earned by Horner and Ogilvie, but not by Walker.

More than any other chief executive, Walker resembles Ninian Edwards, the third in the line of succession, who was a minority governor unwillingly. Edwards' factional rivals controlled the legislature, which at that time had more power than the executive, when the Democratic and Whig parties were emerging from a loose system of political alliances. A controversial figure in early Illinois, Edwards had great talent, a massive ego, a prize collection of political enemies and a penchant for bickering with the legislature.

Like Adlai E. Stevenson and two earlier governors of renown — Edward Coles and Thomas Ford — Walker began at the top and won the governorship in his first try for elective office. In the dull months of 1971 he attracted attention by walking 1,197 zigzag miles in 116 days, acquiring a wide acquaintance and a downstate education. Luck was with him. In the 1972 primary, to their surprise and regret, meddling Republicans provided the margin by which Walker scored his big victory over Mayor Richard J. Daley. The United States Supreme Court had legalized crossover voting and countless Republicans, wanting to reduce the margin by which they were certain that Paul Simon, Daley's candidate, would be nominated, went into the Democratic primary. It was Walker's only help from Republicans.

Walker has the requisite energy and intelligence for greatness. He rose froma California truck farm to become law clerk for the chief justice of the UnitedStates, and then worked his way to a $120,000 a year position as a corporation lawyer. He contributed his time and talents to public causes and, as an assistant to Adiai E. Stevenson II, acquired considerable knowledge of state government. Such men are needed at the nation's highest levels. Furthermore, it is quite possible that Walker is more brilliant than any of his predecessors. The master of administrative detail and fiscal complexities, he had anamazing ability to clear his desk of official business by mid-morning. Thatleft the rest of the day open for politicking.

In his Naval Academy education, Walker apparently did not learn that Edmund Burke, at the start of the American Revolution, said that all

6 / January 1977 / Illinois Issues

A Democrat elected without Mayor Daley in 1972, Walker tried but failed to gain leadership of all Democrats in state

government is founded on compromise and barter. Compromise is not in Walker's nature and his relations with the legislature and other officials had none of the give-and-take that keeps government on an even keel. He clearly had no interest in cooperating with the mayor of Chicago, the leader of his party, on metropolitan and other problems. In contrast, the last three Republican governors — Dwight H. Green, William G. Stratton and Richard B. Ogilvie — did not hesitate to work with Democratic mayors for the common good. Walker instinctively opposed the Crosstown Expressway and whatever else Daley wanted. To dramatize his anti-Daley stance, he continually snubbed Lt. Gov. Neil F. Hartigan. Daley reacted with a rare confession of error, telling the legislature during a confrontation over school aid that it had been a mistake to retire Ogilvie from the governor's office.

His shifting positions Walker was opportunistic as a political tactician, but except for his populism he did not advance any major governmental principle or philosophy. He gave liberal responses to the Independent Voters of Illinois questionnaire. To back up his preaching that big government is out of touch with the people, he held accountability sessions in small towns. Under pressure of revenue shortages and budget balancing, he became a tight-fisted efficiency expert who believed that what made money for Montgomery Ward could reduce welfare caseloads. Liberals and independents endorsed him in 1972 but not in 1976. His shifting positions made it difficult to determine if the governor was a conservative populist or a populist conservative.

Populism was partly responsible for the failure of Walker's ambitions. In emergencies, the governor habitually left the State House for a fly-around, touching down at airports wherever a television station would record his complaints about the fragmented legislature or the mayor, whichever it was at the moment. He was contending that he and the people had the same enemies. After he lost renomination, the governor conceded that the fly-arounds were a mistake and that he should have stayed in his office to work in a spirit of compromise with public and private officials and other opinion makers. The lesson is that chief executives have duties other than rabble rousing. Twelve million people are just too many to reach with this kind of populism, a philosophy which has never been successful in this state anyway.

In the 1970's there was no clamor for innovative or expensive programs, and the major concern has been the financing of education and public aid. Walker, like some governors from other states, sensed the public mood. However, he never proved his campaign claim that millions were being wasted by state government and he found himself smothered by the overwhelming cost of public aid, with which Otto Kerner and Ogilvie also were familiar. The response was a repeated squeezing of agency appropriations to keep budgets within theoretical balance. He spent more on education, but he could not give school boards and university faculties all they had been promised. He tapped a new revenue source in the state lottery and sold its tickets aggressively among lower income groups. In a running fight he held the line on taxes while expenditures exceeded income, month after month. His economizing went to such an extreme that some bills have been left for the incoming governor to pay.

The Walker administration was dollar-honest, and the scandals and conflicts of interest of the Kerner administration (1961-1969) did not arise. Walker, however, had a double standard of political ethics. In campaigning and in his inaugural address he posed as the only honest man in town. He inferred that all others were suspect and that Ogilvie was a puppet of secret contributors to Republican campaigns. He proclaimed that a new era of political honesty had dawned. Before long, however, it became known that contractors and others who were doing business with the state were buying tickets, for which the top price had been inflated to $1,000, to Walker's fund-raising events. State employees were pointedly invited to donate to his war chests, and civil service workers courted unpopularity if they praised Ogilvie or criticized Walker. More than anything else, the governor could not tolerate criticism. Piously, he issued edicts in the name of financial disclosure for others, but a series of excuses cancelled promises that he would make public the names of those who gave him money in 1972. Two days before the second term primary. Walker finally issued a partial list of contributors, alphabetically A through F, without addresses or specific amounts. Some six months later the G through Z list was produced on a holiday weekend when comparatively few people would see it.

The primary was a scare for the Daleyites and a disaster for Walker. The pee-pul, as Walker called them, denied the governor renomination and elected only two of his slate of national convention delegates. Four months later, under pressure from Carter and in a half-hearted manner. Walker finally endorsed the Democrat who beat him, Michael J. Hewlett.

Hereafter, under the new Constitution, state officials will be chosen in the nonpresidential elections, which means that James R. Thompson will have a two-year term. Of necessity, much of it will be concerned with the unsolved financial crisis, which is Walker's legacy. Meanwhile, the outgoing governor has encouraged speculation that, seeking redemption, he might run again in 1978. For the present, however, the great chief executives who preceded him need not move over. Dan Walker will go to the back of the room and take his place among the lesser lights. ž

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