September 22, 2025 • 17 mins
In this special episode of The Middle, we take some time to remember former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, who passed away last week at the age of 79. Gov. Edgar was a true political moderate and bipartisan - and he represented a kind of tact and even-tempered approach that is fast disappearing from politics today. He was also one of the first panel guests on The Middle. Jeremy is joined by journalist Sean Crawford, Managing Editor of NPR Illinois. #JimEdgar #Illinois #Politics #Moderate #TheMiddle #Republican #Democrat #Bipartisanship
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to a special edition of The Middle podcast. I'm
Jeremy Hobson. One of the first guests that we ever
had On the Middle when it became a weekly show
about two years ago, was the former governor of Illinois,
Republican Jim Edgar. For much of my upbringing in champagn Orbanna,
he was the governor, a Republican who got along with
people across the aisle, including Chicago's famous former mayor Richard Daley.
(00:38):
Edgar had a measured, even tempered approach to politics that
made him a deeply respected figure. He was, you could say,
a man in the middle, and he sadly passed away
last week at the age of seventy nine after a
battle with cancer. One of the things politicians in both
parties have praised him for is his bipartisanship and his
ability to listen respectfully to those across the aisle. Here
(01:01):
he is talking about that on the Middle in twenty
twenty three.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
One of my wife would tell you that I argue
more than I should, and on all things, not just politics.
But you know again, I go back to the listening
is extremely important, and if people think you're going to
listen to him then you know they might go along
with some of the things you want because at least
they got a chance to give their point of view.
(01:26):
That's very important. One of the things my experience with
staff and everybody, you have to all make him feel
like they have their input. In the end, you may
not follow it, but they've got to feel like they
had a chance. And if they feel like they had
a chance, and they're going to be much more apt
to accept what the final policy is. So again, I
just think that we need to listen a lot more
(01:47):
and lower the voices, and I probably ought to do
that more myself.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well, in this episode, we're going to talk about Jim
Edgar and his legacy, his style of politics, and whether
his approach is still possible today. And joining me as
someone who's covered Edgar's entire political career, Sean Crawford, longtime
Illinois politics reporter, now managing editor of NPR Illinois. He's
in the capitol, Springfield. Sean, it's great to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Thank you, Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Well, and how is Edgar being remembered in Illinois. I
thought it was interesting just in this moment that we're
in that JB. Pritzker, the current governor, a Democrat, had
some just really nice words to say about him.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, I think you've heard that actually from several Democrats
and Republicans as well, many people who may have disagreed
with Edgar, not only back when he was governor, but
certainly in years since. Jim Edgar made it clear that
the Republican Party was heading in a direction that he
wasn't a fan of. He ended up saying that he
voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty and Kamala Harris
(02:46):
in twenty twenty four. He was not a Donald Trump fan.
He was what we would call a political moderate, and
I think that's showing up more in the types of
accolades he's getting now that he has passed. You're write
the JB. Pritzker. The govern certainly come out with some
glowing remarks about him, and again so did many others.
He's viewed, I believe, as a statesman, and I believe
(03:08):
he's viewed as somebody who again could work with all sides.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And what were some of the examples of him reaching
across the aisle, working with all sides when he was governor.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Well, one thing, to be honest with you, he actually
was very even handed, I believe when he was governor.
But one of the things that he was known for
was being called Governor No because he inherited a kind
of an ify situation with a state budget. And what
Jim Edgar did do by the time he left office
was he had righted the ship. He had gotten the
(03:40):
state's finances back under control. A lot of that came
from some budget cutting and a lot of saying no
to state lawmakers who wanted different projects, different funding for
different programs. You know, most of them, they come to
the capitol and this is the way it is everywhere.
They come to the capitol. They want to take something
back home. They want to show their constitution. It's what
they've done. And he was not always in agreement with that.
(04:03):
So in some ways he did work across the aisle,
but he was very even handed when it came to
how he developed his policies. If Republicans wanted to spend
more money, he would easily say no to them as
well as Democrats. But he worked on issues with education.
That was really one of the key things when I
look back on him. He raised the per pupil spending
(04:24):
in the state and higher education, which has been underfunded
in subsequent years since Edgar left office and caused a
lot of problems here in the state of Illinois. Higher
education got a lot of what it wanted back when
Jim Edgar was governor. Funding requests would be made every
year and pretty much those were rubber stamped, and the
(04:45):
universities did. Public universities in the state did very well.
He also changed governorship of the universities to what we
have now. So looking back on it, he was a
lot different than what you might have might be expecting
from Republicans these days. In some ways, he was different
from what Democrats do these days as well.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
We'll talk about his relationship with a very famous Democrat,
Richard Daley, who is the Democratic mayor of Chicago when
Edgar was governor. As I read about it, it sounds similar
to what people said about Ronald Reagan and the House
Speaker Tip O'Neil. They actually liked each other even though
they were in opposite parties.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I think Jim Edgar respected a lot of people in government,
and and I think that was just a different time
in politics too, where you didn't let some professional disagreements
impact personally how you felt about people, you would you
might you might really argue like crazy during the day
and then go out and have dinner with somebody that
(05:41):
same person at night. And I think that was similar there.
They did have run into a lot of different disagreements.
There was no doubt about that. Chicago is the state,
is the dominant city, of course in the state of Illinois.
But there's a lot of land outside of Chicago in
this state. And in Jim is that what we would
call a downstater or he is from east central Illinois,
(06:04):
the town of Charleston, and he you know, I think
sometimes those two sides sometimes don't always see eye to
eye because they're looking at it from different perspectives.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Well, I think that's a very interesting thing about him
as well, is a lot of the times the governors
are people that live in Chicago and every state, even
people that are listening to this that are like, I'm
not from Illinois, why do I care about you know,
downstate Illinois versus Chicago. Every state pretty much has a
situation like this where there's a big city and then
there's the rest of the state. And I think one
(06:35):
of the things that Jim Edgar, one of his strengths
was that he was able to have this relationship with
the mayor of Chicago, but also be somebody who understood
the importance of the rest of the state and the
people who lived in the rest of the state, and
that their concerns were different than people who lived in
the major metropolitan center.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah. I think that's true. He was educated at a
public university, Eastern Illinois University and East Central Illinois. He
comes from that background. That being said, he understood that
Chicago's the economic engine for the state of Illinois. I
think most people, if they're sensible, realize that. You know,
in Chicago, how Chicago goes often is how Illinois goes.
(07:16):
And he realized that. And I don't think Chicago fared
poorly under Jim Edgar by any stretch. I think he
just again had a broader view, maybe than some people do.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I was talking to a politics reporter in California. I said,
how come so many of the politicians that win statewide
in California, like Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom and you know,
Diane Feinstein back in the day and other people, how
can they all come from the San Francisco Bay area,
Because it's a smaller city than LA And this person said,
because if you can win in San Francisco, where politics
(07:48):
is like a knife fight, you can win state wide
in California. I wonder if that's true in Illinois as well,
this Chicago.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, I think maybe to some extent. I think also
just you know, as the state has become more of
a black state, I think if you look back, I
mean Ronald Reagan of course was from ILLINOI but he
won this state when he ran for president. But you know,
nowadays this is a reliably blue state. When it comes
time for the presidential candidates to go on the stump,
we rarely see many of them because the state's not
(08:15):
really in play outside of primaries. And you know, I
think Jim Edgar, again, he was a social moderate. That
also makes him much different than a lot of what
you see in the Republican Party these days. He supported
abortion rights. In fact, Charlie Wheeler, who a colleague might
who's been following state government for about sixty years, Charlie
(08:37):
often says if Jim Edgar was running today, he would
not win a Republican primary because his positions were maybe
too close to the middle, too moderate, and that I
think is a big difference from what we saw back
then to what we see now.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
And as you said, he was not a Trump Republican.
Once that became a thing. We're going to talk about
that when we come back with NPR Illinois Managing Editor
Sean Crawford. Stay with us, Welcome back to the Middle.
(09:22):
I'm Jeremy Hobson. This episode, we're talking about former Illinois
Governor Jim Edgar, who passed away last week at the
age of seventy nine after a battle with cancer. Who's
one of our first guests on the Middle. I'm joined
by NPR Illinois Managing Editor Sean Crawford. Sean listened to
this clip of Edgar talking about Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I'm an eisenher Ford Bush Republican, and that's not the
Republican Party today. Unfortunately, it's the party is now our
Trump Party. And you know that's a fact of life.
Maybe not quite as much in Illinois as it is
in other states, but more so than I would have
thought a.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Couple years Sean, As you say, he actually publicly supported
Biden and Kamala Harris in their respective elections. Do you
think that that was hard for him as a Republican.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
I'm sure it was to some extent, But you know,
Jim Edgar had been out of politics per se for
many years. I mean he left in nineteen ninety nine.
He decided not to run for a third term as governor.
He was encouraged many times to get back in. Republicans
really have struggled in the state of Illinois since then,
and I think they looked at him as maybe somebody
(10:32):
that could save the party, bring him back and get
back in control, and he refused each time. So I
think he became less concerned with what people thought of
him from a political standpoint. I think he just felt
about talking what he believed in, and I think in
this case that was probably what was going on there.
(10:53):
He did not pull punches. He also fought with some
other Republicans through the years, including our former Governor Bruce Rounder,
at times saying he thought the state should be doing
certain things that Rounder was not focused in on. So again,
I think that was probably Jim Edgar being real, being honest,
and not really concerned about trying to win an election.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
What about what he did after he left the governor's office,
I know he started a Fellows program to teach people
about leadership and good governance.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yes, he became a senior fellow at the University of
Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs. He helped create
the what we call that Edgar Fellows Program to train
future leaders. Again, declining offers to run again, he stayed
more as you know, a retired statesman, if you want
to call it that, somebody that was a political expert,
(11:44):
could you know, bring a lot of gravitas to some
issues when he talked about them because he's dealt with
them in these ways through the years. He would weigh
in on talk shows and different news coverage on occasions
as well. But he really did some retire from public
life and I think enjoyed his time a little bit more. Now.
(12:05):
Something I think we have to point out, as Jim
Edgar had a heart attack when he was governor, and
it did change his focus, I believe a bit, and
I think that's one of the reasons why he didn't run.
He was being looked at for a possible candidate for
US Senate at one point here in the state of Illinois,
and certainly he could have run and probably won a
third term as governor. But I think he wanted to
(12:25):
pull back a little bit, and I think health played
a role in that.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
What is a memory that you have about covering Jim Edgar.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Well, I don't know if it's one specific memory, but
I think the one thing that kind of comes to
mind to me is Jim Edgar was so different from
both his predecessor and his successor. Jim Thompson was his
predecessor a very gregarious fellow. We talked about the types
of politicians who could argue about something then go out
and have dinner and be good buddies with somebody. That
(12:54):
was him, you know, that was Jim Thompson, a likable fellow.
Some people question and if he was always keeping his
eye on what was happening with government well enough, including
the budget. George Ryan, I think he could make the
same argument for who followed Jim Edgar. But Edgar was
very focused. He was, you know, what we like to
call a policy wonk. He was more concerned about how
(13:16):
government was functioning, how this policy was going to impact people.
The budget, as I mentioned, At the same time, he
had these health issues that had come along, and I
remember that there would be events at the governor's mansion
and either alcohol would not be served, or it would
be served very in very small amounts at these things.
(13:38):
And you know, in a town where putting deals together
is often done over dinner and drinks and things of
that nature, he you know, it became a different thing.
So I think some people viewed Jim Edgar as stodgy
at times. I think they viewed him as maybe boring
at times because of this. He was not the guy
to host the huge parties. And I think that's what
I look back on with him, that when I think
(14:00):
some people felt as though it just wasn't the same
as it was before. It did get back to that
for a while when George Ryan took office, but that
Jim Edgar period was almost a dry period for most
people in state government.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Wow. One more thing, Sean, You've been covering politics for
so long in the state of Illinois other than Jim Edgar, Like,
how have things changed over the course of your career
there and the kinds of things that you have to
cover now?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
I think it's I think it's changed like it has
at the national level. I don't know if Illinois is
much different in the sense that the politicians that you
deal with today. I think you know, some people may
think this is good and then maybe not, but they
are much more determined about certain causes and certain beliefs,
(14:52):
and there's almost this mean spiritedness. And this really can
happen on both sides. And I think back when I
was first covering it again, it was a little bit
more of let's, you know, let's work on this together,
let's try to compromise or meet in the middle and
try to get something everybody can live with. And that
included the hardcore conservatives and what we would call the
(15:14):
Lakefront Liberals in Chicago. They would often try to work together.
I don't see that near as much anymore. Some of
that has to do with Democrats having a huge majority
in the Illinois legislature, what we call a super majority.
They can pass anything and override vetos on their own.
Republicans have really been shelved to some extent. Maybe they
(15:36):
will get back to at least having some of that
control again, but it looks like it may be a
while before that occurs. So it's just been a different environment. Plus,
we've had governors go to prison, including the successor the
two successors to Jim Edgar, Rob Blogoyevitch, and George Ryan
both did prison time. So things have looked I think
(15:56):
just look a little bit different in Illinois now. A
lot of mistrust of government that's out there among people. Yeah,
I think that's the biggest thing. And then you know,
just journalism in general, with social media and some of
the other things that are going on, it really make
it a very difficult beat to cover.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah. That is Sean Crawford, the managing editor for NPR Illinois,
talking with us about former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, who
died recently at the age of seventy nine. It was
one of our first guests on The Middle. Sean, thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you, and thanks
you for listening to this episode. It was produced by
Harrison Patino. Our next Middle episode is coming to your
(16:34):
podcast feed later this week. We're going to be taking
a look at the creative spirit that is so deeply
a part of the American identity and ask you why
do you create? If you like this podcast, rate it,
where you get your podcast, write a review. Our theme
music was composed by Noah Haidu. I'm Jeremy Hobson. Talk
to you soon.
Welcome to a special edition of The Middle podcast. I'm
Jeremy Hobson. One of the first guests that we ever
had On the Middle when it became a weekly show
about two years ago, was the former governor of Illinois,
Republican Jim Edgar. For much of my upbringing in champagn Orbanna,
he was the governor, a Republican who got along with
people across the aisle, including Chicago's famous former mayor Richard Daley.
(00:38):
Edgar had a measured, even tempered approach to politics that
made him a deeply respected figure. He was, you could say,
a man in the middle, and he sadly passed away
last week at the age of seventy nine after a
battle with cancer. One of the things politicians in both
parties have praised him for is his bipartisanship and his
ability to listen respectfully to those across the aisle. Here
(01:01):
he is talking about that on the Middle in twenty
twenty three.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
One of my wife would tell you that I argue
more than I should, and on all things, not just politics.
But you know again, I go back to the listening
is extremely important, and if people think you're going to
listen to him then you know they might go along
with some of the things you want because at least
they got a chance to give their point of view.
(01:26):
That's very important. One of the things my experience with
staff and everybody, you have to all make him feel
like they have their input. In the end, you may
not follow it, but they've got to feel like they
had a chance. And if they feel like they had
a chance, and they're going to be much more apt
to accept what the final policy is. So again, I
just think that we need to listen a lot more
(01:47):
and lower the voices, and I probably ought to do
that more myself.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well, in this episode, we're going to talk about Jim
Edgar and his legacy, his style of politics, and whether
his approach is still possible today. And joining me as
someone who's covered Edgar's entire political career, Sean Crawford, longtime
Illinois politics reporter, now managing editor of NPR Illinois. He's
in the capitol, Springfield. Sean, it's great to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Thank you, Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Well, and how is Edgar being remembered in Illinois. I
thought it was interesting just in this moment that we're
in that JB. Pritzker, the current governor, a Democrat, had
some just really nice words to say about him.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, I think you've heard that actually from several Democrats
and Republicans as well, many people who may have disagreed
with Edgar, not only back when he was governor, but
certainly in years since. Jim Edgar made it clear that
the Republican Party was heading in a direction that he
wasn't a fan of. He ended up saying that he
voted for Joe Biden in twenty twenty and Kamala Harris
(02:46):
in twenty twenty four. He was not a Donald Trump fan.
He was what we would call a political moderate, and
I think that's showing up more in the types of
accolades he's getting now that he has passed. You're write
the JB. Pritzker. The govern certainly come out with some
glowing remarks about him, and again so did many others.
He's viewed, I believe, as a statesman, and I believe
(03:08):
he's viewed as somebody who again could work with all sides.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And what were some of the examples of him reaching
across the aisle, working with all sides when he was governor.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Well, one thing, to be honest with you, he actually
was very even handed, I believe when he was governor.
But one of the things that he was known for
was being called Governor No because he inherited a kind
of an ify situation with a state budget. And what
Jim Edgar did do by the time he left office
was he had righted the ship. He had gotten the
(03:40):
state's finances back under control. A lot of that came
from some budget cutting and a lot of saying no
to state lawmakers who wanted different projects, different funding for
different programs. You know, most of them, they come to
the capitol and this is the way it is everywhere.
They come to the capitol. They want to take something
back home. They want to show their constitution. It's what
they've done. And he was not always in agreement with that.
(04:03):
So in some ways he did work across the aisle,
but he was very even handed when it came to
how he developed his policies. If Republicans wanted to spend
more money, he would easily say no to them as
well as Democrats. But he worked on issues with education.
That was really one of the key things when I
look back on him. He raised the per pupil spending
(04:24):
in the state and higher education, which has been underfunded
in subsequent years since Edgar left office and caused a
lot of problems here in the state of Illinois. Higher
education got a lot of what it wanted back when
Jim Edgar was governor. Funding requests would be made every
year and pretty much those were rubber stamped, and the
(04:45):
universities did. Public universities in the state did very well.
He also changed governorship of the universities to what we
have now. So looking back on it, he was a
lot different than what you might have might be expecting
from Republicans these days. In some ways, he was different
from what Democrats do these days as well.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
We'll talk about his relationship with a very famous Democrat,
Richard Daley, who is the Democratic mayor of Chicago when
Edgar was governor. As I read about it, it sounds similar
to what people said about Ronald Reagan and the House
Speaker Tip O'Neil. They actually liked each other even though
they were in opposite parties.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I think Jim Edgar respected a lot of people in government,
and and I think that was just a different time
in politics too, where you didn't let some professional disagreements
impact personally how you felt about people, you would you
might you might really argue like crazy during the day
and then go out and have dinner with somebody that
(05:41):
same person at night. And I think that was similar there.
They did have run into a lot of different disagreements.
There was no doubt about that. Chicago is the state,
is the dominant city, of course in the state of Illinois.
But there's a lot of land outside of Chicago in
this state. And in Jim is that what we would
call a downstater or he is from east central Illinois,
(06:04):
the town of Charleston, and he you know, I think
sometimes those two sides sometimes don't always see eye to
eye because they're looking at it from different perspectives.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Well, I think that's a very interesting thing about him
as well, is a lot of the times the governors
are people that live in Chicago and every state, even
people that are listening to this that are like, I'm
not from Illinois, why do I care about you know,
downstate Illinois versus Chicago. Every state pretty much has a
situation like this where there's a big city and then
there's the rest of the state. And I think one
(06:35):
of the things that Jim Edgar, one of his strengths
was that he was able to have this relationship with
the mayor of Chicago, but also be somebody who understood
the importance of the rest of the state and the
people who lived in the rest of the state, and
that their concerns were different than people who lived in
the major metropolitan center.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah. I think that's true. He was educated at a
public university, Eastern Illinois University and East Central Illinois. He
comes from that background. That being said, he understood that
Chicago's the economic engine for the state of Illinois. I
think most people, if they're sensible, realize that. You know,
in Chicago, how Chicago goes often is how Illinois goes.
(07:16):
And he realized that. And I don't think Chicago fared
poorly under Jim Edgar by any stretch. I think he
just again had a broader view, maybe than some people do.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I was talking to a politics reporter in California. I said,
how come so many of the politicians that win statewide
in California, like Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom and you know,
Diane Feinstein back in the day and other people, how
can they all come from the San Francisco Bay area,
Because it's a smaller city than LA And this person said,
because if you can win in San Francisco, where politics
(07:48):
is like a knife fight, you can win state wide
in California. I wonder if that's true in Illinois as well,
this Chicago.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, I think maybe to some extent. I think also
just you know, as the state has become more of
a black state, I think if you look back, I
mean Ronald Reagan of course was from ILLINOI but he
won this state when he ran for president. But you know,
nowadays this is a reliably blue state. When it comes
time for the presidential candidates to go on the stump,
we rarely see many of them because the state's not
(08:15):
really in play outside of primaries. And you know, I
think Jim Edgar, again, he was a social moderate. That
also makes him much different than a lot of what
you see in the Republican Party these days. He supported
abortion rights. In fact, Charlie Wheeler, who a colleague might
who's been following state government for about sixty years, Charlie
(08:37):
often says if Jim Edgar was running today, he would
not win a Republican primary because his positions were maybe
too close to the middle, too moderate, and that I
think is a big difference from what we saw back
then to what we see now.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
And as you said, he was not a Trump Republican.
Once that became a thing. We're going to talk about
that when we come back with NPR Illinois Managing Editor
Sean Crawford. Stay with us, Welcome back to the Middle.
(09:22):
I'm Jeremy Hobson. This episode, we're talking about former Illinois
Governor Jim Edgar, who passed away last week at the
age of seventy nine after a battle with cancer. Who's
one of our first guests on the Middle. I'm joined
by NPR Illinois Managing Editor Sean Crawford. Sean listened to
this clip of Edgar talking about Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I'm an eisenher Ford Bush Republican, and that's not the
Republican Party today. Unfortunately, it's the party is now our
Trump Party. And you know that's a fact of life.
Maybe not quite as much in Illinois as it is
in other states, but more so than I would have
thought a.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Couple years Sean, As you say, he actually publicly supported
Biden and Kamala Harris in their respective elections. Do you
think that that was hard for him as a Republican.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
I'm sure it was to some extent, But you know,
Jim Edgar had been out of politics per se for
many years. I mean he left in nineteen ninety nine.
He decided not to run for a third term as governor.
He was encouraged many times to get back in. Republicans
really have struggled in the state of Illinois since then,
and I think they looked at him as maybe somebody
(10:32):
that could save the party, bring him back and get
back in control, and he refused each time. So I
think he became less concerned with what people thought of
him from a political standpoint. I think he just felt
about talking what he believed in, and I think in
this case that was probably what was going on there.
(10:53):
He did not pull punches. He also fought with some
other Republicans through the years, including our former Governor Bruce Rounder,
at times saying he thought the state should be doing
certain things that Rounder was not focused in on. So again,
I think that was probably Jim Edgar being real, being honest,
and not really concerned about trying to win an election.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
What about what he did after he left the governor's office,
I know he started a Fellows program to teach people
about leadership and good governance.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yes, he became a senior fellow at the University of
Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs. He helped create
the what we call that Edgar Fellows Program to train
future leaders. Again, declining offers to run again, he stayed
more as you know, a retired statesman, if you want
to call it that, somebody that was a political expert,
(11:44):
could you know, bring a lot of gravitas to some
issues when he talked about them because he's dealt with
them in these ways through the years. He would weigh
in on talk shows and different news coverage on occasions
as well. But he really did some retire from public
life and I think enjoyed his time a little bit more. Now.
(12:05):
Something I think we have to point out, as Jim
Edgar had a heart attack when he was governor, and
it did change his focus, I believe a bit, and
I think that's one of the reasons why he didn't run.
He was being looked at for a possible candidate for
US Senate at one point here in the state of Illinois,
and certainly he could have run and probably won a
third term as governor. But I think he wanted to
(12:25):
pull back a little bit, and I think health played
a role in that.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
What is a memory that you have about covering Jim Edgar.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Well, I don't know if it's one specific memory, but
I think the one thing that kind of comes to
mind to me is Jim Edgar was so different from
both his predecessor and his successor. Jim Thompson was his
predecessor a very gregarious fellow. We talked about the types
of politicians who could argue about something then go out
and have dinner and be good buddies with somebody. That
(12:54):
was him, you know, that was Jim Thompson, a likable fellow.
Some people question and if he was always keeping his
eye on what was happening with government well enough, including
the budget. George Ryan, I think he could make the
same argument for who followed Jim Edgar. But Edgar was
very focused. He was, you know, what we like to
call a policy wonk. He was more concerned about how
(13:16):
government was functioning, how this policy was going to impact people.
The budget, as I mentioned, At the same time, he
had these health issues that had come along, and I
remember that there would be events at the governor's mansion
and either alcohol would not be served, or it would
be served very in very small amounts at these things.
(13:38):
And you know, in a town where putting deals together
is often done over dinner and drinks and things of
that nature, he you know, it became a different thing.
So I think some people viewed Jim Edgar as stodgy
at times. I think they viewed him as maybe boring
at times because of this. He was not the guy
to host the huge parties. And I think that's what
I look back on with him, that when I think
(14:00):
some people felt as though it just wasn't the same
as it was before. It did get back to that
for a while when George Ryan took office, but that
Jim Edgar period was almost a dry period for most
people in state government.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Wow. One more thing, Sean, You've been covering politics for
so long in the state of Illinois other than Jim Edgar, Like,
how have things changed over the course of your career
there and the kinds of things that you have to
cover now?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
I think it's I think it's changed like it has
at the national level. I don't know if Illinois is
much different in the sense that the politicians that you
deal with today. I think you know, some people may
think this is good and then maybe not, but they
are much more determined about certain causes and certain beliefs,
(14:52):
and there's almost this mean spiritedness. And this really can
happen on both sides. And I think back when I
was first covering it again, it was a little bit
more of let's, you know, let's work on this together,
let's try to compromise or meet in the middle and
try to get something everybody can live with. And that
included the hardcore conservatives and what we would call the
(15:14):
Lakefront Liberals in Chicago. They would often try to work together.
I don't see that near as much anymore. Some of
that has to do with Democrats having a huge majority
in the Illinois legislature, what we call a super majority.
They can pass anything and override vetos on their own.
Republicans have really been shelved to some extent. Maybe they
(15:36):
will get back to at least having some of that
control again, but it looks like it may be a
while before that occurs. So it's just been a different environment. Plus,
we've had governors go to prison, including the successor the
two successors to Jim Edgar, Rob Blogoyevitch, and George Ryan
both did prison time. So things have looked I think
(15:56):
just look a little bit different in Illinois now. A
lot of mistrust of government that's out there among people. Yeah,
I think that's the biggest thing. And then you know,
just journalism in general, with social media and some of
the other things that are going on, it really make
it a very difficult beat to cover.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah. That is Sean Crawford, the managing editor for NPR Illinois,
talking with us about former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, who
died recently at the age of seventy nine. It was
one of our first guests on The Middle. Sean, thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you, and thanks
you for listening to this episode. It was produced by
Harrison Patino. Our next Middle episode is coming to your
(16:34):
podcast feed later this week. We're going to be taking
a look at the creative spirit that is so deeply
a part of the American identity and ask you why
do you create? If you like this podcast, rate it,
where you get your podcast, write a review. Our theme
music was composed by Noah Haidu. I'm Jeremy Hobson. Talk
to you soon.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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