Victor De Grazia Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

University of Illinois at Springfield
Norris L Brookens Library
Archives/Special Collections
Victor De Grazia Memoir
D364. De Grazia, Victor
Interview and memoir
7 tapes, 407 mins., 80 pp., plus index
ILLINOIS STATECRAFT
De Grazia, former campaign manager and deputy to governor Dan Walker,
discusses his education and early involvement in politics; managing Abner
Mikva's 1955 campaign for state representative, service as Executive Director of
the Committee on Illinois Government and of the Democratic Federation of
Illinois. He discusses Walker's gubernatorial campaign and governorship; meeting
Walker; the 1970 campaign for governor, campaigning techniques, commercials
and the media, and the Walker/Ogilvie debates; Walker's governorship,
relationships with agency directors, cabinet, State Legislature, media, Independent
Voters of Illinois, Chicago politicians, organized labor, and the Democratic Party.
Also discussed is the Better Government Association's investigation of "ghost
payrollers", economic recession, amendatory veto, patronage, and the 1974
budget.
Interview by Marilyn Huff Immel, 1981
OPEN
See collateral file: interviewer's notes, correspondence regarding interview, and a
photo of Dan Walker
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144
University of Illinois at Springfield
One University Plaza, MS BRK 140
Springfield IL 62703-5407
© 1981 University of Illinois Board of Trustees

.. -
This oral history of Victor de Grazia's participation in the
administration of Governor Dan Walker is a product of "Eyewitness
Illinois," a program of the Oral History Office of Sangamon State
University. The project was made possible in part by a grant Erom 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, Susan Cooke House Trust and the MacArthur
Foundation. Central to this program is a conviction that the business of
the governor deserves larger and better public understanding, and that
oral history offers a distinctive way of supplying it.
Victor de Grazia was deputy to the governor Erom January 1973 to January
1977. A long-time friend and associate of Governor Walker, Mr. de Grazia
has been involved in Illinois politics since the early 1950s. In 1956 he
managed the primary campaign of independent Democrat Abner Mikva for
state representative. Mr. de Grazia served as the first executive
director of the Committee on Illinois Government where he met Dan Walker,
the driving force behind forming the group. He was also executive
director of the Democratic Federation of Illinois, a group of independent
Democrats dedicated to reforming the state Democratic party.
Mr. de Grazia's first position in government was as executive director of
the Board of Economic Development under Governor Otto Kerner. Later he
served as executive director of the Maremont Foundation and assistant
director (under Dan Walker) of the investigation following riots at the
1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. After working on Adlai
Stevenson's 1970 campaign for the U. S. Senate, Mr. de Grazia became
Walker's campaign manager when he announced, later in 1970, his intention
to run for governor.
Mr. de Grazia's wide experience in Illinois government and politics
prepared him well for his participation in the Walker administration, and
provides a unique perspective from which to comment on governmental
affairs and the people involved. He expresses strong opinions as well as
providing in this memoir a wealth of personal recollections which enhance
our underatanding of Democratic politics in Illinois and the behind-
the-scenes workings of government.

Readers of the oral history should bear in mind that it is a transcript
of the spoken word. Its informal, conversational style represents a
deliberate attempt to encourage candor and to tap the narrator's memory.
However, persons interested in listening to the tapes should understand
that editorial considerations produced a text that differs somewhat from
the original recordings. Both the recordings and this transcript should
be regarded as a primary historical source, as no effort was made to
correct or challenge the narrator. The conclusions and assertions do not
necessarily represent the viewe of the Illinois Humanities Council, 'the
National Endowment for the Humanities, Sangamon State University, or
other eponsors, nor are these institutions responsible for the factual
accuracy of the memoir.
The tape recorded interviews were conducted by Marilyn H. Immel during
the summer and fall of 1981. Ms. Imrnel was born in 1943 in Wichita,
Kansas. She received a bachelor's degree in Russian language and
literature from Northwestern University in 1965. While raising two
children she was actively involved with the League of Women Voters in
Springfield, Illinois, working primarily in the areas of election laws
and government. In 1977 she returned to school in order to pursue a
master's degree in political science. She was associated with the Oral
History Office of Sangamon State University from January of 1981 until
August, 1983.
Jackie Barnea transcribed the tapes and, after the transcriptions were
edited by Me. bumel and reviewed by Mr. de Grazia, Linda Jett prepared
the typescript. Florence Hardin compiled the index. Francie Staggs and
Carol Marshall assisted in the pre-interview research. Marilyn Immel
supervised the artwork, photographic layout and production. The Illinois
State Historical Library provided valuable assistance in the research
effort.
This oral history may be read, quoted and cited freely. It may not be
reproduced in whole or in part by any means, electronic or mechanical,
without written permission from the Oral History Office, Sangamon State
University, Springfield, Illinois 62708.

Education and Early Political Involvement ........... 1
University of Chicago--Lake Forest College--
Manages Ab Hlkva's 1955 Campaign for State
Representative--Executive Director of
Committee on Illinois Government--Executive
Director of Democratic Federation of Illinois
Activities in the 1960's. ................... 6
Consultant to Kerner Administration (Economic
Development)--Executive Director of the
Maremant Foundation--With Dan Walker of 1968
Riot Study Commission
Walker Gubernatorial Campaign ................ .11
The tlWalk"--Pr imary Campaign Financing--
Walker's Campaigning Technique--Ogilviels
"Walker Reportt' Commercials--Media Campaign
(David Garth)--Ogilvie/Walker Debates
The Walker Governorship ................... .31
Deciding on Top Appointees--Walker's
Relationship with Agency Directors and Cabinet--
the Administration and the State Legislature--
Crosstown--Walker and the Media--Walker and
the Independent Voters of Illinois--the Better
Government Association Investigation of
"Ghost Payr 01 ler st'
The Walker Governorship, Cont. ............... .54
Walker Administration and Organized Labor--
Walker Administration and the Economic Recession--
the Amendatory Veto--Walker and the Democratic
Party--Patronage--Walker and the U.S. Congressional
Delegation--1974 Budget--Walker and Other State
Conbtitutlonal Officers
Index ............................ .81

July 8, 1981, Tape 1, Side 1
Q: I'd like you to begin by going into your background, where you come
from and, I guess, how you got to the Walker administration in 1972.
A: Well, originally I was going to be a psychoanalyst and I went to the
University of Chicago and I was in pre-med. Then I decided .that
psychoanalysis was not an efficient enough tool to deal with the numbers
of problems, and I decided I was going to go into biochemistry because
I'm convinced that that's the route that ultimately the treatment of
mental illness will take. And it happened that--I'm a musician--I
transferred at this point to Lake Forest College. I was working with
emotionally disturbed children. And, I was singing in the choir and
sometimes conducting the choir, and the dean of the Department of Music
asked me to write a piece of music for the choir, which I did and which
was performed, and I was so excited about the idea of writing music and
hearing my own music performed that I decided to throw everything over
and go to music school. So, I went to the Chicago Conservatory of Music.
A friend of mine taught there. It gets a little complicated because what
happened was, the Chicago Conservatory of Music on its catalogue said,
"approved" or some word like that. And I assumed that it meant it was
part of the regular, what is that called?
Q: The accreditation?
A: Yes, of the North Central Association.
Q: Yes.

A: It turned out it wasn't, and how I learned that, unfortunately, was I
applied for a fellowship at Stanford and they wrote back and they said,
"Wonderful, we'd love to have you except that your school is not
accredited." And that's how I found out. At the same time I was in
severe financial straits so I just had to drop out. So I stopped and got
a job.
How I got into politics from there--my brother is a lawyer and he and
Abner Mikva were close friends and rivals at the University of Chicago
Law School. As a matter of fact, they fought it out for editor-in-chief
of the law review. And my brother had said to me that he thought I
should meet Ab, that he thought that Ab was the kind of guy that would be
a good candidate and a man who would want to be in politics. So, Ab and
I met and we talked about politics and we liked each other very much, and
his very close friend, a man by the name of Elliott Epstein, and I once
had lunch with him and on the spur of the moment said to him, "You should
run for state legislature."
Q: Now what year was this?
A: This would be 1955. Ab said he would, and so we started a campaign.
Q: And you had not been involved in politics at all before that time?
A: No, well, I have three brothers, my oldest brother and my--I don't
know whether you can call him my second brother-are both PhD political
scientists, and my father was always interested in politics. Politics
was always a part of our family discussions. My father was an ardent New
Dealer and he brought us all up that way. So, what happened then was 1
became Mikva's campaign manager in 1956 in the primary in which he beat
the regular organization. Yes, he was the first Democrat to ever beat
the regular Democratic organization for state representative. Then he
was elected and went to Springfield and I was his campaign manager
thereafter. He didn't have too much trouble until he decided to run for
Congress in 1966 and I was his campaign manager for that one which he
lost. A very tough fight. And then I was his campaign manager in 1968
when he was selected as the Democratic candidate by the regular
organization.
Now, I guess to go back to the beginning . . . in 1956 after the Mikva
campaign, that was the spring, he didn't need me in the fall because it
was a Democratic district. So, I needed a job. There was a group called
the Committee on Illinois Government. I don't know how much you know
about that but the founders were a group of very, very bright and
distinguished--now distinguished but then soon to be distinguished--
people. They were formed after Stevenson was defeated for president in
1952 and was no longer governor, and these were mainly people who had
worked in the Stevenson administration. The driving force behind forming
the group was Dan Walker, and he was its first chairman. I was hired as
their first executive director and that was in 1956. Its chairman then
was Jim Clement and then Frank Fisher succeeded him. But it's really
interesting if you look at the members of that group. For example, Tom
Sullivan who was the U.S. attorney. Jim Moran who was a federal judge,
Adlai Stevenson I11 was a member of it, and Dan Walker of course. And
those who were in private practice are all at the top of the legal
profession. They were all lawyers then. I was the only nonlawyer.

J
Anyway, so I was executive director and that's how I first met Dan
Walker. And my knowledge of Dan Walker was that he was not very helpful
to the Committee on Illinois Government (CIG) and by then he had put in a
few years; he had gotten it going and he was starting to build a career
for himself as a lawyer. And so, he did not have the time, the voluntee'r
time, plus the fact that you also had very strong egos, and guys who were
former chairmen just hated like hell to come and sit around and watch the
current chairman run things. (chuckles) So they usually dropped . . .
they didn't drop out but they decreased their interest.
Q: What was the focus of the group?
A: Well, it was formed originally to keep a watch on Stratton. And we
put out a thisg called the "Stratton Record" which became a Democratic
campaign document. We did lobbying, we kept on proposing things like the
income tax, the state income tax, and we'd appear before the Democratic
platform and they'd snicker, you know, as we proposed it.
One of the amusing sidelights on that was that we had prepared a package
of anti-corruption bills, especially on lobbying, control of lobbyists,
and we had given the package to Bill Lynch who was then the Democratic
leader in the senate, a former law partner of Mayor ~aley's. Well, Bill
Lynch was on vacation when the Hodge scandal broke and they reached him
wherever he was, out West somewhere on vacation, and they asked him,
well, what did he think, what was he going to do? And he said, "Well, it
just happens that I have a package of bills that I've been reviewing to
control things like that." (laughter) That was really an example of how
a politician can move quickly. He had no intention of doing it, but he
did. Mter that happened, then he introduced those bills. They never
went anywhere but he did introduce them. Okay, so that was CIG in the
beginning.
A group then formed around Steve Mitchell called the Democratic
Federation of Illinois. Paul Simon was, I think, the first president or
chairman of the group. A man named Arnold Maremont who was a wealthy,
liberal Democrat was involved in the formation of it too because he
believed that the Daley regime was bad for the Democratic party and he
wanted to change it. DFI, the Democratic Federation of Illinois, was
modeled after the California club system. And . . .
Q: What's the California club system? )_I
A: Well, in California they really have no statewide party kind of
operation. They have clubs, so you'd have a Los Angeles Democratic Club.
Q: I see.
A: So, we set up clubs around the state. And I guess at our high point
we probably had somewhere between three and five thousand members, I
really can' t remember.
Q: But these were independent Democrats . . .
A: Right, right.

Q: . . . who needed a place to meet outside of the regular Democratic
party?
A: Right. And they were spread all over the state. And we had a
platform of reforms that we wanted to propose. Political reform is
really a fascinating thing. 1 became the executive director of the DFI.
And while I was executive director the granddaddy club in the country, a
liberal Democratic club, the Lexington Democratic Club in New York, were
celebrating their tenth anniversary and they asked me to come and be one
of the speakers. So, I spoke about what we were trying to do in Illinois
and how one of our greatest reform measures was that we were trying to
get the law changed so that we would elect precinct captains in Chicago
who would then elect their ward committeemen. And after I said that, I
sensed a strange reaction in the audience, and it was so obvious that T
stopped and I asked what was wrong. Well, it turned out that their big
reform was--they had that--they wanted to go to direct election of their
ward committeemen which we had, right? But their reform was the reverse.
Reform is just what you don't have. (laughter) In political
organizations at least.
Anyway, Arnold Maremont was treasurer of the DFT and he and I had become
friends, and he was very impressed with me as a person who was in
sympathy with his political views, and he was very influential in the
organization. And there was a convention here in Chicago to elect the
first permanent chairman of the DFI. Dan Walker was there and was
thinking of running. Maremont said to the Walker supporters that he
would underwrite my salary for a year if Dan Walker were the one who
became chairman. Because he felt that Walker was the best; as he was.
There was a great fight but, with that support, Dan Walker became elected
chairman. I was named executive director. And that was the beginning of
Dan and my close working relationship in politics, so this would be 1957
I guess. 1957, 1958 somewhere along there.
Q: And what was your title?
A: Executive Director. My first real memory of Dan Walker as a person
to admire was . . . we had our first statewide gathering down in
Bloomington. And we were expecting trouble from people who had opposed
us and we knew there would be all kinds of fights over the constitution
and all that sort of stuff. So, Dan and I arrived early and we spent
most of our time politicking with various people.
Q: This was after his election?
A: Yes. The first statewide meeting after his election. And so we were
meeting with various people and doing' the usual political thing we do.
It must have been, I'd say probably one-thirty, two o'clock in the
morning when we finished. And so we went up in the elevator and walked
down the hall and I said, "Well, goodnight Dan." And he said, "What do
you mean goodnight?" I said, "I'm going to bed." He said, "No, no,
we've got work to do." So, we went into his room and he took out two
black notebooks and gave me one. And in the notebook was listed, page by
page, every action that needed to be taken. And we went through that
book, page by page, decided, was that action the action we wanted taken,
and if so who should make the motion, who should second the motion, who

should lead the discussion. When I left the room about three-thirty or
four, I was totally bowled over by the way his mind operated. Bill
Redmond has said that Dan Walker was the smartest governor he has ever
served under, and from my knowledge of governors, that is certainly true.
So that was the DFI. The beginning.
Q: So that was in 1957 and you . . .
A: It must have been late, it must have been in 1958.
Q: Okay. That was an ongoing commitment that you had. In 1959 was when
Governor Walker went before the slatemaking committee for attorney
general. Were you involved in that?
A: Yes, yes.
Q: Was that the next event?
A: Yes, the next big . . . yes. (pause) Now, he went before the
slatemakers and he met with Daley, and we were told the night before the
slate was to be announced that he was on the ticket, that he was slated.
The next morning, as a matter of fact, I came over to his law office and
we were writing the statement (laughs), and got a call saying, Well,
sorry"; he had been bumped. Now there are two explanations given for why
he was bumped off the ticket. One was, at that time Dan lived in
Deerfield. A builder by the name af Morris Milgram had bought some land
in Deerfield and was going to build integrated housing, for the first
time bring blacks into Deerfield. Immediate uproar, of course, in the
community. Dan became the central figure of the group supporting
Milgram, supporting the development, and because of that became a very
hated object to a lot of people in Deerfield. It's a very conservative
community. Some people say that at the slatemaking committee that was
raised by somebody who wanted to knock him out saying he would have to
defend himself against the charge all around the state. "Why should we
have a candidate like that?" I don' t believe that.
I was told by a reliable source that what really happened was that Bill
Clark had been slated to run for secretary of state. He did not want to
run for secretary of state because he would have had to run against
Carpentier, Carpentier had a phenomenal popularity. But Bill Clark's
mother went to see Daley. Now, Bill Clark's father had been assessor,
very powerful figure. And Bill Clark's mothel: went to Daley and said,
according to this person, "You promised my husband on his death bed that
you would take care of my Billy and he wants to be attorney general. He
doesn't want to run for secretary of state." Now I believe that, because
Daley was very moved by those family kinds of things. Much more than
other things. The old relationships were things that he relied on and he
would honor. So, it's my belief that that was the reason Dan was knocked
off the ticket. So, he went back to practicing law. I don' t know what I
did.
Q:
You don't know what you did?
A: (laughs) 1'm trying to think what I did in that period.

Q: Then he was practicing law and there were no more attempts to run him
for anything . . .
A: No, well this was . . .
Q: . . . through the 1960's. What was happening during that period of
time from 1959 to say, 1968 when he became so visible?
A: Oh, we were friends, we would talk about various offices, but there
was no strong movement.
Q: Had he sort of lost interest in running for office? It didn't seem
to be a burning desire for him?
A: Yes, it's hard to say; it was always there but it was not at the top
of the agenda. Oh that's right, so that was 1960's; yes, that's right
because it was the 1960 election, right. hat's right. hat's when I
first went into government with Kerner and then left and set up the
Maremont Foundation.
Q: What job did you hold in the Kerner administration?
A: What did I do for Kerner? After Kerner was elected . . . Maremont
had been one of his supporters, large financial supporter, and they liked
each other. At that time I had a little consulting organization and I
suggested to Maremont and he then to Kerner, that economic development
was probably the best political vehicle that a governor could ride, and
that Illinois had absolutely zilch in the way of an economic development
program. And what Maremont did was that he hired me to do a study of all
the states' economic development programs and make a proposal for Kerner,
which I did. And I met with Kerner and we discussed it and he liked it,
and he asked me to come in and implement it.
At that time the only economic development program was wit,hin the
Department of Registration and Education. There was a title called,
Superintendent of Industrial Planning and Development, and it was an
absolute washout kind of thing. What I proposed was a Board of Economic
Development which would be chaired by the governor and have as its
members those members of the cabinet who had the most substantial impact
on economic development in the state. So we set it up, got it through
the legislature--very difficult job--and I became its executive director.
So, I was the executive director of the Board of Economic Development of
the state under Kerner. And this lasted until there was this terrible
falling out between Maremont and Kerner over the Public Aid Commission,
and when Maremont left government he asked me to leave with him and set
up this foundation to rehabilitate housing for low and moderate income
people, which I did. And I did that through the rest of the 1960'9, in
Chicago and California and New York.
Q:
Did your leaving create bad feelings between you and Governor Kerner?
A: It's funny it wouldn't have. It's a kind of long story but it's a
story of really the way government operates and the kinds of things that
make up relationships in government. Kerner had as his director of
Mental Health a very good man named Dr. Francis Gerty. A wonderful guy.

Now, when Gerty and I first met we immediately liked each other. Kerner
had taken over as governor; he had been named by Kerner but he had not
yet been confirmed by the senate. Otto Bettag was still the director; it
was, yes, Mental Health.
I Q: Bettag was director of Public Welfare.
A: Public Welfare, yes, right. It hadn't changed yet. It was Gerty who
changed it to Mental Health. Gerty asked me to get him the budget
proposal from the department. I thought that was an easy job so I went
there. At that time there were five deputy directors and I went to each
one of them and asked them for a copy of the budget and they all turned
me down. I started off gently enough saying, "Dr. Gerty is going to be
your new boas and he would like to have a copy of the budget before it's
submitted .It "I'm sorry," they said individually, "Dr. Bettag is still
our boss and he says we shouldn't do it." Wonderful--these guys are an
example of why civil service is such a terrible . . . it was really
awful. Here is the new director, couldn't get to look at the budget that
he was going to have to live with. [With] the last guy I really became
so annoyed that I expressed myself very vigorously. The guy stood up--I
don't remember his name but he was the deputy for administration--he
stood up and he said, "I'm going to lunch. That briefcase by the door
has the budget in it." And he walked out of the room. (laughter) So
anyway I got the budget. Gerty loved it. Gerty then wanted to hixe me
and . . .
I Q: He loved what you had done?
A: Yes, the fact that I had gotten it. And he wanted to hire me and I
said, "No, no, no." He said, "well, I'm going to go to Kerner and ask
him what's more important, Mental Health or Economic Development." I
said, "No, Dr. Gerty, don't do that. I will find you smebody that's
just aa good or better than I am." So, I had a friend named Lowell
Sachnoff who was an attorney and I brought them together. Lowell is one
of the brightest guys in the world. And they hit it off and Gerty said,
"Fine." And so I went to Economic Development. That's under the
prologue, very long story.
You must know that one of the most important things in a bureaucracy is,
where's your office, what kind of space do you have? It's prestige
besides comfort and it becomes vicious, the fighting that goes on. I had
commandeered some new office space in the State Office Building. The
Department of Mental Health wanted it, and Kerner said I could have it.
Gerty--to tell you how ridiculous this is going to be--Gerty said to me,
It 1
I m going to say to the governor that I'm going to resign unless I get
that office space." So, it became a very fierce fight. Okay, the
Maremont thing blew up. Maremont had lunch with Lowell Sachnoff;
Lowell'a working for Gerty. In the course of it, Lowell said, "What do
YOU think Vic's going to do?" And Maremont said, "I wouldnf t be
surprised," with a knowing look, "if he left very soon." Sachnoff goes
back and he goes to Kerner and he said, "Vic's going to resign. Can we
have that space, that office space?" Kerner did not know I was going to
resign. Because we had a very close relationship, the idea that he heard
that I was going to resign from somebody else really poisoned it. I mean
it's so silly, right? I mean, this whole thing's wer some few hundred

square feet of office some people got all. . . . So, our relationship
was not good. We were friendly to each other but it never was good after
that.
Q: So you spent the 1960's then as executive director of the Maremont
Foundation?
A: Yes.
Q:
And then how did you come back together with Dan?
A: Well, we were still talking and . . .
Q: Now, when you say "we," at this time you're talking about you and Dan
Walker and Dave Green, and was Norton Kay a part of it at that time?
A: No, no, no, there was really the three of us. And, there's one
little side thing that did happen, I forgot. And I remembered it because
I taped a thing, videotaped a thing for Governor's College or whatever
. . . overno nor's State University], and somebody wrote a story on some
things that I said in it. And one of them was, in 1963 a new U.S.
attorney was to be selected. Dan Walker decided he would like to be U.S.
attorney. So we started working on doing everything we could possibly do
to influence the then attorney general, Bobby Kennedy. Everybody who had
worked with Dan, or had horn him, thought highly of him. And so, we
called upon all these people, everywhere we could, to talk to Bobby
Kennedy about it. Daley was against: Walker. He had his own candidate
and yes, it was the famous . . . the guy of the Black Panther raid,
Hanrahan .
Q: Hanrahan.
A: That was Daley's candidate. The Justice Department called Dan and
said, "We're going to go ahead over Daley's objection; you're going to be
named U.S. attorney." Dan and I said, "Let's go have lunch and
celebrate." And we went to the Mid-America Club, and while we were
sitting there thinking and talking about what should we do now that he
was going to be U.S. attorney, he got a phone call from his secretary,
Mary, telling him that Kennedy has been assassinated, Jack Kennedy had
been assassinated. So, it was on that day. That's how I remember it so
vividly.
Q: Isn't that something,
A: It was really a staggering thing, because obviously at that point
everything went out the window. And Lyndon Johnson was more interested
in making nicey with Mayor Daley and so Hanrahan got the appointment.
Strange quirks of . . . So, it wasn't a question of Walker not being
interested in politics, but looking for opportunities where he could do a
good job and would be productive. The decision to run for governor came
really in . . . well, I guess 1967 when Sam Shapiro became the candidate
and it was obvious to us he was going to lose and we said, "Well, that's
what we ought to do. l1

Q:
You were at that point preparing for 1972 then?
A:. Yes, yes.
Q: What were you doing in 19681 There was the King assassination, Bobby
Kennedy was assassinated, the Democratic National Convention riot. Tell
me about that year and what you were doing and your relationship with
Walker.
A: Well, I was doing the Maremont Foundation thing. And working in East
Harlem and in Chicago. As a matter of fact, I was working with King in
Chicago on the west side. And the Democratic Convention . . . well, it
was a funny thing. On, I guess, Wednesday or Thursday . . . yes, it must
have been Wednesday of the convention I got a call. We were going to
have lunch, a small group was going to have lunch at the Cliff Dwellers.
The group was Adlai, Ab Mikva, Paul Simon, Jim Moran and me. [I] don't
think there was anybody else there. We were all appalled by the
convention and what was going on and we decided that something should be
done about it. One of the things that we had come up with--we all
agreed, but most everybody then backed out--was that there was going to
be a parade and we were going to carry signs. That Adlai would carry a
sign saying, "Free Chicago Democrats," that kind of thing. The capstone
was supposed to be a joint press conference with Adlai, Paul Simon and Ab
Mikva. We were to meet Thursday night after the convention at the
convention hall and work on the statement. Well, Ab and I were there
waiting to work on the statement. But Adlai and Paul Simon disappeared.
Paul Simon allegedly issued a statement but nobody I know of has ever
seen it. Adlai, of course, later issued a famous statement about the
stormtroopers in blue and stuff like that. But the next day Ab Mkva
held a press conference by himself and denounced what was going on.
Tape 1, Side 2
A: It's funny to think of these. Dan Walker as you know, then became
chairman of the Riot Study Commission. And I became assistant director.
And then we worked on the report and issued the report. The report was a
good report, really accurately depicted what was going on. In the
beginning we were skeptical about the things we heard and it wasn't
really until we got the reports from the U.S. attorney's office of what
they' saw that confirmed everything we had been getting from the people
who had been beaten, and people who had witnessed beatings and violence.
As a matter of fact, at that point it was so obvious to Dan and me that
we decided'that my role should become pro-police within the group in order
to force everybody to work harder to prove their case, and to get more
confirmation of anything they were saying happened and stuff like that.
Q: Why were you chosen to be pro-police? I would think of Dan Walker as
the more likely one.
A: Well, but he was chairman.
Q: I see. So he wasn't pro-anything.

A: Right.
Q: I see.
A: And it was convincing. It was so convincing that we found out later
there was talk of rebellion among the troops, and they thought that I had
made a deal with Daley and there was going to be a whitewash, and when
the report came out, I mean, it was really a great surprise to them all.
But now that was an example of Dan Walker's fantastic organizing ability.
He put that thing together, came out with that report, got every major
law firm in the city to contribute lawyers to that, and if you look at
the list of people in that group, there were some damn good lawyers. And
they were not hippy lawyers. I mean, as a matter of fact the guy we sent
to interview Abbie Hoffman was absolutely a classic Republican
establishment, three-piece suit lawyer. (chuckles) And of course Abbie
Hoffman charmed him. It was really funny. (laughs) The tape of that
interview is really very, very amusing.
Q:
So where do we go from there to the Stevenson campaign?
A: That's what, 1968? Yes. Stevenson was running for treasurer in
1968, yes.
Q: For treasurer or senator?
A: No, no, no, he didn't run for the senate until 1970, right? First
time?
Q: Right, okay, okay, yes.
A: Yes, that was part of his problem with that statement with the press
conference. Adlai told me, you know, that Daley had put tremendous
-
pressure on him and--no, wait a minute, I'm wrong--he was treasurer; 1966
was the election for treasurer. Oh, boy. Nineteen sixty-four was the
orange ballot in which he first got elected state representative.
Q: Nineteen sixty-eight would have been the election year for state
treasurer wouldn't it? Because 1972 was then four years later another
election for state treasurer.
A: But I'm trying to remember, wasn't state treasurer a two-year term
then? Or was it four-year on the off year until 1970, until the new
constitution? I'm really not sure.*
Q: I was really more interested in the senatorial campaign because of
Walker's involvement, in 1970 then.
A: Adlai decided he wanted Dan Walker to chair the campaign, knowing
that Daley was not going to like it. Adlai told me this story and I
*Stevenson was elected state treasurer in 1966 and served until he became
a U.S. senator in 1970.

elieve it. He had made the decision and went to Daley, and after
talking to Daley for awhile he then said to him, "Mr. Mayor, I decided I
needed soarebody who had great organizing talents, who would be able to
pull together all the elements in the campaign so I could win. And
therefore I chose Dan Walker and asked him and he has agreed to be my
chairman," And Adlai said there was this enormous silence from Daley and
finally Daley said, "YOU mean to tell me in a state of ten million people
there's only one person you could find with the organizing ability to be
chairman?'' (laughter) So, Dan became chairman and did his usual good
job, and got staff people, and (pause) organized it well.
Q: And then Stevenson won.
A: Yes.
Q: And then two weeks later Walker announced.
A: Walker announced. That was really funny.
Q: Tell me about that.
A: Well, it was funny. We had decided we wanted to announce early and
we didn't want to interfere with Adlai's being sworn in. It was one of
those bloody accidents that happen. We'd set a date and then it came out
that Adlal was going to be sworn in on that day. So we said, we'll
cancel that date, and we'll set it for this date, but we've got to go on
this date. Then there's some reason Adlai wasn't sworn in on that date
and so, we went ahead with it. Adlai, I'm sure to this day, believes
that it was done to interfere with his . . . the worst thing in the world
for us was to do it on that day. You don't try your big shot on the day
when somebody else is having a big media shot. I mean, it's dumb. But
Adlai was getting a little paranoid by then so, really, I'm sure he still
believes that.
Q: That's hard to believe that he would believe that his campaign
manager would try to undercut his day.
A: Well, as Adlai went along in the campaign, he changed. It's hard to
describe that but, for example, he decided that he had to bring in Tom
Foran and others as co-chairmen . . . Paul Simon. To diminish a an's role
as chairman. Now whether this was because he felt pressure from the
regular organization or whether it was his own idea I. . . . The only
amusing sidelight on that is, I was sitting with Adlai at his house and
we were talking about the campaign and organizing the campaign, what
needed to be done and he said to me, "What about Tom Foran, getting him
involved?" I said, "Gee, why don't we make him chairman of the truth
squad--he'd be great for that-and have him travel around following Smith
around the state." Adlai said, "Well, I was thinking more of something
like co-chairman, something like that." Not a bad idea.
A couple days later we were having a strategy meeting in his treasurer's
office, State of Illinois Building. And among the members of his
strategy committee was Jim Hoge, the editor of the Sun-Times, who was
sitting next to me. During the course of the meeting Adlai says, "Vic
and I were talking the other day and he came up with a hell of a good

idea. Vic, why don't you tell them about it." So I said, "Well, I think
we ought to bring in Tom Foran as co-chairman." The room was electrified,
right? Hoge leans over to me and says, "Only you could come up with an
idea like that." (laughter) That to me was the wonderful irony of it
a1 1. (laughs)
Q: But what did Dan Walker have to say about Foran as co-chairman?
A: He didn't mind really.
Q: Did Foran actually work or was he just a figurehead?
A: Well, by that time I think everybody was a figurehead; It was so
obvious Adlai was going to win, and it really became a "how do we handle
the victory celebration?" kind of thing.
Q: -So we're into the beginning of Dan Walker's campaign. The
announcement in November 1970, is that right?
A: Yes, yes.
Q:
Tell me what you were doing once his candidacy was announced.
A: Well, I was the campaign manager. I started to organize the
campaign. Pulled together volunteers and that kind of stuff. Raise
money.
Q: It's such a unique campaign because he was bucking the incredibly
powerful Chicago regular Democratic organization. You had to think very
creatively because obviously there wasn't going to be a lot of money
right off. So you had to use what little you had as creatively as
possible. Tell me what the think sessions were like.
A: Mostly directed to trying to get the media attention. Besides being
difficult at any time, here we were so far in advance of the election
that it was almost impossible. Also, to try to use our legal resources--
we had a lot of good smart lawyer volunteers--to get them to came up with
creative ideas and lawsuits. There were a number of lawsuits then that
we filed, and won. On the primary voting for example, at that time you
could not switch over, you know, and we went into court on that one; a
couple others we did. ,
And things like that were good, not only because they accomplished
something--I believe that there weren't as many Republican crossovers as
some people say there were in that election--but, what it did was it gave
people a feeling of, well here was a campaign that had some power, it was
winning victories, it was interesting; therefore, you know, let's have
some fun, let's get involved. And when you're trying to get people
involved in politics as volunteers, you know, there' s a small group who
are ambitious, who will get involved. Then [there are] those who want to
have fun, but you got: to provide them with fun, and different people have
different ways of having fun.
When we were active in the Fifth Ward IVI [Independent Voters of
Illinois], south side IVI with Ab Mikva--it was University of Chicago

centered--there was an intellectual kind of involvement. We always tried
to export it to the north side but never could get it going. And it
wasn't until Billy Singer came along with the idea that, you know, party,
party, party. . . . (laughs) That's when they organized around parties
on the north side and got an independent political movement going.
So, then somebody came up with the idea of the "Walk." Nobody knows who.
My guess is that it was Dan Walker himself because he was a friend of
Lawton Chiles and that was the most incredible event of all, that "Walk."
It carried mystical meaning to people that I still find it hard to
understand.
Q:
You were enthusiastic about the "Walk," or not?
A: Oh, yes.
Q: But you were still surprised at its impact?
A: Yes, I had no idea of its emotional impact. I viewed it as a media
event to get Dan Walker's name known. I had no idea that it would have
such meaning to the voters, that it struck some chord. And I saw it.
When I went out there and saw it--I never walked with him--I could tell
that something strange was happening, but what it was I didn't know.
Q: I have read that nothing made him angrier at the time than to have
people refer to the "Walk" as a gimmick. What's the difference between a
media event and a gimmick?
A: Well, the mystical and the emotional reaction that people had to the
"Walk" was mirrored in Dan Walker. And Dan Walker may have started out
on that bridge thinking that it was a media event idea, but after he had
walked a certain distance it was no longer that; it had an emotional
meaning to him. It's very hard . . . in a sense I think people looked at
it and Dan and they said, "That guy's willing to suffer for me because he
wants to be governor and that's why I'm for him." And T think that's
part of it. Christian theology.
Q: How did he change over that period of time? When you think about the
Dan Walker who began the "Walk" and the one who walked into Chicago. How
had he changed?
A: He was no longer a corporate lawyer. He was a downstate person. One
of our biggest problems with Dan is that he became such a downstate
person that we had grave difficulty in getting him into Chicago because
he really felt more comfortable with people downstate.
Q:
Did you see him becoming more conservative?
A: Politically you mean? No. He always was conservative politlcally,
always was, It was funny because I guess the media, because of the
"Walker Report," thought he was a flaming liberal. Dan Walker was never
a flaming liberal. He was always a conservative Democrat. If somebody
ever asked me to describe what was Dan's--to me--his greatest
characteristic, I would say he was fair. He always would look at a
situation and be able to take himself out of it and decide what was the

fair solution. And a good conservative can be that way just as a good
liberal can.
Q: But he was involved in organizations that were considered liberal
Democrat organizations.
A: Like?
0: Like CIG.
A: Well, now why would you call it a liberal?
Q: Because you did. You said liberal, you referred to those people as
generally liberal Democrats.*
A: Yes,
Q: But not all?
A: Not all certainly. Adlai was a member . . .
Q: And Walker certainly was involved in liberal activities, he was
involved in Mayor Daley's negotiations with Martin Luther King, the
housing in Deerfield.
A: But that's not a liberal issue.
Q: Well, okay.
A: That's a fairness issue.
Q: Okay.
A: I think if you take that as the theme you'll find that's the thread
that runs everywhere; that you can explain more of Dan Walker's behavior
on any given issue, where he'll end, in terms of what he believes is the
fair, equitable solution. And he doesn't believe it's fair that blacks
can't live where white people lived. He did it.
Q: What are the highlights of the "Walk" as you think back? What are
the stories that come to mind?
A: The first story that comes to mind: We had a volunteer public
relations committee, about ten of the best public relations people in
town, and I used to meet with them and, you know, we'd kick around ideas.
So, after the strategy group had decided the "Walk" was going to go
ahead, I met with the public relations group to tell them about the
"Walk." They were appalled! They thought it was the worst idea they'd
ever heard. What a waste of time! I mean, they were hollering at me.
It was really a bad meeting. And finally one of them said, "Well, at
least let him ride in between towns, (laughs) so he doesn't waste all
that time walking down the highway."
*In fact, the narrator referred to these men as independent, not liberal
Democrats.

You know, as he walked he carried a dictating machine. An example of his
organization. And people he met he would dictate letters to as he
walked. So, everybody he met on the "Walk," he would get their name and
address and then dictate a letter and send the tape up to Chicago; letter
would be typed and they would get the letter saying how nice it was . . ,
an example of how well organized a person he is.
One of the funniest things I remember is right at the very beginning. He
had been walking I guess two days and Norty Kay, 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 .It 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 walking. Norty was really . . . he
was distraught, no doubt about it.
Q: And you never walked with him? You did meet with him though along
the way.
A: Yes, yes.
Q: I know that even though there were times that he wished the "Walk"
were over, there was never a time when he was ready to give it up. Was
there ever a time when you thought that his time simply was not being
well spent?
A: No. At one point--1 wish I could remember the county--we decided to
test. We took a county, a rural county, that Dan was approaching and we
did a poll to see how many people had heard of Dan Walker before he
arrived. Then he came in, walked through the county, and we took another
poll to see how many people knew who Dan Walker was. Well, it was
unbelievable. It was stunning. And what it was . . . it could not be
just media and that's part of it. There wasn't enough media in that
county, but even so they all covered it. But what it was was word of
mouth. I mean people would drive out to see him; they would drive out to
bring him food; they'd drive out to bring him something to drink. People
became involved in it and in the face of those statistics, there's just
no question that it was a roaring success as a political tactic.
Q:
And do you think because of it he was better prepared to be governor?
A: No question about it.
Q: In what way?
A: Well, because the worst part of being governor is isolation. Dan is
a corporate attorney and, moving in the circles he moved, was isolated
Erom people, Erom the great bulk of people. And not in the sense that
. . . I mean not intellectually, but feeling for people, empathy and
understanding of what their problems were. You talk to people as you
walk and you're asking questions and you stay in their homes at night;

you start identifying with them; you understand their problems and they
get to how you, of course. And there's that mutual emotional exchange
that occurs. That's why Dan is the most formidable campaigner in the
history of Illinois. And Thompson is damn good, and Thompson will
admit-bor used to admit--that everything he did he learned from Dan
Walker, from watching Dan Walker. Including the way he acts in parades
and everything like that. I really would like to have seen a match up
between those two. (laughs)
Q:
I know, wouldn't we all?
A: 'cause Thompson really is a formidable campaigner.
Q: You know, on the one hand Dan Walker Is a relatively shy man who
. . . no, he is a private man, not comfortable with sort of mindless
cocktail party conversation. But on the other hand he was able to reach
out to people on a one-to-one in a very personal way. He was able to, as
you say, have an incredible presence in a parade, in a situation where he
couldn't have privacy. He could go to the state fair and be an
auctioneer and be a terrific auctioneer. There seems to be a real mix
here in the man. Do you understand what I'm getting at?
A: Yes.
Q: ~e's very private but he's so able to come out of that when it's
necessary. How does that work?
A: I don't know. I know exactly the phenomenon, the two things. Dan
Walker in so many ways is an overachiever. When he was in law school he
of course was editor-in-chief of the law review. And then of course he
organized the National Association of Editors-in-chief of Law Reviews,
and of course he was elected its first president. And it was at its
first meeting that Willard Wirtz--who was then a professor of law at
Northwestern, later became secretary of Labor under Kennedy--Willard
Wirtz said, in introducing Dan, "I want to introduce the guy who someday
will become the governor of Illinois." This is when he was in law
school, right? I mean, there's something abaut his physical presence
that commanded respect.
He's a very private person. I'm sure a lot of it is due to his
background. You know, he was very poor. It's no baloney that he
supplied income to his family by selling vegetables door to door when he
was a kid. Hts father was chief petty officer in the navy. And then Dan
went to Annapolis. He went to Annapolis not through an appointment but
through a fleet exam. Now Annapolis took this poor kid and turned him
into sort of a polished version of a human being. And the polish they
put on him was really I think his first go around, and I think that had
more to do, and has had mare to do, with what people sometimes described
as his standoffishness or his aloofness or his coldness. It really is
that Annapolis veneer put upon a poor kid from California.
Q: It is interesting that be seems to be either described as very cold
or incredibly warm . . .

A: Isn't it?
Q: . , , but nothing in between.
A: Yes. I remember the first coffee I set up for him right after the
campaign. A friend of mine on the north side of Chicago . . . I asked
her to set up a group of people and have Dan Walker come and talk to
them.
Q: This was after he was elected or . . .
A: No, no, no, when he announced. These were all upper middle class
people, probably in their forties, late thirties, and there were about
twenty people. She called me that night. She said, "Vic, he was a
disaster. He is so cold and so aloof. Everybody hated him." (laughter)
ll& never can be governor." It's hard to understand and I don't pretend
to. It's there. He can walk into a grain elevator--he could do it
today--walk into a grain elevator and sit down.
Q: Can he walk into a grain elevator easier than he can walk into an
upper middle class home? And be comfortable?
A: Well, during the time he was governor I would say . . . no, I don't
think so. 1 don't think so. I think it's about the same. I think he
might feel more comfortable in a grain elevator than he would in an upper
class home, inside, but I don't think you could tell it from the outside.
That's just my view.
Q: Were there disagreements along the way as he was walking and you were
sort of being campaign manager from the city? Were there times when you
had to settle things because his point of view was so different from
yours as far as the "Walk," the campaign, was concerned?
A: No, I can1 t think of any. Can you?
Q: Well, at some point he decided that he couldn't stay in so many
homes. Was that something you agreed to readily?
A: No, I didn't agree readily. (laughs) How did you know about that?
Q: Because he told me. (laughter)
A: Oh, I'd forgotten that one, right. Yes.
Q: He just felt that having to be up . . . '
A: All the time, right.
Q: , . . all day long, and then up in a stranger's home at night, day
after day, was more than he could bear.
A: Yes, well we kept up, that's right, we kept up a running battle on
that and my view was that my job was to keep on pushing him--
understanding and sympathizing with his problems--but it was just like
his feet. It was something you had to keep on pushing him to. . . .

Q: What about fundraising?
A: Yes, what about it? It's awful. (laughter) No matter where you're
doing it it's awful. Whether it's for the United Jewish Appeal or . . .
Q: Well but, you know, as we said before he was unknown, he was not
backed by the regular Democrats. Who wanted to give to somebody who
didn't look like he had a chance in the world of making it?
A: Very few people, very few people, and he borrowed a lot of money. We
used to joke that if he had lost that he and I would both have to go to
New Zealand. We had decided that would be the safest place where nobody
could get us. . (laughter) We' d both be in such hock by then . . .
Q: Was the bulk of the money to fund that primary his own money?
A: That's hard to say.
Q: It seems as if I've seen a figure that there were several hundred
thousand dollars that came from him.
A: Yes, but I'm trying to remember what the total cost of that primary
was.
Q:
At some point you said seven hundred and fifty thousand to a million.
A: Yes, it must have been that. Sure, because we must have spent two
hundred thousand dollars on television.
Q: For the whole campaign?
A: No, for the primary.
Q: For the primary.
A: Yes, I would think so, yes. I can't remember but then I would guess
we'd spent that much.
Q: By the time the "Walk" ended how were you feeling about the campaign
and his chances? At that point I don't think you knew who he'd be
running against, did you? That was in October of 1971.
A: That's right. One night I had a dinner and I brought together five
people, the people whose political judgement I respected most of all. And
at dinner I said to them, "We have just one thing I want to discuss. Who
is our best and who is our worst opponent of the ones that are being
named as potential candidates?" There were six people there. Four of
them said Paul Simon would be the hardest to beat and two of us said Tom
Poran. I was one, another guy was the other, I think Tom Foran would
have beaten us in the primary.
q: Why?
A: The reason Daa Walker won the primary and the reason he won the
general is because he got a hold on the working class people. And om'

Foran would have wiped him out in that group. Nobody cared about Paul
Simon. Daley, he had one huge blind spot, which was downstate Illinois.
He didn't understand anything about downstate Illinois, The greatest
example, a later example other than Paul Simon, was when he believed that
he could make Clyde Choate Speaker of the House. He just believed that
Clyde Choate was the downstate leader and so that to him made sense. And
he believed that Paul Simon would have the support of everybody
downstate, 'cause he was a downstater . . , big mistake.
Q: Who were those six people that you . . .
A: I won't tell you. (laughs)
Q: You won't tell me. Okay, I'll forget that question. (laughter)
Just thought I'd try. Okay, from the time the "Walk" was over the end of
October of 1971 until the primary in March of 1972 . . .
A: Yes, March 21st, yes.
Q: . . . what were you doing? You and Dan Walker?
A: Well, Dan Walker was campaigning in the various kinds of campaigns.
I was running the campaign but concentrating on organization and getting
volunteer precinct workers. Dan was developing these fantastic
techniques, the bowling alley technique, which was unbelievable how that
worked.
July 8, 1981, Tape 2, Side 1
A: Where were we?
Q: What you were saying was the bowling alley technique, and I want to
hear you describe that.
A: Well, the bowling alley technique only works if you are popular with
the kinds of people who go bowling all the time. When our number one
advance man told me--he came up with the idea of trying bowling alleys-
when he told me the response and how excited everybody was that he [Dan]
was there, and wanted to talk to him, and it was really wonderful and he
said it was phenomenal; we decided to turn it into an organized
campaigning technique. There are so many bowling alleys and so many
people every night it really became a fantastic way of reaching people.
And reaching them when they didn't mind being reached.
Now sporting events in general are bad. I don't believe in having a
candidate or an official go to, say, a ball game and be introduced. The
chances of his getting booed are probably ten to one that he's going to
' get booed, just because people have been drinking beer and they're mad
'about something and, you know, let him have it kind of like. But the
bowling alleys for some reason . . . everybody's having a good time and
it's kind of in small groups rather than large, so it worked very well.

I want to get back to the organizing thing because of one important, I
think, phenomenon. In the beginning of the campaign I asked a friend of
mine who was a sociologist to dig up for me everything he could find on
voting habits of the suburbanites. And he was at Columbia at the time
and I remember we met in New York and he gave me some articles and he
said, "There's one thing I can tell you. People who move from the city
to the suburbs do not change their parties." I said, "What!" He said,
"They do not change their party unless they change their class. If they
change their social class, they may change their party." Well, when I
started realizing the implications of that, the organizing strategy
started developing for the campaign. We organized those suburbs
fantastically. I mean we just had volunteers everywhere.
One of the funny things is, a Democrat from Chicago moves out to Lake
County or moves out to southern Cook County; now he's always had a
precinct captain who's come around, knocked on the door, and he'd vote.
He moves out there, he stops voting or he votes only when he's really
excited. So people say, "Oh well, as soon as they leave Chicago, they're
no more Democrats." They're still Democrats, they just don't vote.
In DuPage County just before the election, Bill Redmond, whom I love, and
I were talking about that and he was for Paul Simon and I said to him,
'I Bill, how many votes are we going to have in the Democratic primary?"
And he said, "Oh, I would guess the usual. Around ten thousand." I
said, "Bill, you're wrong .I1 He said, "No, I think around ten thousand."
Well, he was right. He got out his ten thousand and we got out thirty
thousand other ones. And he was astonished. "Where did you find all
those people?" So, he said, "Oh, they're all Republicans." Baloney.
They weren't Republicans, they're Democrats. They're still out there.
And you look and you see what happens when Alan Dixon ran or Stevenson
ran in DuPage County. They pour out like crazy to vote for them. But
they're not going to vote for . . . well, Redmond is a good Irish
Catholic and he and I would fight about the Catholic control, Irish
Catholic control, of the Democratic party. I believe it should be
Italian. (laughter) But the candidates they run . . . they run Irish
Catholic candidates in DuPage County. Well, that's not going to, you
know, those candidates aren't going to win. So that's what I was doing.
Working on organizing, fundraising wherever I could. Cajoling, pleading,
doing whatever I could.
Q: The last months of the campaign--February, March--how were you
feeling about it? Did you believe you were going to win?
A: We did a poll in January that showed Simon winning. But his
weaknesses were so apparent in that poll that we knew we could win. And
the last month of the campaign nobody knows nothin'. You just are going
on adrenalin and instinct and, you know, you say what you have to say to
people. People say, "HOW does it look?" You want to throttle people
because everybody says that, Well, they're so nervous and they think
you're on the inside and you know everything that's going on, you know,
and so you say, "Oh, it looks great,'' and "He's going to win,'' just
'cause that's the best thing to say to keep people's morale up. But you
really don't know. You can do sophisticated polling at the end and get a
pretty good idea, but if it's close there's no idea.

Q: Walker has said, and I believe that this is what he said, that if the
election had been one day earlier he would not have won.
A: Was he talking about the primary or the general?
Q: The primary. I think it was because of the media problems. The TV
money came so late. How do you feel about that? It was that close?
A: It was close at the end, there's no question about it, but all
elections, or most elections, are. I mean, Ogilvie had us beat a week
before election, I mean, he had us beat. But they made some bad mistakes
which we were ready for, We figured that Ogilvie was going to use the
"Walker Report" at the end and we were ready with a counter-commercial,
so Ogilvie came on and attacked Walker on the "walker Report."
Q: Tell me about election day, the primary day and night.
A: My most vivid memory is, every phone in the office we had a volunteer
on. We had been doing sampling of the suburban areas. This is
incredible. We did sampling in Cicero, sampling in Berwyn. These are
areas that you would normally think would never be for Dan Walker or
. . . particularly Democratic. Well, we found that the people there were
so strong for Dan Walker that that next day we just took phone books and
we called everybody. We didn't ask them, "Are you for Dan Walker?" you
know, or "Are you for Paul Simon?" We just said, "Get out and vote,
please get out and vote, please get out and vote," and we called
everybody we could in Berwyn and Cicero and those western and
southwestern suburbs. hat's my most vivid memory of that day.
My second memory is watching Paul Simon on television as he got on the
plane to come to Chicago, and looking at him and realizing that he knew
he lost, and yet I couldn't figure out how he knew. How did he know? He
hadn't heard any of the election returns but there was just, you know
. . . somebody obviously had told him that there were problems, but he
knew.
Q: It's interesting that you knew, that you recognized that.
July 10, 1981, Tape 3, Side 1
Q: The other day you mentioned the ads at the end of the campaign; oh
no, you mentioned the ads right before the general election in response
to ogilvie1s bringing out the "walker Report." Could you tell me about
those?
A: Well, we had decided that if Ogilvie felt he was in trouble at the
end of the campaign, he would go on the attack. Now normally an
incumbent governor doesn' t attack a challenger. Historically that's
true, because it just gives the challenger another opportunity, more
publicity. But Ogilvie felt, I'm sure based on the polling that he was
doing and we were doing, that [he needed to attack.] Walker had had a
tremendous lead after the primary. That Lead had gotten eaten away of
course, so that by a few weeks before the election Ogilvie had caught up
with Dan and was even ahead of him. But then he started dropping back

and he went on the air with these "Walker Report" commercials. In my own
judgement they weren't very good commercials. They were Ogilvie himself,
just by himself, I think he was sitting on a stool. He is not the most
charismatic person on television and he hammered away at Walker being the
author of the infamous "Walker Report" that talked about police riots and
blamed everything on the police.
Now we had, as I said, determined that that was going to be the assault
at the end if there was an assault, so we had our answering commercials
which we'd called the "Sixty Day Trial Law" commercial, in which Dan
Walker talks about a proposal to try everybody in sixty days. Now we had
tested that idea in a poll and it was a most staggering response I've
ever seen in a poll. I don't know, I think maybe seven hundred people we
did statewide in a scientific sampling, and out of all of those only one
person was against it. And that was a University of Illinois professor.
(laughs) What we hadn't realized when we were talking about the idea was
that it cut both ways. That is, conservatives looked at the proposal and
said, "Yes, let's get them off the streets and into jail in sixty days,"
and liberals looked at the proposal and said, "Well that means innocent
people won1 t languish in jail for more than sixty days." So, as I said,
we hadn't realized that that was what we had, but it was obvious that it
was an extremely popular proposal and so we used that as the answer to
Ogilvie' s "Walker Report" charges.
Q: Can you remember some of the other advertising? It is so expensive.
How do you decide what to say when there's so much money riding on it and
the election perhaps riding on it?
A: That's what's always astonished me about some politicians I've worked
with. Not Dan Walker. Here you spend a million dollars, say, on a media
budget, and they scream and holler about spending a hundred thousand
dollars on research to decide what you should spend that million dollars
on. I guess politicians, and lawyers are a lot like that too--there are
many lawyer politicians, so maybe that's it--they trust their own
instincts so much that they'd rather go that way. The polls are also
scary to politicians because a politician out campaigning rarely gets a
bad response. When he's walking on the street or anything, people don't
go out of their way to insult them. People in general have got good
manners, but a poll shows in black and white how people really feel about
him, and sometimes a candidate really is afraid to learn that.
Q: Can you tell me about some of the other ads, specifically what you
learned from the polls that you should do in the other ads?
A: Well, as I kind of indicated yesterday or day before yesterday, the
"walk1' as a symbol was terribly important so there were pictures of Dan
on the "Walk" in every commercial we did. The other commercials were--
it's hard for me to remember. (laughs) Generalized commercials. One
thing I remember is, because of Dan's phenomenal background we did a
long, relatively speaking, long commercial on his background, what he had
done . . .
Q: His childhood or his past career?

A: His whole life, yes. But I really can't recall specifics.
Q:
If you had it to do again would you hire David Garth to do the media?
A: Yes. Why do you ask that question? (laughs)
Q: I'm just curious because so many politicians . . .
A: He just handled Begin's* campaign.
Q: Oh, he did?
A: Yes. (laughter) He's now an international campaign man.
Q: Well, as you said, you know, lawyers and politicians like to trust
their own instincts about politics and they don't want to trust some
Madison Avenue guy to do it for them, and yet you all decided that you
wanted that specialized expertise.
A: Yes, Dave Green and 1 had hown Dave Garth since 1960. He worked
with us on that draft Stevenson thing at the 1960 Convention. You're too
young to remember that convention.
Q: No, I'm not. (laughter)
A: But, I don't know if you remember--the big thing was how did so many
Stevenson supporters get into the convention? The whole place was packed
with Stevenson supporters, and there were all kinds of theories in the
media. There was a tremendous demonstration for Stevenson when he was
nominated by Gene McCarthy. And here the mechanism of the convention was
controlled by Kennedy. So, they finally came up with the theory that
Stevenson people would go in and then collect from the Stevenson people
their tickets and one guy would go out [and give it to someone else]
. . . much simpler than that. I was in the trailer outside, the
intelligence trailer with the hookups to the delegates, and at one point
I turned around and there was some guy undressing. A guard, right? And
he was with Dave Garth and what had happened was that Dave Garth, I guess
the word would be hired, a guard and his uniform. And he put it on a
Stevenson volunteer who then went back to the gate where this guard was
and opened the doors to all the Stevenson people and they just poured in
by the thousands. It was really funny. But Garth is a very imaginative
Q: Resourceful.
A: . . . resourceful guy.
Q: Okay, tell me about the primary win. What was that night like? You
didn't know whether you were going to win or not. I assume you went into
it thinking you were.
*Israel's prime minister, Menachem Begin.

A: Well, thinking it was very close. As I said before, in the last
weeks, there's no way, in a close race, there's no way of knowing. Even
if you're polling, because then turnout becomes important. For example,
T know that in 1976 all our polls showed that Walker was ahead of Howlett
and if everybody had voted, Walker would have beaten Howlett. But the
fact of the matter is, if you look at what happened in the election in
Chicago, the machine ground out their voters and elsewhere the Walker
voters stayed home, and so you never can tell. Now, we didn't know until
very late that evening that we had won for sure. I remember at one point
he went on television and threatened . . . he had called Jim Thompson and
he called everybody because we were worried about some of the wards not
coming in with their ballots, and we were worried that they were holding
back to see what was going to happen, whether or not they needed
more. . . .
Q: And Thompson at that time was U.S. attorney?
A: U.S. attorney, yes.
Q: Can you remember the moment when you finally knew that he had won the
primary?
A: Well, I have a very simple rule on that. When Dave Green tells me
that somebody has won then I believe it and if it's at six-thirty in the
evening or if it's six-thirty in the following morning, I believe him.
And when he tells me we've lost then I believe we've lost. I don't
remember when it was that Dave told me but it was . . . I guess it was
late that evening.
Q: And then what did you do? I can't believe you went home and went to
bed.
A: No, of course there were a lot of people down in the hotel ballroom,
and Dan went down there and made a victory speech. Then we went up and
had a meeting. And the meeting was to decide what should be done the
next day. And everybody expected him to have a press conference the next
day and we didn't want to do it, so instead he left that night for a
vacation and did not have a press conference.
Q:
Why didn't he want to have a press conference?
A: Well, there was one serious political problem. One . . . there were
many, (laughs) and they all revolved around what should our relationship
be with the Daley administration? But there was also another question
which was . . . Hanrahan had been nominated and what should be our
position toward Hanrahan? And in general we've always taken the position
that . . . for example, Dan said he was against slatemaking. Not against
the process of endorsement but against: the process that that was the
legal determination of the candidates. Our view, and it's the legal
view, is that the voters determine it in the primary. So now you're
faced by a candidate you find unacceptable, who's been nominated by the
people, running on your ticket. What do you do? That was a very serious
problem. We wanted time to think through what we should be doing on
those things, so we all flew off, and then we met down in Florida and
discussed the problem.

Q: What did you decide to do about Daley and Hanrahan?
A: Well, we decided to try to work with Daley, but Hanrahan we decided
we could not support. Well, we did not support him.
Q: Did Walker ever say that publicly . . .
A: Yes, yes.
Q: . . . that he couldn't support Hanrahan? What was his feeling at
that point about Hartigan? Did he think he could work with him?
A: Yes, and I thought so too. I had misjudged how important Neil
thought being ward committeeman was. And when you looked at the ticket
and there were just . . . there was Hartigan who was a ward committeeman,
there was Lyons who was a ward committeeman, let's see who else was on
the ticket then? Two or three ward committeemen, at least that, Chicago
ward committeemen, and we felt that really wasn't the best way of
presenting the Democratic party candidates to downstate people. So Dan
called and asked to talk to them and asked them to resign or if they
wouldn't resign, say they would resign if they were elected. But they
refused.
Q:
A: Yes.
They thought that just didn't make any sense at all.
Q: Why do you think Dan Walker won that primary?
A: Be worked very hard, very hard. We were all on target in terms of,
11 where was the population?" They were looking for somebody who was
fresh. And they identified with him and they believed he identified with
their problems. And we organized like hell. We really did, everywhere
we could. Particularly in the suburbs.
Q: But you don't think that the crossover voting or the eighteen-year-
olds voting had much to do with it?
A: No. As I said the other day those victories were more psychological
for our troops. Gave us the feeling that we were winning, moving ahead.
But you know the pattern of eighteen-year-old voters and how they vote.
So, not many vote in the general elections and then you take the
percentage that vote in primaries it's even more ridiculous, so. . . .
And I don't think many Republicans crossed over to vote for Dan.
Q:
If Daley had taken him more seriously would he have won?
A: I think that's kind of a myth that Daley didn't take him seriously.
The regular organization did its usual job in Chicago. What defeated
Simon wasn't that we carried Chicago, which we didn't, but that we rolled
up this tremendous amount of votes in the suburban ring and downstate
where he was supposed to have power. Daley couldn't have squeezed more
votes out of it. Daley certainly took Hanrahan seriously and Hanrahan
beat him. I mean he really took that man seriously; that was a direct
challenge to him on his own home turf, Cook County.

Q: What about the summer, then, in preparation for the general election?
A: That summer?
Q: Was it more of the same or can you think of highlights, things you
did differently then because it was a different race?
A: Well, it was a different race. Number one, we were running against a
much more skillful and ruthless campaigner . . . and experienced, who had
a bottomless campaign fund. You know, that's one of the funny things. I
never understood why Ogilvie has never been asked or pressed on that
money, 'cause he has said publicly that once when he was thinking of
running--I guess maybe for the Senate, was that?--and his name was being
talked about, and he said, well, he had a campaign fund if he wanted to
run. Well, if he has the campaign fund under the law, it should be made
public. I mean, he should file. Nobody ever picked that up, nobody ever
asked him.
For some reason Ogilvie--and I've got to say most Republicans--seemed to
lead a charmed life with the media. And Bill Scott, it wasn't until Bill
Scott was really down, I mean on the mat, before newspapers started
raising any questions about him. I know a reporter for the sun-~imes who
did the original story on that fifty thousand dollars in the safe-deposit
box; left the Sun-Times because he wanted to continue that story and they
said no, So he quit and went with the Washington Star and he's now with
the New York Times. And Thompson, I mean it's incredible what Thompson
gets away with; it's just staggering. It's never his fault, it's
always. . . . If a third level bureaucrat made a mistake, the head on
the story would say, "Walker Aide Caught in, . . ." you know, but with
Thompson, the guy's named and he's not even identified as an appointee of
Thompson or anything like that. Amazing.
Q: Well, I want to get into that at some point because obviously
Walker's press image is not the best.
A: I think that's . . .
Q: He was really pretty well taken care of in the press., I mean . . .
A: Yes, they murdered him.
Q: Right. But I'd like to get to his election.
A: Okay,
Q: Tell me about the debates between Ogilvie and Walker.
A: Well, we developed some pretty sophisticated political polling
techniques. There's an amusing story. This is a pollster in Chicago, an
irascible guy, and we were talking to him. Dave Green and I were meeting
with him to discuss hiring him for the campaign to do the polling--this
is the primary, He said to us that he had seen Walker on televisiofi and
Walker was a born loser, that he didn't see any sense in spending any
money, that the guy was just terrible. Dan came in then because he
wanted to be in on the discussion and this pollster said to him, "As far
as I'm concerned you're a loser." I thought we were going to, you know,

everybody was going to have a fight. But when things calmed down, Dan
said that he had just come from a taping of the "Kup Showt1 and that he
and Simon had appeared on the "Kup Show" together. As you probably know,
Simon refused to debate Walker throughout the primary and we developed
that technique of debating the tape recorder. So, this pollster said,
"Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll do a before and after poll on
. .
the "Kup Showt1 and I'll do it for nothing just to show you you're a bad
candidate.'' So, we did a before and after poll. Now on a before and
after poll what you do is you call up . . . do you know?
Q: Tell me.
A: Okay. You call up a random series of people in the area and you ask
them if they're planning to listen or watch the "Kup Show," and if they
would be willing to. And if they agree then you take some demographic
information from them, and say that you'll call them back after the
program to ask them questions about what went on. You don't say what's
going on. You don't say anything. So, when you get "X" number of people
who say they will--many of them don't--you call them back. Many of them
haven'l: watched so you just discard those. Those that have, you ask a
series of questions.
Well, Walker wiped Simon out. Just wiped him out on the show. We were
stunned. I watched the show myself. Dan is so smart and so quick that
it's almost impossible for me to conceive of anybody being able to best
him in a debate. So before he went on that Simon thing we had said to
him, "Cool it, cool it. Television is a very cold medium, be very
gentle." Well, when I watched him I said to myself, "This is awful. I
mean, he looks like he's effeminate, he's being so cool." Well, then
when we got the poll results and it showed that he had just slaughtered
Simon, number one, we hew that we should try and get them together at
all costs and that debate should become an important campaign device.
But we also knew that there was a great chance here to win. We knew it
was there if we could only get Dan's image across to the population. We
did that once more during the general election. This was with Ogilvie
and it was the television debate down in St. Louis.
Q: Excuse me just a minute. Now did Simon know that you had done this?
He didn't hear about this so that that didn't color his refusal?
A: No.
Q: Okay.
A: I thi .nk he might have been afraid and I don't blame him. 1 would be
afraid to go up against Dan Walker in a debate. (laughter) The debate
with Ogilvie was in St. Louis and we did the same thing, that is, polled
before and after. And this time, before Dan went in we said, "Get him.
Go, just show how bad the guy really is and how bad his administration
is." So, he really tore into him and it was beautiful, and we were so
happy and we loved it. We were, you know, patting ourselves on the back
about what a great candidate and what a great governor, and then we saw
the poll and it showed that Ogilvie had wiped out Walker. (laughter)
That Walker had been so good that he had reversed the people. They
started feeling sorry for Ogilvie. It was really an eye-opener for us on
debating,

I think the critical debate was the last one on television up here, and
Dan was magnificent. Jack Touhy called me after the debate and he said
"I've never seen anything like it." He said, "The guy's great and he
just wiped out Ogilvie on that [debate.]" So the debates were important.
The debate before the media people - - downstate at the Press Association was
important because it showed them that Dan Walker was not some dummy or
some corporate executive that knew nothing about government and politics,
but was, in fact, a very bright and capable guy. So they all were
important. In the meantime we were doing what you do all the time in a
campaign: we were trying to generate as much free publicity as possible,
organizing wherever we could.
Q: Was there a point at which, during that general election campaign,
you sensed the press turning against him or away from him?
A: Towards the end of the campaign, there was a debate before the IVI,
Independent Voters of Illinois, and Jim Hoge [of] the Sun-Times was
there, and Dan came out in the debate against forced busing and I believe
for capital punishment. That was a change in his position. I believe
that was the one, I'm not sure. Anyway . . .
Q: I think it was.
A: . . . Hoge was stricken. He went to the phone and called in--and now
here's the editor--the story and they made it the front page story.
"Walker Booed by Liberals Comes Out Against Forced Busing." Well, when I
saw that headline, I thought, "super!" 'Cause that's where the people
were, But the Sun-Times felt just the opposite, obviously. They thought
it was a very harmful headline.
I think the media changed right after Dan was elected because they didn't
believe he could be elected. And they didn't believe he could win the
primary, but they also believed that Ogilvie could beat him in the
general and that really, I think, more than anything else, made Walker
intolerable to them. No?
Q: I don't understand why he was intolerable. Was it because they were
proven wrong?
A: No. He owed nothing to any of them. He owed nothing to the
establishment. He was, in that sense, a true independent. The media
don't like that, Just like Jane Byrne. One of the reasons they hate
Jane Byme so much is because she doesn't care about the establishment,
so there's no hold, I mean, Ogilvie was a creature of the establishment.
A newspaper knew that they could talk to him; if they had problems they
could reach him through business contacts, and Dan they couldn't. There
was just no way to get a hand on him and that they didn't like. The
change was startling. I couldn't believe it; I couldn't understand it,
but they really started jamming away.
Q: Election night was anybody going around saying, "I can't believe it"?
Or did you all believe that he had a very good chance of winning and when
he did it was no great surprise?

A: Again, it's not romantic. Election night a few of us sit in a small
room and get reports and use those reports to try and figure out what's
going on or check what's happening. I do remember one thing that was
funny that night. The first report we got in was from a precinct in the
Eleventh Ward--we had sample precincts around the state and we sent
people, assigned them that precinct, to go and get the count and call in
the count for governor, that's it; because Dave then had it worked out so
he would how what was happening. The first one that came in was the
Eleventh Ward. The margin was terrific. It was a typical Eleventh Ward
margin. I don't remember what it was but the total vote was half of what
it should be. When Dave saw that he went crazy, I mean he just, he said,
"They've sold us out, we're down, there's no way . . . if that is a
typical precinct, they're just going to kill us."
Q: Because the turnout wasn't good or because it was stolen?
A: Well because it was . . . well, let's say the vote was six hundred
for Walker to fifty for Ogilvie okay? In that precinct it should have
been, say twelve hundred to one hundred. Well, that six hundred votes,
and that multiplied by all the other precincts meant, if true, that the
downstate vote which had to go more strongly for Ogilvie, would overcome
the Chicago lead. It happened that I knew the people who were the
volunteers, so I tracked it down. Well, it turned out that they had--it
was panic, I'm telling you, it was panic in that room--turned out that
they had only gotten the count on one machine. (laughs) There were two
voting machines and they had gotten the count on one. (laughter) So, it
was a great relief, but that was really ten minutes of pure, pure panic
and depression.
Q:
At what point did Dave Green tell you that Dan had won?
A: I really can't remember. It was fairly early in the evening. Nine
o'clock, somewhere around there.
Q: And you had no doubt about it?
A: If Dave says it, it's true.
Q: But didn't Dave think you were going to win in 19761
A: No.
Q: He didn't? Not going into the primary he didn't?
A: No, remember what I said about Dave is when Dave tells me we've won,
we've won and when he tells me we've lost, we've lost. When it comes to
predicting an election then he and I are peers.
Q: What was Dan's reaction to the win?
A: Well, he didn't say, "yippee!" (laughs) He was happy . . .
Q: Well, what does Dan Walker say when he becomes governor of the state
of Illinois?

A: 1 think he probably said, "Thank you1' to us in a very formal way. I
would imagine that's what he did. I don't really remember. And then we
went down and, again, the victory speech, and then up again to plan the
press conference for the next day. This time, obviously, we had to have
a press conference.
Q: At that point what was your position vis-a-vis Daley?
A: Cordial. Dan called him that evening and there was no hostility.
Daley had helped a great deal financially; to my knowledge, more than
he'd ever helped any candidate. Daley wanted Dan Walker to win. I don't
think he wanted him to lose 'cause he wouldn't have come up with that
money if he had. It's very easy to say no.
Tape 3, Side 2
Q:
How do you remember that time between the election and the Inaugural?
A: Well, let me touch on one other thing first. Before you go into a
press conference you have a briefing session. What are the tough
questions that are coming up and what are you going to say and, you know,
working out . . . every politician and public office holder does this.
Two questions that we did not discuss came up and they became the
headline story the next day. It said, I think it was the Daily News,
"Walker Says Crosstown Dead--Asks Hartigan To Resign As C~rnmitteeman.~'
And Hartigan was there with him and said, "No .I1 From the very beginning
there was that pattern established.
That Crosstown thing was amazing, incredibly important, and had an
astonishing impact, and I'm sure, an impact in ways we'll never know on
people, the business community. And of course it was a lousy idea. I
mean the whole idea of the Crosstown was a lousy idea. But Daley never
gave up on that. Never gave up on it.
An amusing story--in 1976 Dan had lost the primary and there was some
speculation, was he going to support Howlett? . . . And he announced he
was going to support Howlett. Well, Daley had a press conference in
Chicago and he praised Dan and he said, "Oh, he' d make a great senator
and he's a great man, a great, great Democrat, l' went on and you know,
baloney. Okay. That day Dan was campaigning in Indiana and he gets an
emergency call from Daley, Now he's in Indiana. He's campaigning; I
think the guy was running for governor of Indiana. And you know one of
the funny things about Illinois, the governor of Illinois is very well-
known in a strip along the border of Indiana because of television. And
the same thing is true in Iowa and Missouri. So he can be very useful in
a campaign. So, he was campaigning . . . emergency call from Daley.
So he called Daley and Daley said, "~ust wanted to tell you that I held
this press conference and I said what a great Democrat you were and that
I thought you'd make a great United States senator." And Dan was
flabbergasted and said, "Well I appreciate that Mr. Mayor. Thank you
very much," you know. Then Daley said, "Now Gov, how about the
Crosstown?" (laughs) This is four years later and he's still in there
trying to get it.

One of the things, by the way, during the campaign--this was the
Watergate era. Now, we caught a spy in our office and her boyfriend
taught at some college out in DuPage. He was a former CIA guy.
Q: Wait a minute. In which office? Campaign office?
A: Campaign office. It wae during the Ogilvie/Walker campaign. But we
caught her duplicating stuff to take out. Stuff that was none of her
business. And there was also a guy who was killed in an automobile
accident in Illlnois who worked for [Donald H.] Segretti, and when he was
killed he was driving an automobile that belonged to one of Ogilvie's
assistants. We'll never know what they did in that campaign. We know
some of the things they'd do. We'd have a meeting scheduled somewhere
and somebody would call the people and say he was from Walker
headquarters and Walker would not be able to make it and so the meeting
was canceled. So then we'd arrive and there'd be no meeting, that kind
of stuff. There were a lot of dirty tricks going on and the Nixon people
were all over the country assisting their Republican candidates.
You asked about the period between that [the general election] and
inauguration. Well, the hardest thing of course was trying to work on
the cabinet and the top appointees. And a few of us went off and spent a
week or so talking about it. Then I had a heart attack in December, so
during that period until I came back, which was the end of January--for
example, I was not at the inauguration--I was at home. I was out of the
hospital but I was at home.
But the putting tagether of people to try and make up the cabinet was
extremely difficult, trying to balance rewarding your people -who have
worked hard for you and supported you, with whether or not they could do
a job in government. And you know, we made mistakes. Not anywhere near
the mistakes that people think we made--not people--that media and
politicians say we made, 'cause in general I think that his cabinet had
better people in it than any governor in my memory, and that includes
Stevenson. People have a sort of foggy idea of Stevenson and they forget
that there was a great insurance scandal and the great horsemeat scandal,
and he had people in his cabinet that we would neker touch in a million
years.
Q: Well, give me an example of a mistake.
A: You mean somebody?
Q: Well, I mean obviously Angelos was never actually submitted, but that
was a mistake.
A: Mistake.
Q: Was Fogel the first director of the Department of Corrections?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you think of that as a mistake?

A: Oh no, I think Fogel was a very, very smart guy. I'll never forget
. . . to me, the most chilling and most pressure cooking things that
occur is when there is a riot or a disturbance in a prison. And that
happened a couple of times, and I'll never forget that first time. We
were down at the mansion, we stayed all night at the mansion, and trying
to work it out . . . one of those wonderful bureaucratic stories, right?
We're sitting there, the top people in the administration. We decide,
this is what should be done. The governor gets on the phone, talks to
the person in charge of the prison and says, "1 want you to go. I want
you to talk to them. I want you to say this to them. Okay, you got it
straight? Let's go over it. Do it. Okay." And then we wait. You can
imagine the incredible pressure. Maybe they killed them. We don't hear
anything, we don't hear anybody.
Q: They're hostages taken, that kind of thing?
A: Yes. We don't hear anything. Finally we call again, The guy is on
the phone. "Well, we've been discussing whether or not we should do
that." (laughter) Right? I mean here's the governor telling . . .
(laughs) but so, Dan in his most sweet and convincing tones told him to
"Get the hell out there and do it." He did it and it worked. Now, Fogel
was in the meeting with us and he said, "The most important thing to do
fight now as the prisoners go back to their cells is to take that small
group that were the ones who were the ringleaders and parade them through
all the cell blocks so that all the prisoners can see they haven' t been
beaten." Now that's the kind of thing only somebody who understands what
guards are like, and what prisoners are like, can do. You know, that was
a brilliant kind of thing, So, Fogel to me was not a mistake.
Q: Who do you think turned out to be the very best appointments? Who
jumps into your mind as really good?
A: Langhorne Bond was . . .
Q: Why was he . . .
A: Well, he was an extremely good recruiter of talent. After all, he
recruited [John D.] Kramer and you know (laughs) Thompson kept Kramer on
as his secretary of Transportation. Be was a blend of very high grade
ideas and ideology about transportation, but on the other hand understood
that there are politics involved in a road program and a transit program
and would listen. He didn't always give in but he wouldn't automatically
oppose you. Some people just automatically oppose you. If you said
political then they said no.
It's strange. When we were down in Florida talking about putting the
cabinet together, there was a guy who had been the top assistant to the
Democratic governor of Ohio, Gilligan, and he had been helpful to us in
our campaign in advice, and we asked him to come down to Florida and meet
with us and talk to us. So he did. And one of the things he said was,
"You'll be surprised. You'll take your toughest political organizer and
you'll put him in as, say, assistant director of Conservation, and he's
the guy who would do anything to get a vote. So you put him there
because he's reliable and trustworthy. Then he makes a speech somewhere
to a group of conservationists. All of a sudden he's got a constituency.

So you ask him to do something political and he says, "I'm sorry I can't
do it." He [Gilligan] says, "You won't believe that will happen but it
will happen." Well it happened. (laughs) I mean, with a vengeance.
We appointed Tony Dean--who was our top political organizer and a guy who
would, during the campaign, you know, just do what needed to be done--we
appointed him director of Conservation. At one point . . . you know, in
a legislative session, legislators would come and would ask for things.
The Republican leader in the house had never asked me for anything. And
one day he called me up and said he wanted to talk to me. And he came in
and he said, "Two of my precinct committeemen last night voted against me
for county chairman." He said, "I'd like them fired and they work in the
Department of Conservation." So I thought to myself, "Okay, here's the
Republican county chairman, he's the Republican leader in the house and
these are two Republican committeemen who are not in civil service. Fire
them." I said, "It's done. It's done. Couldn't be better." So, I
called up Tony and I asked Tony to came in and I'd lay it all out for
him. I'm so happy. And he says, "They're two of my best people, Vic, I
can't do it." And he wouldn't. And the Republican leader would call me
every day and say, "What about those two guys? I told them they were
going to get fired." And I said, "1'm sorry, I'm trying." It was really
a terribly embarrassing thing for me. A marvelous example of all the
kinds of things that can happen to a guy when he [takes] a job. His
whole approach changes.
Q: There was a time when directors were much more closely allied with
governors. Any disagreements were aired in private, and the cablner and
the governor showed a united front to the world. Somewhere along the way
that has evolved in a different direction. Directors obviously are
feeling much more independent. Was that one of the big problems that
Walker ran into in trying to manage the state of Illinois?
A: No, I don't think that was such a problem. There is a famous
incident [involving] Bob Gibson who is now head of the AFL-CIO. Gibson
was appointed chairman of the Capitol Development Board. And in the
course of the number one, the first legislative battle, between Walker
and Daley, Gibson went on the floor and campaigned for Daley's side and
against Walker's side. Now that kind of behavior is unacceptable; there
is just no way you can have a head of an agency who is going to be
working against you. So, he was fired and there was a great fuss about
that.
Q: What was the battle do you remember?
A: Yes, it was House Bill #89 the famous . . . money for the CTA.
Q: Right, okay. Everybody remembers number #89. Why is that? Because
it was the first . . .
A: Oh yes, it was the first battle. Well, they had many, many sides to
it. You don't veto a bill that's that critical and go into a fight like
that if you think you're going to lose. We had been assured by Henry
Byde that he and his group would support us because he had had the fight
with Bob Blair for Speaker and had lost, and so he had a rump group of
Republicans who were his people and they would vote with him. And Henry

Hyde said, "I'm with you on this." We had the votes, we counted them.
We had the votes to prevent an override. Unfortunately however, when it
came to the vote, for the override, Henry not only voted but made a
speech supporting the override of the veto and the veto was overridden.
Now Jerry Shea later told me that not only did he make Henry chbnge his
vote, but that he had gestured to Henry to make sure that Henry had to
stand up on the floor and make that speech. That to Jerry was sort of
the cream on the cake.
Q: That CTA.bil1 was where Walker wanted Chicago to put in more money,
is that what it was?
A: Yes, well, there were various versions. Whether it should be a loan,
whether it should be outright grant; and Daley had come down, and he and
Pikarsky and Dan and I had lunch at the mansion and Daley had talked
about how important the bill was etc, etc. Daley, I think, believed he
was going to get it. And was shocked when Walker vetoed it.
Q:
That wasn't when Daley came down and spoke.
A: No, that was the education . . .
Q: Right.
A: . . , that was some years later. Doug Kane was at that time head of
our legislative team. And he was the one who counted the votes and said.
they were there, that got the override beaten. And it should have been;
he just counted. If you looked at it, downstate would be against it and
you needed three-fifths to override a veto, so it appeared a doable
thing.
Q: How did you see Walker's relationship with cabinet members, with
agency directors?
A: (long pause) Dan believed that the chief executive should run
government. And he believed in what in business is called hands-on
management, in which the top executive has his hands on everybody and
knows what's going on. From observing other governors, they never liked
to get involved that much in government and they let the departments just
run by themselves. Thompson is a. classic example of that. But Walker
got heavily involved in every budget and would meet with the director and
go over the budget, with programs, with problems; and directors, I'd say,
were probably ambivalent about that. They'd much prefer to be let alone
to do their own thing rather than have somebody. . . .
You how, it's a funny thing. A friend of mine still calls me "director"
because when I was head of Economic Development under Kerner, he came
down to Springfield to see me and I walked into a hotel and they said,
"Oh, director, there's a phone call for you." And he was astonished,
right? And when you become a director and all the fawning that ,starts
taking place within the staff, all the restaurants, the hotels, everybody
treats you . . . you know, you have a car or somebody drives you around,
you how, that kind of thing is bad for a person's ego. That is, it
inflates it.

As you know, Dan brought in zero-based budgeting and they didn't like
that. And the staffs particularly didn't like that. They didn't like to
have to justify everything. It's a funny thing. In the beginning--I
think it's true of everybody, and it's true of the national as well--in
the beginning a director or a cabinet officer says, "Gee, this governor'
is really smart as hell to pick me. He understands," But as more and
more they start locking horns on things, then they forget that they were
picked and now they're there on their own merit. Which is true, but on
the other hand it's the governor who gets all the heat for what they do,
ultimately, and so he really has to have the final say. And they don't
like that, so that kind of relationship develops in every cabinet if a
governor or chief executive tries to do something.
I think that was one of Carter's problems too. Carter thought he could
run government and liked the idea. I think Rerner was an extremely
popular governor. Kerner never ran anything. I mean, he went around and
visited things and he made a lot of decisions, but he left the department
heads alone. He'd have cabinet meetings and he'd sit there at the table
and everybody'd say a little thing about what they were doing and he'd
smile and you know it was really wonderful. (laughs) He enjoyed it,
they enjoyed it and . . .
Q:
Did Walker have cabinet meetings?
A: Well, he had subcabinet meetings like the health cabinet, and then
when we'd have big cabinet meetings there was so many people that it was
difficult.
Q:
He didn't think that was a particularly effective tool?
A: Committee government, no; or cabinet government, no.
Q: When you came in at the end of January, came into the administration,
there was the big flap over your title, The press chose to leave out
...
A: Two words. (laughs)
Q: Two.
A: Right.
Q: And dubbed you deputy governor.
A: Or as [Thomas J.] Hanahan used to call me, Deputy Dictator.
(laughter)
Q:
Tell me about that and how it affected your role.
A: That title?
Q: Yes.
A: It made my job a lot easier. The way the title came about was, I was
still in the hospital and Dan was visiting me one day and said, "We ought

to figure out a title for you." And I said, "Yes, I've been thinking
about it." He asked'Jack--the name will come to me--Jack Foster to come
up with some titles, and they wrote me a note and there were four
different titles and I don't remember what they all were. One of them
was deputy to the governor, and so I decided that was the one I liked,
and when we talked he said, "Do you have any feelings about it?" I said,
"Well, I like deputy to the governor." He said, "I like that too." With
all the problems, my job was to get things done, handle problem areas.
The more the title implied authority and access to the governor, the more
easily my job was done. It meant also that I would have to take a lot of
heat and still do. As Barry Truman said . . .
I I
Q: What, "the buck stops here," or "the heat in the kitchen, . . .
A: That's right. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
And if you go into government, and you want to play an important role in
government, you've got to expect that the more important role you play
the more heat you're going to get. And that's just the way life works.
Q:
Did you ever consider not being a part of the administration?
A: Briefly. Two people I think, suggested it. Mike Bowlett and Jack
Touhy both said to me separately, "Don't go into government. Stay
outside and do the job that needs to be done but do it outside of
government." In some ways they were right. That is, my problems that
I've had over the years, grand juries and things like that, would not
have occurred if I were outside, might not have occurred. But on the
other hand, getting things done, I think there would have been a lot more
problems that Dan would have had to handle or somebody, if I had been
outside. I've said that never again will I do it. ltis a crushing job
that, you know, it's like the army. I'm glad I served in the army but
I'd never want to do it again. (laughs) And that's the way I feel about
government.
Q: In retrospect, was being in the administration the right decision do
you think?
A: I think probably I should have gotten out after, say, a year or so
when things had gotten into some kind of a routine, so we knew where the
problem areas were and stuff like that. I'm not so sure though, given
the media's hostility, that they wouldn't have been tracking me wherever
I was and, you know, trying to find out all my sources of income and
trying to then . . . if I had a client, does this client have a contract
with the state, that kind of business. So I'm not sure . . .
Q: How did the press deal with Dave Green? They knew he was a close
advisor to the governor.
A: He never appeared, or rarely.
Q:
But they didn't feel the need to hound him?
A: No, I guess they had somebody else to . , .

Q: They had you. (laughter)
A: Yes, right. I used to say, you know, it's the old story that if you
can't hit the organ grinder then whack the monkey. (laughter) And so,
that was my role.
Q: Speaking of your role, what specifically was your primary job?
A: Solve problems. Solve problems that weren't serious enough to
involve the governor, or were of a political nature, that he shouldn't
get involved in,
Q: Were you the one who was most closely involved with legislative
matters?
A: Yes. We had a team, a legislative team, and they met with me.
Q: Can you talk about some of the legislative items during that first
year that characterize the relationship between the Walker executive
administration and the legislative body?
A: Well, the big problem that first year was that Bob Blair was Speaker.
And he was totally unreliable. They were doing things like, subcommittee
chairmen would be issuing subpoenas and stuff like that, you know, which
were clearly illegal and which we would refuse to honor. And so there'd
be a big story when they were issued, big story when we refused, you
how. And that kind of confrontation.
Everybody says Walker is a confrontationist. Total nonsense. In the
first place, it takes two to confront and you can't confront if somebody
doesn't want to confront. There's always confrontation going on in
politics, but it's usually underground. You don't see it. There are
legislative battles going on all the time but rarely do they rise to the
surface, like RTA or aomething. But look at reapportionment. That's
raised it's ugly head just a few times. But can you imagine what's going
on? I mean that is the most important thing in the lives of these
legislators and this governor and these parties, and there are all kinds
of confrontations going on, that is, defining it as two people who are of
different views fighting it out. But when it rises to the public view
then it becomes a confrontation.
Our problem was confrontation with Daley. Daley had the horses. I mean
he had the numbers, and he could reach across all the time and pick up a
few more from the Republicans. The only way we could Eight Daley was to
make an underground fight public and hope that, using public pressure, we
could accomplish something and hold onto our troops. Legislators are--
not all legislators of course--but many legislators are notoriously
forgetful and there's a famous phrase in the legislature which is, "I
didn' t say, 'all day long. "I That's when he voted with you in committee
and then votes against you on the floor, right? You thought you had an
agreement with him but he only agreed to help you get the bill out of
committee. He didn't say he was going to vote for it on the floor. So,
the phrase is "All day, are you with me all day?'' (laughter) And so we
had to go public often, to make sure the constituents of some of our
downstate brethren could see what that guy was doing so that he wouldn't
slip away after he had agreed that he was going to help us.

Dan Walker is not a confrontationist. He's a strong-willed person, but I
venture to say he is probably less a confrontationist than Ogilvie. But
there was just no other way of handling it. It had to be. It had to
rise to the surface, otherwise we'd get smothered all the time.
A good example is what they would do to the budget. We put in a good
budget. It was tight but good. And the Daley guys with the Republicans
would just throw billions onto the budget; then we'd have to cut it and
then there'd be fights on it. Now there was a lot of money there. They
say that Walker was a big spender. Another pure baloney thing. When he
was faced by budgets which he cut--I mean budgets which he submitted
which were then inflated--which he cut and then was overridden, and then
all of a sudden they were his budgets. It was really a terrible
position, but the media never explained it.
Q: Can you give me an example of an important legislative battle for
Walker that first year?
A: His appointments being turned down. Unheard 05, unheard of, and it
particularly bothered me because in a meeting with all the cabinet
officers before the process started I said, "Now, it's all pro forma."
And I told them my own story of when I was confirmed by the senate which
was heavily Republican and how easy it had been, and a lot of joking. I
said, "It's really, you know, it's a lot of baloney but we've got to go
through it," right? And damn, they hit us. (laughter) And of course
they hit the women particularly.
July 10, 1981, Tape 4, Side 1
Q: You say the women were hardest hit. Mary Lee Leahy was one of those
who was not confirmed . . .
A: Nancy Phillipi and Beverly Adante, three of them.
Q: What happened?
A: I'm not sure. But there was no doubt the orders came to get them.
Q: Well, Mary Lee Leahy had been a part of the unseating of the Daley
delegation at the Democratic National Convention hadn't she?
A: Had she? I don't know.
Q: I think that that was part of the problem with her.
A: Nancy Phillipi had worked for Bill Singer, and Bev Adaate I don't
think had done anything "wrong1' in that Daley lexicon.
Q:
How do they differ from Joyce Lashof who was confirmed?
A: Well, they were more political, and I guess that was probably the
reason. But why the women? Tony Dean, since he had been a conscientious
objector, he would have been an easier target.

Q: What was your reaction to the difficulty in getting the cabinet
con£ irmed?
A: Well, I was astonished at first. To me it violated all the rules.
In hindsight I can see where Daley felt he should have been consulted
about appointments, side he was the most powerful Democratic leader In
the state, But on the other hand, we didn't want a cabinet made up of
Daley appointees, so it was bad when it happened. As a matter of fact,
it was bad for morale particularly among the political activist group,
the younger group, and in the administration. And I remember we had a
dinner then to talk about it and to talk about what we needed to do in
the future, because obviously when people see their leaders shot down
they feel that they may be next. That represented a substantial shift
for us. We went on a much more aggressive, hostile stance at that point.
Q: Did the governor take it personally? Did he feel that it was a
personal attack on him?
A: I think probably he did, although I don't recall him saying it, but
he certainly - felt that they had not played fair with him on discussing
it. Now that was one of the things throughout the administration. The
only Democratic leader except for Bill Redmond . . . well maybe a way to
modify that is, among the top leadership in the legislature, the only
one, other than Bill Redmond, who dealt squarely with the governor and
with me all the time, was Phil Rock. So many times we would be sitting
at breakfast and Dan would say to Senator Partee, who was the leader in
the senate, "Are we going to have any trouble with this bill in the
committee?" And Partee would say, "No, Governor, it's going to go
through and no problem," and then Partee would vote against it in
committee that day. So, you sort of had a feeling that you couldn't rely
on what was said at these meetings but on the other hand you had to go
through the charade of meeting and trying to get information from them.
Partee was particularly good and he was a master of language. I like
Cecil. And I remember one time, it was the Accelerated Building Program,
and Dan said to him at breakfast and we're all listening, "Well Cecil,
are you saying to me that our program is dead?" And Cecil said, "Well,
Governor, I would say it's not overly alive." (laughter) And he was
right because then they proceeded to kill it.
Q: Was the Accelerated Building Problem the first year?
A: Oh, no, no, no, no, that was in the last, in 1975, 1976.
Q: What was the big program the first year? Was it the penal reform?
There was one big Walker program that you fought long and hard for and
I'm trying to . . . penal reform was one that you really worked on and
the Accelerated Building Program.
A: That was later.
Q: When you think about that first year what was the big legislation, or
was it more the veto override?
A: Well, the veto override was the one that sort of smashed everything
to bits. Blair's behavior as Speaker made things very difficult.

I
I
40
Q: Did he and Walker try to meet one-to-one? Was that ever successful?
A: No. I remember one night I got a call from a Democrat, a friend of
mine in the legislature, and he said that Blair wanted Bill Murphy to
meet with me privately--Bill Murphy was then one of the Republican
leaders known as "Dingo" Bill Murphy, now retired--so we set up this
meeting, secret meeting. This was when Representative Collins, as head
of the subcommittee, had issued all these subpoenas, and Walker in turn
had suggested that maybe Blair should release his income tax and show
people what his income was. So this meeting anyway, which I didn't know
what it was about, turned on Murphy saying, as Blair's representative,
that if Walker would stop harping on his income tax he would see that
Collins stopped talking about the subpoenas. 1 said, "well, the
subpoenas are illegal anyway. We're not going to pay any attention to
them." I said, "~ut as far as I know, Dan isn't going to say anything
more about the [income tax]. He's said it, and that's it." Fine,
everybody leaves. The next evening Collins is up again with more
subpoenas (laughs), different subpoenas, and raring to go. And that was
really the way Blair operated. Very difficult guy to talk to. ~lthough
I guess he's changed samewhat, mellowed somewhat . . .
Q: You talked earlier about the Crosstown. Early on that became an
issue between Daley and Walker. Can you recount that controversy?
A: Well, it always was an issue. That is, Walker had been against the
Crosstown during the campaign. It was no new thing. Everybody outside
of the Daley group who looked at it knew it was absurd, that the money
could be better spent elsewhere, and we worked hard and got all the
arrangements done in Washington so that it could be used elsewhere, rapid
transit and so forth. Of course the highway contractors up here, who
were very important, were against any shifting of money to mass transit.
They wanted it in roads. And I think a lot of businessmen were led to
believe that Dan just didn't want the money at all, rather than he wanted
it used for what he considered more productive purposes. But the
Crosstown became symbolic; in fights it always reared its head. It's
hard to remember, but back then Daley had proposed the lakefront stadium.
Walker had opposed that and Daley didn't get it. Daley had proposed the
airport in the lake. Walker had opposed that, and Daley didn't get that.
And the other big thing he had was the Crosstown. You know, I think he
had a vision of that being his highway, the Daley Expressway. And the
idea that a Democratic governor wouldn't give him what he wanted above
allwas. . . .
Q: Was Walker's support to the RTA in response to Daley's desire for the
Crosstown? Was that how he felt the money should be spent?
A: No.
Q: That was totally separate.
A: Yes.
Q: In light of the RTA problems right now, tell me about Walker's
support for the RTA then.

A: Well, it's still a good idea and it was a good beginning. Now the
thing that really has made the RTA a problem again was the Crosstown.
That stupid Crosstown deal, where, in the shuffle, that part of the state
income tax that was to go 'to the RTA was knocked out. Now that's the key
to it. The key to it is to get state subsidy into the RTA to make it
survive. And so the ridiculous thing is that here 18 Chicago and the
metropolitan area, the only mass transit district that doesn't have a
state subsidy. That's insane, right? So that's the real problem. But,
you know, once it was knocked out, then trying to get it back on again is
impossible, We got it on originally as part of the total packet. It
wasn't a perfect solution but it was a damn good beginning to solving the
problem of mass metropolitan transportation. So if the question is, was
it a good idea, the answer I would give is, yes; it had to be done.
Q: Was there a sense of real leadership in the General Assembly during
that four-year period of time? Did you know where to go and what the
chain of command was?
A: Yes. You dealt with the downstaters on an individual basis and you
dealt with Chicago guys on whoever was the Chicago leader. Whether it
was Jerry Shea or Madigan or . . .
Q:
What was your relationship with Jerry Shea?
A: Oh, cordially hostile.
Q: Could you trust him?
A: To do what? (laughs)
Q:
Well, I mean if he said he'd do something, would he do it?
A: In dealing with somebody as smart as Jerry and as skillful as Jerry,
you had to make sure you listened very carefully to what he said.
Legislators are very good at language and you'd really have to be
careful. I always knew when we were losing a battle; it's when Jerry
would tell me we were winning. Then I would start worrying. But he was
very hard-working, very loyal to Daley and very skillful. Very abrasive,
but he got his job done, no question about it, what needed to be done.
Q: Who were the downstate legislators that you went to when you needed
support?
A: All of them. Some of them of course were impossible. They were tied
to Daley through other means, Madison County guys. But otherwise we
dealt with them directly.
Q: Who stands out when you think about that group of people? Who stands
out as either most effective or most helpful to you?
A: That would be hard to say because they each had different talents
that you use. That's too difficult a question.
Q: Can you describe an incident that exemplifies how the negotiating
worked between the Walker administration and a legislator on an important
bill?

A: Well, we had a legislative team, on the house and the senate, and we
would meet and the position on the bill would be described, and then they
would go off and talk to the legislators. If they had a problem that
they qouldn't solve then they'd come back to me, if they thought I could
help them solve it. But sometimes it would be a case where a legislator
might have a problem in his district with the mental health faclllty or
something like that; then the legislative guy would go to the Mental
. Bealrh Department and work with them, so I guess that's negotiation.
Q: Can you tell me about the penal reform program?
A: No.
Q: Okay. (laughs) How about the ethics legislation? I know that that
was important to Governor Walker always.
A: Yes. And of course then the legislature came up wlth this idea that
they would appoint . . . (laughs) It's incredible that they would come
up with such an obviously unconstitutional idea.
Q: That what, they would appoint the commission?
A: Yes, they would appoint the . . . Yes, ft's a funny thing. All of
these things, you look back two hundred years from now, they would seem
like waves of the balance of power as the legislature moves and tries to
take more authority, and the governor resists, and certainly in
Washington the same thing happens. When I was a kid I hated Congress and
I wanted a strong president and the stronger the better, and Roosevelt
should have been stronger and more powerful. Then Truman, and Congress
was always the worst thing. And then the shift occurred--the imperial
presidency. And then it will shift back again. I think shifts happen
quicker now because of television communication. It's just the same
thing over and over again. Different faces, different names.
And the legislature was trying to assert itself. They wanted control.
And in fact, there were three parties. There was the Daley party, there
was the other Democrats, Walker party, and there were the Republicans.
Most times we could not get any Daley Democrats over If they were against
us. And so we were always going over to the Republicans to try and get
them.
Q: What about the 1974 midterm election? How active was Walker in
campaigning for independent Democrats?
A: Oh, that was our thing. I took a leave of absence to run the
operation. It was funny; there was a meeting between Daley and Walker.
Now, I knew from the beginning that every time Daley looked at Walker he
saw the Church of England and the British suppression of the Irish, and
when Dan would look at Daley he would see the quintessential politician
who was only interested in political gain. I knew there was just no way
they could talk to each other. I tried to get another person in there as
someone who could communicate with both, but Daley wouldn't accept it.
Daley never would meet except alone with Walker. Somebody told me, I
think it was Jack Touhy, about the first time Daley met with Ogilvie, and
the way they'd do it is they'd set up a room in a hotel and would meet

there. Ogilvie came with Tom Drennan and Daley walked out; he wouldn't
meet .
After meeting with Daley on the midterm elections Dan called, I think it
was Dave and me, to discuss it, and there were two problems. One were
county offices which were up, and there had been some talk about Walker
supporting county office races, and then there were the legislative
offices. Now Dan remembers saying to Daley, "I'm going to stay out of
the county offices." Daley remembers Dan saying--he told other people--
"I'm going to stay out of all county races." So, when we came in and ran
people against Jerry Shea, for example, and other people who had been
poisonous to us in the legislature, Daley was offended and accused Dan of
double-crossing him. Now whether in fact that was an honest
misunderstanding, I don't know. But I do know it was always very
difficult for those two guys to understand each other. Although Dan is
probably--when he is listening--he is probably the best listener in the
world. He can remove himself, I mean, remove his personal involvement
and hear what is going on. So the midterm, yes, that was a very crucial
thing. We elected a Democratic house and Democratic senate, and
tremendous gains throughout the state in local offices. Tremendous
gains, which were destroyed in 1976.
Q: Could you feel a real difference those last two years, having a
Democratic house and senate?
A: Yes. We had more downstaters in office. You know, we had two from
the Champaign area, two from the Springfield area, twa from the Rockford
area, two from Peoria. They were people we had helped, and therefore
were supportive. Now one of the things we knew, we had tested this, was
that anybody who campaigned and said that [he] wanted to be elected--I
don't haw the exact wording--because [he] wanted to go to Springfield,
and work with Dan Walker to help his district, that those words were
magic words with voters. The guys who lost were guys who refused to use
that. Those who won were ones who used.those phrases, because the people
liked Walker, trusted him. But it was also important for the person to
say, "Help the district," not help Walker run the state, or help Dan
Walker in the abstract. "Work with him to help the districtt1 were magic
words.
It was a very good election. It shows what can be done if you . . . and
the Republicans know it and they spend now, and they organize. The
Democratic party's in such awful shape because there is no Democratic
party. A lot of Democrats, but there's no Democratic party.
Q: That was the year that Dan's son-in-law ran against . . .
A: Yes.
Q: . . . Clyde Choate,
A: Right. Against all our pleadings, and everything, not to do it.
Q: And the press picked up on that and said that that was the reason
that Walker was determined that Choate would not be the leader of the
house.

A: No, I'm not sure.
Q:
A: No.
You didn't want him to run?
Q: Why not?
A: There was no reason to . . . somebody could run against Choate, that
wasn't the problem. The problem was you make it a personal thing by
somebody in the family running. A legislator can overcome the feeling
that you tried to beat him. Okay, so now we'll come back together
because we have mutual interests, but when it's a family affair then that
family is always around there, and it's not good. And you've seen it in
Massachusetts with the McCormicks and the Kennedys, the same thing.
Bitter, bitter, bitter problems.
Q: Tell me about that Eight in the house for the leadership.
A: Speaker?
Q: Yes, for the Speaker. That was January of 1975.
A: Choate went to Daley and, as I think I mentioned before, Daley had a
very distorted view of downstate. And Choate went to Daley and convinced
him that he had downstate support, that he could do it. And so Daley
supported him. Now there was another example of why we had to go public.
Daley's got a lot of troops, and they spread out immediately and say,
"We've got it locked up; you'd better get on board," you know. So Walker
had to go public and say Choate is unacceptable as Speaker. So then
those wavering ones say, "Well, at least I've got the governor on my
side," number one; number two, "It's now becoming a battle of downstate
vs. Daley, and my constituency is not in Chicago," so it strengthens
their resolve. So the issue was joined.
Now, there were a number of candidates who were running. There was
[Gerald A.] Bradley, there was Redmond, there was [John S.] Matijevich,
and there was a guy who is now a judge, he was a state representative
from Champaign, I don' t remember his name. And Bill Redmond and I have
been friends a long time and I love him, and we're both gardeners and
he's just a super person, but I had the job to go to him--we were all
working with the various candidates--to go to Bill one Saturday and say
to him, "Bill, I think you should withdraw because you don' t have the
votes. You ought to support Jerry Bradley." Now he' s never, he' s never
forgotten that. He keeps bringing that up. That and Pat Quinn he keeps
bringing up to me all the time. "Now where did you ever find Pat Quinn?"
But what happened was that we held firm for ninety-two ballots or
whatever it was and that was really tough, That was really tough,
Our gravest problem was our friend, Ken Boyle, from Macoupin County. He
then became the state's attorney, but he was our first guy up, our first
vote for Redmond. So, if he'd ever waivered, then the rest of it
(laughs) would go down the drain. So we had to do everything to keep him
in line. I remember Dave Caravello was assigned to him, right? And we'd
be afraid to let him go home because his father used to be clerk of the

house and all the old timers were putting pressure on him to get his son
to go over to Choate. So Dave would take him out to dinner. Dave took
him to the mansion, let him sleep in ~incoln's bed. Everything to keep,
you know, to keep his vote steady, you know. He lived with him
practically for those ballots, for those days. Finally Daley decided
that it was hopeless with Choate . . . no more.
Now Howlett, I know, was the guy who made the suggestion of Redmond.
Howlett and Redmond go back a long time. Now to Daley, Redmond, an Irish
Catholic--sure he Lives in DuPage--but that's, you know, that's not too
bad. But he's a county chairman and he could work with him. Whereas the
other guys were impossible as far as he could see. So Daley switched to
Redmond and then a series of phone calls to Walker from Daley, because 1
think then he got afraid that Walker might not support Redmond. So he
would call and he'd say, "Gov, you were right and I was wrong. You were
right and I was wrong! I'm for Redmond and we got to go with Redmond and
we all got to stick together." It was a strange kind of thing. But it
showed what Daley would do. He didn' t care. He'd say anything that he
needed to say in order to accomplish his objective. And so that's how
the fight ended. Just mopping up the few. We didn't mop them all up;
Doug Kane held out. (laughs) Doug Kane is one of those great mysteries
to me. 1'11 never . . .
Q: Doug Kane held out for Choate?
A: For Choate.
Q: Oh, I didn't know that.
A: Oh, yes. Never switched. He was one of the eighteen or whatever
they were.
July 27, 1981, Tape 5, Side 1
Q: I'd like to go back just briefly to the very beginning of the
administration. You had run the campaign and Walker had really trusted
you to tell him what to do and where to be and all of those things, and
then he wins and suddenly it's up to him to tell everybody what to do,
and to be governor. Did your relationship change at that point? Could
you feel it?
A: No. Of course it changes somewhat, but I always considered myself a
staff person, even as campaign manager. 1'd take the view that the
candidate . . . you can tell him what you think he should do and argue
and fight with him and browbeat him and cajole him, but in the final
analysis he's the guy who really stands or falls, and therefore he's got
to make the final decision. Now Dan's and my relationship was such,
built over the years, that many decisions I could make knowing that they
would be the decisions he would make. This applied in the campaign and
it carried over into government. I think it was this columnist, Bob, he
was a national columnist. Two names in the column.

Q: Novak and . . .
A: That's right, Bob Novak. He once told us that the difference between
the Carter staff and Carter, and the Walker staff and Walker was that in
the Walker administration the staff called Dan "Governor" to the public
and in private when we talked with him we called him "Dan." And that the
opposite was true in the Carter administration . . . (laughs)
Q: Isn't that interesting!
A: Yes, which I thought was an indication of one of the most serious
problems of the Carter administration. But Dan as governor was very easy
to get along with. He was not difficult.
Some things happened. It was a Columbus Day parade and after the parade
Dan had to make a little TV shot, and I was waiting for him and he said,
"Can I give you a lift?" And I said, "Sure." So we walked over--this
was very early [in the administration]--we walked over to the state car
and he opened the door, and he got in the car, and he sat down right
where he got in. Which meant I had to walk around and go in the other
door. Now, that's kind of funny. Usually the first one who goes into a
car moves over and slides on the seat, and you get in. As I walked
around I thought, that's not a good sign, Because he said nothing, he
just sat there, shut the door and I walked around. And that's really not
a good sign and it shows that he's moving away from people, or he's
losing a feeling of relationship with people. But then a couple came
along with a child and he got out of the car and went over and talked to
them, and you could just see these people radiating happiness and talking
with him, and his very good style. He got back in the car again and I
forgot about it.
But I thought a lot about it, a long time, and finally I went to the
security detail people because it had occurred to me what might be going
on. I said, "Does Dan have to sit in a certain place in the car all the
time.'' And they said, "Yes." (laughs) "We always want to know where he
is so we say, 'As soon as you get in the car, sit down; that's where you
are so we'll always know where you're sitting. "' It's a case of how you
can start making castles in . . . looking for signs of changes in people.
There's no doubt that as you stay in government the way people treat you
. . . you get used to that kind of treatment and it has an effect on you.
Everybody. I'm sure it had an effect on me. But it had a minimal
effect, I would say, on Dan.
Q: Early on in the administration, he really took a pasting from the
press and it just continued over the four years. Could you see him with-
drawing at all as that became more and more evident?
A: No. The one thing about Dan . . . ever since I've known him, he
understands that you pay prices for things and that that was one of the
prices he had to pay. I think after he got out and found that that kind
of abuse from the media carried over and made it more difficult for him
to get clients, for example, as a lawyer . . . it was the first time he
really felt, you know, that it was unfair. He has said so many times
that he feels that it's an adversary position, the media and the elected

official, and it is. The one ingredient I would add is that, they are
also working people who have a job, and they sometimes do their job very
badly.
Q: He has also said, I believe, that he feels that he badly mishandled
the press situation. That he might have done it differently and better.
A: There would have been a difference in degree but not any difference
in kind, I don't think. There's just the hatred of the establishment
media for Dan which colored everybody's . . . Oh it's funny. Everybody
says that the editorial policy doesn't determine the newspaper, for
example, and that's pure baloney. A reporter today who would write a
slashing story on Thompson might get it printed but probably wouldn't, or
at least the editor would give them a hard time on checking this and
checking that. So a reporter who writes a series of stories attacking
Walker and they all make it with a by-line . . . he sees the message and
he knows what he has to do to produce a by-line and that, after all, is
what his goal is.
It's kind of funny. Adversary is probably the wrong word. There's
probably a much worse word. They're locked in this embrace in which
politicians look at the media as if they should be saints and find out
that they are terribly human, and just as bad as anybody else; and the
news media look at politicians as if they should be some kind of saints
and find out that they're terribly human and both of them are
disappointed and both of them talk about hypocrisy back and forth and,
you know, that's a favorite word on both sides,
Q: How does the governor, given the fact that he doesn't have a daily
newspaper in his shop to tell his side, how does he counter press when he
feels that his policies and his motivations are really being portrayed in
a way that he just believes is unfair?
A: Well, paid television is probably the best way. You see, I believe
very strongly that if Dan had not had a primary fight or had won the
primary fight he would have won the general election, 'cause he would
have been able to get out his story. The problem in the primary was
organization. We were up against an organization that was working as
hard as it could. So that using paid political advertisement, paid TV
commercials, was effective but not effective enough. And that was a very
serious, strategic error we made. We should have organized as we did in
1972.
(2: But you said the other day that you got into a situation where he
tried to pay and go to the people when there was a hue and cry over the
supposed cut in school funding, and he wasn't allowed to because it was
not close enough to an election to be political, and they wouldn't accept
it...
A: I didn't say that. You must have gotten that from somebody else,
Q: Oh, I'm sorry.

A: But that's okay, that's true. Now let me refine that though.
Q: Okay.
A: They did allow us to do it downstate. They did not allow us to do it
in Chicago. In our polling we found that people believed the truth
downstate, That is, those people who had been exposed to the truth
through the commercials believed them, knew it. Whereas in the
metropolitan area our polling showed they still believed the story about
the cuts and that stuff.
Q: Can you go to the people in Chicago with paid political
announcements? Is there a way to get around the rulings that they make?
A: No, you're at their mercy except during a campaign, and even during
a campaign you're at their mercy because they set the rules of how many
spots they'll allow and stuff like that. Even so, (pause) a governor who
has residual good feeling with people . . . people don't like to feel
that they'd been duped or fooled by somebody; that isn't part of human
nature. But if they've been beaten and beaten and beaten by the media
and so they have wavered, it doesn't take much to bring them back home
again. Especially when you have somebody like Dan who's a very
believable campaigner.
When Dan Walker is on the television tube he is eminently believable. I
had an experience--I don't know if I mentioned it to you--just recently
when he was on television and somebody, a young woman--very good
political sense, instincts . . . worked with politicians, ran some
downstate campaigns--saw Dan Walker for the first time on television and
was totally bowled over by him, totally, and is ready to go to work for
Dan Walker for governor or anything else he wants. Really it was
surprising. You forget about that, you how. I mean he really is good.
Q: When the people are his constituents as was the case with Walker, and
he felt that he needed to use the fly-around to get his message across
because it wasn't filtering down through the legislators, does that eat
up an incredible amount of his time that he should be spending elsewhere?
A: No, I don't think so. I happen to believe a good officeholder should
be campaigning all the time anyway, and I think that that's part of the
job of communication. There is one thing that we learned much too late.
I had a study made of what Dan Walker said at a press conference and what
the television stations then reported, And we found that in the
overwhelming percentage of cases they did not do our story, but did their
story, which was a story usually prompted by a hostile question from
their reporter and getting a response to it from Walker. And that was
the story rather than this good thing.
Now, we had gone for years believing that we were having all these
wonderful press conferences and announcing all these good things that
were going on. (laughs) As a matter of fact that wasn't what the people
were seeing, and when they did show our story, most of it was done with,
say, a picture of Walker and the voice over of the announcer, rather than
Dan himself doing the announcing. So that was an eye opener.

Q: Is that what makes you think that the paid political announcement is
the way to go?
A: In Chicago, Daley, for example, had built up this constituency for a
long, long time and he handled television very well and certainly not
like anybody else. And he always seemed to get through to people, but he
had had many, many years to build up this reservoir, So he could take a
lot of rapping. But on the other hand, Daley never got the concentrated
fire that Walker got, never. Partly because the establishment liked
Daley, and Daley, you know, from the very beginning, the first time he
was elected mayor, he made the jump to the business community and made
the relationship with the business community, which we never could.
Q: Why couldn't you?
A: It's a good question. (laughs) I guess part of it is that we all
believed that you could govern by governing. And Dan was the one who was
most infected by that theory, and we didn't spend enough time on that
kind of buttering-up of the establishment that should have been done.
Part of the problem in Illinois is, you have Springfield which is the
state capital and you have the mansion. The mansion is a very useful
tool but it's in Springfield and you've got the power up in the
metropolitan area, the business power. Oh, there's some in Rock Island,
Peoria, other centers, but basically Chicago. Well, it's very hard to
get them to come down to Springfield for a dinner or something likdthat
which means really a two day trip, so you can't use the mansion like you
do the White House.
And for a while I was working on an idea of trying to develop a situation
in Chicago where we would have, say, a host, somebody whose house we
could use, you know, sort of the "Mansion in Exile" to invite people to.
But that was just too difficult to put together. But something like that
needs to be done. There should be some kind of facility in Chicago for
the governor; that is, a place where he can entertain people and meet
with people and stuff like that, that is more than just an office.
Q: The other day I misquoted Walker when I said that he said that if the
primary had been a day earlier he would have lost. What he said was, if
the general election had been a day earlier he would have lost. Do you
believe it was that close at the last minute?
A: Oh, yes. The OgilvielWalker race?
Q: Yes.
A: Oh, yes. Very close. They obviously were doing a lot of polling.
Oh, what's the name of that guy who is the head of the Metropolitan
Planning Commission, I think now. Young man, wealthy family.
Q: In Springfield?
A: No, in Chicago. It's the Inland Steel . . . well, I'll think of his
name. After the election he told me that they knew that they had peaked
about three days before election, that they had lost it. They were just
at the top and missed it. But it was very close, yes.

Q: What was the effect on Walker and on all of you of winning such a
close one? What I'm getting at is . . . I'm thinking of Richard Nixon's
"mandate" from the people because of his landslide or his tremendous
victory. Walker didn't have that. HE knew that it could have gone
either way at the last minute. What kind of effect does that have on you
as a governor?
A: I don't think it really does. If you remember they said that about
Jack Kennedy when he won by such a small amount; he owes his election to
so many people. When you owe it to so many people you owe it to nobody.
If you do a poll after any election and ask people for whom they voted,
the overwhelming majority say they voted for the winner. (laughs) I
mean, even if it was, you know, 49.9 and 50.1, it will turn out to be
65/35 after the election. And what it really shows is that people after
an election, no matter how close, they move to the person who won. They
say, "Yes, he's our governor or he's our president ." So, I dont t think
you have to worry that because it's so thin a margin you have to be very
careful. I've never felt that.
Q: The other day you talked about some of the legislators individually.
Redmond, Blair, Phil Rock, Jerry Shea. Who are some of the others that
stand out in your mind as you worked with the legislature?
A: There's one I thought about afterwards, and he's a former senator
now, Don Moore, a really despicable man who was head of the legislative
Public Aid Commission and who hired Joel Edelman when we fired him, or he
resigned, or whatever. Something that really bothered me about Joel . . .
they also set up a private corporation, the two of them, to consult for
hospitals and nursing homes and things like that, which I always felt was
a conflict of interest. Don Moore , . . the other senators privately
called him "Flipper" because he went into the tank so many times for the
Daley machine. Whenever Daley needed a vote they always had "Flipper .I1
(laughter) You look at all the votes and then whenever there was a close
vote Don Moore was there for Daley.
Bill Harris, a Republican, he was a Republican leader. He was president
of the senate the first time and difficult to get along with, I thought.
In the second two years he was then'minority leader and he was very easy
to get along with. Bill and I became very friendly. I don't know what
it was but for some reason he had changed, maybe I'd changed, but he
became a very cooperative and very helpful person. Then he left the
legislature and now is head of the Department of Banks and Trusts for
Thompson.
Q: Can you think of an example of a time when Harris was cooperative,
when he was helpful to you in getting through legislation, or talking to
other people?
A: Well, it's very hard to describe the legislative process. So much of
it is procedural and so much is playacting, like all politics. The
animosity that Blair showed was pure animosity. And any obstructions
that he put in our way were put in our way to try and beat us. I think
Blair was thinking he might run for governor. Bill Harris . . . it
wasn't a case of you could get his vote, or anything like that; but if
you had a problem in timing, he would understand and not make a

confrontation. I don't think I ever got his vote on something that was
critical, one vote or something like that. He was just, he became a
person who believed in, "We've got a governor here; sure I'm against him
in a lot of things, but on the other hand, let's keep the process moving
and if they need help 1'11 help them. But on the other hand, I'm not
going to roll over and become a Democrat or a flipper."
Q: What about John Graham?
A: Well, he was an impossible man and he's dead so. . . . (pause) He
destroyed our choice for head of the prisons, and I never understood why.
There was something that I couldn't see. I mean, he was very vindictive.
But like some of the old guys in the U.S. Senate, they have the power far
beyond what is assumed to be their power, although there are less and
less of those in the Senate. When I first started working in Springfield
there were a number of real powerhouse senators. Ev Peters and Russ
Arrington, guys who really swung weight, and now there are less and less
of those. I don't know what it is.
Q:
But you don't think of them as vindictive?
A: No. The ones I just mentioned you mean? No. Although they could
be.
Q: But Graham was powerful in a way that was just plain difficult to
deal with.
A: And did not seem to me to have been any relation to reality. I
didn't understand why he was fighting so hard on that question. You
might not like a guy, you might not like a guy's position, but to make it
into a holy war . . . there's got to be some reasons there, and I
couldn't see them, never did.
Q: I guess what I'm getting at is an attempt to understand the position
of the legislators, because Walker was blamed by the press for the
confrontation, for the confrontations. I know that you and he believed
that . . .
A: It takes two to confront.
Q: . . . he was responding to sometimes outrageous behavior, and I'm not
going to have a chance to talk to the legislators, so I'm trying to get a
sense from you why they couldn't work with Walker. He had sort of a new
approach but he wasn't unwilling to listen. I guess I'm looking for a
key.
A: Well, (pause) part of the key certainly is Daley's concern about
Walker taking over the state, including Cook County, Contrary to
conventional wisdom, it is not necessarily true that it works better for
a Chicago Democratic mayor to have a Republican governor. Daley did very
well when Kerner was governor. It just was more dramatic under Ogilvie
because there the deals had to surface sooner or later. So that Daley
recognized in Walker not a compliant person like Kerner, but someone who
is going to assert his authority as governor everywhere. And Daley was
not about to let that happen. Mike Madigan, who is now the minority

leader in the house, when he was majority leader under Redmond as Speaker
a couple of years ago, and I was working for the Committee to Elect a
Democratic House, often he would say to me, "Oh, for the good old days,
Vic, when we were always fighting and scrapping, when Daley was alive";
things go too smoothly. And the orders to scrap came, I believe, more
from city hall than from the executive mansion.
Q: In your position with the Walker administration you must have been
the one to deal most closely with lobbyists and the staff that dealt wfth
lobbyists. What are some of those experiences? What do you remember?
A: Well, I didn't deal with lobbyists, many lobbyists, directly. The
way the governor's office staff operation worked, each assistant was
assigned a series of departments. And they worked with those department
heads and therefore with the lobbyists concerned with those agencies, and
problems would be handled, if they were serious enough, by Dan. If they
were less serious, by me. Dan m et regularly with his liaison people to
the agencies. That was an important way for him to know what was going
on. I rarely met with them as a group; if they had a problem they'd come
and talk to me, but Dan would meet with them on a regular basis and find
out Information from them, you know, of what's going on and what are the
problems. But I was really sort of in crisis problem-solving, not on a
long-term basis.
Q: In the very beginning or even during the campaign Governor Walker had
his problems with the Independent Voters of Illinois. Can you
characterize tHat relationship over the four years?
A: The IVI is a disgrace today. It really is. And I speak as a former
IVI1er. Back in the 1950's and 1960's It was a truly independent
organization that supported a candidate and then worked hard for the
candidate. It was centered primarily in the Fifth Ward in the South
Shore area and Ab Ukva was probably its focus. Now it's nothing but a
public relations group: a candidate's representative will go out and
spend a lot of money, for people that join the organization to go and
vote for that candidate at a meeting, and all of a sudden that candidate
is endorsed, and it has no relation to anything but that a guy knew that
if he went up to Uptown you could get a lot of people who would join the
IVI. It's really a disgrace. But the media still keep it going because
they pretend that it has power and impact, and I guess by pretending it,
it does in some ways.
Q: Was the IVI involved in that so-called "ghost payrollers"
investigation, or was that the Better Government Association?
A: Oh, Better Government Association. Yes, BGA. That!s such a nonsense
thing, that whole ghost payroller thing. In the first place, we
announced it, I mean we said, "liere's what we're doing." We issued a
press release and said, "we're taking this money from this agency and
staff," and all of a sudden it became a ghost payroller thing. Now it's a
practice in government that goes back, as far as I know In Illinois, at
least to Stevenson. Jim Clement, the guy I mentioned before, worked in
the governor's office but he was paid by the Department of Finance.
There's nothing wrong with it, but they came up with this great idea of
calling it the ghost payrolhrs, and, (laughs) you know, it would be

funny if it didn't have an effect on people. People believed that there
was some shenanigans going on.
Q: What about the Better Government Association? What was your
relationship to them? How did they relate to you?
A: Oh, awful. That guy Brenner, Terry Brenner, he had a particular
dislike for Dan Walker and me. I don't know why and I know a lot of
people who worked for him, reporters from a number of papers who've
worked for him, who dislike him intensely. For all the things that he
said were going on--and some of them were--in the Walker administration,
I would wager there are five times as many under Thompson. Because for
one thing, Thompson isn't running the show, and if the governor Is not
running the show then everybody underneath at the third level is free to
go their merry way. Once they're free to go their merry way, you've got
problems. But the BGA under Walker had a big Springfield office and
operation, and they were always grinding out stuff to justify themselves.
Under Thompson, they don't.
As you probably know, they got into national difficulty with--was it
Channel 7 they were working with--a story in Uptown on arson, and Channel
2 did a blistering attack on them. That whole area gives me great
problems. When you have amateurs--and that's all they are--and
newspapermen who are also amateurs, pretending to be . . . well like,
pretending to run a bar in the famous Mirage incident, or when they work
in hospitals and take records out, I start getting very nervous with that
kind of action. I just don't think they should be allowed to break the
law.
Tape 5, Side 2
Q: Was the BGA during the Walker Administration ever a positive force?
Could you see that?
A: No, I don't think of it.
Q: What about the Taxpayers' Federation of Illinois?
A: I don't think I . . .
Q: With Maurice Scott.
A: . . . I never dealt with him. They were always known as a solid
group, heavily skewed toward business but . . .
Q: How about the League of Women Voters?
A: (long pause)
Q: Should I note "silence"? (laughs)
A: Yes, silence, right. (laughs) (pause) I think they're really
pretty ineffective.

Q: (laughs) You wouldn't go so far as to refer to their support as the
"kiss of death"?
A: Oh, no. Oh no, oh no. I think that's another organization that has
a reputation, and again the media produces it. I had a friend who was a
reporter from a Chicago newspaper. And he used to make money going
around the state speaking to League of Women Voter groups. And I asked
him how come he was so successful, you know, in getting fees to go there
and talk. He said, "It's very easy. I just go there and insult them and
tell them how terrible they are, and (laughter) they love it."
Q: What about the relationship of the Walker administration to labor?
A: Well, again that was a mixed bag. Now Bob Gibson, whom we appointed
as head of the Capitol Development Board and then he was fired, was then
an important figure in state AFL-CTO. He was the number two man. You
know [he] is now head of the AFL-CIO. So obviously after he was fired he
did everything he could, in that position, to hurt the Walker
administration. Daley and the Chicago unions, the same way. Now we had
a good relationship, strangely enough, with the Teamsters and downstate
unions, especially the craft unions. And for a long time we had a very
gaod relationship with the Auto Workers until the final primary, as a
matter of Eact. Up until that time the Auto Workers and Walker were very
close . . . leadership I'm talking about.
One of the interesting things, is if you look at the primary figures,
although the leadership of the Auto Workers was supporting Howlett,
wherever there was a large Auto Worker plant Walker won overwhelmingly.
As far as the Auto Workers themselves were concerned they were for
Walker. But even, for example, when Dan proposed the Accelerated
Building Program (pause), Daley opposed it and his captive labor people
then were really caught in a terrible bind because it was the kind of
program that Labor should be knocking itself out for, but they subverted
it. Which was a shame; it was a good program.
0: There were a lot of stories in the papers over those years about the
Walker administration's courting the construction business. I remember
somebody saying that a Dan Walker fundraiser looked like a convention of
people associated with construction, highway particularly. How do you
respond to that?
A: I think that probably overstates the case. The Eact is, there are--
were and are--people in the construction industry who always contribute,
and they contribute to Thompson, or Howlett or Walker or whoever. Since
Walker was the first governor under the Financial Disclosure Act, the
media had a field day, because now for the first time they could see
everything that was contributed. I was told very reliably that the
construction industry gave Ogilvie a million dollars in his campaign. I
believe that. I believe the person who told me. But that never showed
up anywhere because in that campaign there was no disclosure.
T see nothing wrong with somebody who does business with the state or the
city or any entity contributing to a political campaign. As a matter of
fact, I see wrong in preventing them. I think, for example, a law that
prevents liquor interests from contributing is wrong, I think they ought

to be free to contribute to campaigns. You see, when you move it over
one step and you move it from money to ideology . . . a pro-abortion group
sees a legislator and they go and talk to him and they say to him, "Now
where do you stand on the abortion issue?'' And he stands where they
stand. Fine, he gets a contribution. Now that's really the same kind of
thing as a highway contractor going to a governor or mayor and saying,
"How do you stand on a road program?" And they say, "Well, we believe
that there should be more building, more roads, etc." So fine, there's a
contribution. To me, just because one is a quote, "ideological''
principle . . . I could argue that it's even worse [because] abortion is
a moral issue and therefore it's even more heinous to give somebody money
to do something that a great part of the population thinks is terribly
immoral. So, I can't buy the media approach to campaign funding, it just
doesn't make sense to me.
Q: Well, the difference in two examples that: you gave is there's no
monetary gain by the pro-abortion people in that, and there may be
hundreds of thousands of dollars gained by the construction people who
support a candidate or an officeholder.
A: But I chose abortion because it has the moral. . . an anti-abortion
person looking at that transaction for a big chunk of money, that person
thinks that that legislator is really immoral for accepting that kind of
money from thoae people. Same is true of the ERA. There are many people
in Illinois who feel that way, very strongly feel that way. Why should
it matter--because somebody would gain income? Now if there's
crookedness, I agree. If you say, "Well now if you come up with a
contribution then we're going to have a big road program," well, then I
agree that's illegal. Shouldn't be allowed.
Q: I guess in order for it to be crooked I would think you'd have to be
more specific and say, "You come up with a big contribution, I'll see to
it that your company is favorably considered when we start passing out
the. . . .
A: Yes, that would probably have to be the case rather than the road
program. Although, you know, it may be that in some industries there's
so much talking among themselves as to who gets the contract that there
may not in fact be this open (chuckles) competitive bidding that
everybody talks about.
Q: Well, it is a perennial problem and nobody has solved It yet. The
people who have money to support a candidate for office are often those
people who are in a position to get contracts from the state, and I guess
that's always going to be, except that especially during the Walker
administration the press made it look as if Walker was selling favors.
Is there any way to avoid looking that way?
A: No. Unless you only take money from your enemies.
Q: Who won't give you . . . (laughs)
A: hat's right. (laughs) s hat's what always strikes me as strange. I
once heard Paul Simon talk to a group about contributions, and he said he
would get home late at night from campaigning, dead tired and there would

e twenty phone messages, and he could only really return three of them.
The ones for sure he returned would be ones from a large contributor.
Now you can take a position that that's really horrible. What a terrible
thing. I mean, there might be somebody in that list who really has a
serious problem, but as long as you need money to run campaigns, and you
always will, then you're going to respond first to those people who
support you .
Now, there's another group. That's a group called "workers." By Cod, if
there are two people and you only have time for one of them, and one is a
worker who has helped elect you, I think, you know you'd be a damn fool
if you didn't spend your time with that person. But the media makes it
appear that the only way you can do it is by taking the person who didn't
help you; then you can show you're pure. I can't buy that. (laughs)
Q: During the Walker administration, the fuel shortage became a real
problem and state cars were supposed to reduce their speed to fifty
m.p.h., and people were turning down thermostats. How do you remember
that crisis as affecting the way Walker did things?
A: You know, that's funny, the only thing I remember is people who owned
the Wrigley Building saying that they would turn out their lights only if
the governor asked them to. And my getting so damn mad, thinking,
"That's really great that they're putting it right on us." You know,
they can't make the decision themselves. (laughs) People who got mad
because the lights in the Wrigley Building are off blamed Walker. That's
the only thing I remember.
Q: Was there pressure on him to fly less or anything like that?
A: No.
Q: Also one of the facts of life that he was dealing with was a
nationwide recession. We didn't have the 1950's economy and he was
obviously battling that the entire four years, and the mind-set was there
not to raise taxes, so he had to find all kinds of other ways to look at
it. How did that fact of the recession, aside from the very general
things that we've talked about, how did that affect his administration?
A: Well, mainly in the budget area. And, as you know, the problem with
budget is that we would submit a very tight budget to the legislature,
which, contrary to its usual practice under former governors, would then
increase it tremendously. You know, the game used to be in the old days,
a governor would submit a big budget, the legislature would cut it, so
everybody would feel good. The governor would get what he wanted, the
legislature could go back home and say, "Well, we cut the budget," it was
one of the wonderful things, but then the rules changed.
Walker submitted tight budgets that didn't have fat to be cut out, And
then the Daley forces, primarily, proceeded to bloat the budget,
increasing it tremendously, and then Dan would have to veto, and then the
Daley forces would try to put coalitions together to override the vetoes.
There has been a lot of talk, as I think I mentioned before . . . that
people called Walker "the big spender governor," and it's really not
true. The legislature was the big spender, But since it's diffuse, you
really can't do anything about it; politically it becomes very difficult.

Q: In June of 1973 there was what was referred to in the press as a
dramatic appearance by the governor before the House Democratic Caucus.
Do you remember that or do you remember another time when he went to them
and . . .
A: I think he went a couple of times.
Q: What was that like?
A: I was never in there. We weren't allowed. The only people in there
were Democratic members of the legislature and he. Reports were that it
was always very well done, but I never was there.
Q: Who were the Crazy Eight? The independent Democrats. I've only seen
one place where they were referred to as the Crazy Eight. Was that . . .
A: Some of them were elected in that 1974 election. There was Bill
Morris who's now mayor of Waukegan, Jerry Joyce from Kankakee, I think
Dawn Netsch was part of the Crazy Eight, yes, and Terry Bruce. Well,
there were eight sort of independents, quote "independents," and I think
it was Bill Morris who gave them the name Crazy Eight. And they acted as
a group and were influential because they stuck together.
Q: But would you call them Walkerites?
A: No, 40.
Q: Just independent.
A: But since Walker's focus politically was independent of the Daley
machine, and these were independent of the Daley machine, we found
ourselves working together on many things. And Walker's view of
government was to tip the balance more towards downstate than it had
been, and they responded. It's very hard for anybody to understand the
downstate Democratic party at the height of the Daley regime. They were
at best dispirited, at worst flunkies for Daley, and I see some signs of
that recurring and it occurs particularly when the number of Democrats
shrinks downstate; therefore, the Chicago weight becomes so much more
powerful. It's ironic that Pat Quinn is going to bring about one of the
worst, I think, Democratic parties elected that we've had in a long time.
That reduction of the legislature that Pat Quinn sponsored and got passed
is going to result in fewer downstate Democrats, fewer independent
Democrats up here in Chicago, and therefore the relative weight of the
Chicago machine is going to be much heavier. So what will happen is
those guys who get elected downstate will be people like McClain, who
will become nothing but extensions of the Daley machine, as he is now.
He will be reelected, I'm sure. But some of the more independent
downstaters will be in trouble.
Q: Edgar Crane says in his book that in relinquishing what he calls the
"tools of accommodation," Walker had to use the formal powers of the
governor to the hilt, and of course this included the veto; he was the
first governor to have a full term under the new constitution and the new
veto provisions. How would you respond to Crane's assessment?

A: What book is that?
Q: Oh, it's a new reader in Illinois government.*
A: I mer have seen it.
Q: I'm trying to think what he calls it. Political Process and
something.
A: Accommodation is like confrontation.
Q: Except it sounds softer.
A: (laughs) Yes. Just as it takes two to confront, it takes two to
accommodate. And if somebody isn't willing to accommodate then you can't
accommodate with them or you can't accommodate them. So we again come
back to this false picture, I think, of Walker insisting on his own way
all the time. It's just not true. It's not true in my experience ever
with him [that he] has been that kind of a person. But as I explained
before, when you're beset by superior,forces they can do things without
any fuss, and in order to fight them you have to go public because your
only base is the public.
Thompson--this session, I believe, if somebody did a study--1'11 bet you
has more bad bills on his desk than he's had since he's been governor.
And he's going to veto them. ~e's going to have to. Money bills, other
kinds of bills, special interest group bills, and that's because the
legislature's really mad at him. And they just slipped it in. Just
passed them. No big fuss, just passed them and sent them on. They know
what they're doing and he's going to have to take the heat. So there's
going to be a lot more trouble than he's gotten. I'm sure that's one of
the reasons he's so cranky these days. (laughs)
Well, it got so bad in the house that his legislative liaisons from the
departments were not allowed on the floor. At no time was the
relationship with Walker in the house that bad, even under Blair. But
nobody's saying anything about it; nobody's saying it's confrontation.
(laughs)
Q: That's interesting.
A: But, gee, they confronted him.
Q: Walker wanted to open up state politics and he wanted to strengthen
the downstate Democrats. Were there times when--and I guess 1'm getting
back to confrontation--but were there times when he had to stand firm on
a position in order to accomplish that greater goal? Had the balance of
power been different, he might have been more likely to compromise.
A: Well, that's an easy question to say yes to, but I would then be
hard-pressed to find some specific example of that. It's funny, a
*Illinois Political Processes and Governmental Reform by Edgar Crane.

governor exerts power and they say he's power-mad, and if he doesn't then
he lacks leadership. It' s kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you
don't" situation. But there's no question that he was trying to effect
reform in the Democratic party and he believed in it strongly. Daley was
an easy man to get along with. All you had to do was prostrate yourself
in front of him and let him walk over you and you were accommodating him,
and not confronting him. That's all he asked of you.
Q: Do you feel that Walker was able to accomplish that, those basic
general goals that he set out to accomplish, or do those things get sort
of lost in the daily . . .
A: No, it' s hard to say. The Democratic party downstate is in very bad
shape and in great part due to the 1976 primary. And it's gotten worse.
The question is, somebody has to draw the circle, and politicians, local
politicians downstate, are not great long-range political analysts. They
remember they lost and they lost and they lost, but they don't go back
and look at when they won and then in the long term what has happened.
Somebody in the campaign or a political leader has to make that thing
clear. Somehow political leadership downstate has to realize what kinds
of things occurred, what pattern they fit in, and what they should do in
the future in order to reverse what's been going on.
Now if what is coming up in this next year is going to be two slates, one
headed by Stevenson and the other headed by somebody endorsed by the
regulars, I think we're going to find that it's going to get worse
downstate rather than better. And it's not going to be a useful fight,
Because substituting Daley's son as the Cook County leader is not going
to change the picture. Downstate has to build its strength downstate,
but there is no leader to put them together. Walker was doing that but
there's no one doing it now. It's unfortunate.
Q: Did Walker ever seriously consider running as an independent after he
lost in the primary in 19761
A: No.
Q: Would that be partly because he believed in the Democratic party and
wanted to work within it to strengthen it from within?
A: Yes. And, that kind of spoiler role is not something that Dan wauld
ever get himself into. He has too much respect for himself to take that
role on.
Q: Walker came along at a time when political parties nationwide were
finding it harder and harder to hang onto "yellow dog" supporters, How
did that enhance his chances or hamper him in prevailing as an
independent?
A: The hardest thing is to decide what an independent is. In most polls
those people who identify themselves as independents are the worst in
terms of their involvement in the process. I tend to look at voters as
those who are strong Democrats, weak Democrats, weak Republicans, strong
Republicans; and that there aren't any groups that are truly independent
in any sense of the word. I feel that the Independent Voters of Illinois

originally were really weak Democrats. Very few Republicans in that
group.
The trick in a campaign is to go hunting where the ducks are, you know.
Aud the ducks in the Democratic party are Democrats, strong and weak.
And you reach out to bring those weak ones in. Now Reagan did that in
the Republican party. What people say they are often mirrors what they
think is a nice thing to be. So it's nicer now to be a Republican, so
more people say they're Republican. That doesn't make them Republicans.
More people are saying they're Republican now because weak Democrats are
saying they're Republican, They aren't Republican. They can be pulled
back to the Democratic party if they ever believe a Democrat is going to
articulate their concerns (long pause).
Q: With Daley gone, do you see more hope in opening up the Democratic
party? Walker didn't want to leave the Democratic party. He wanted the
Democrats to be independent of the power over them from Chicago.
A: Right,
Q: Well, now Daley's gone and it would seem that there's a greater
possibility of that happening, and yet you just mentioned that you don't
see leadership coming out of southern Illinois, the Democratic party in
southern Illinois. What do you see in the future for Democrats?
A: Well, unless somebody runs and is elected governor who understands
downstate and will work to strengthen the local Democratic party, I'm
really very pessimistic about the downstate Democratic party. And again
going back to the legislature, the house is really going to be awful. I
just, I think that's, it's just . . . Pat Quinn should (laughs) . . .
Q: Should what? (laughs)
A: Should be ashamed of himself. And I'm not sure what this next
election will bring. Certainly Stevenson never would be able to do it.
He finds it hard to be articulate about anything and absolutely does not
understand political power, so downstate would not, if Stevenson were
governor, downstate would not be helped at all. And the way you help the
downstate Democratic party is, you help elect county treasurers, county
boards, county auditors, that's how you strengthen the Democratic party.
You don't enunciate great principles, you give them help and you work
with them. And that's how, sooner or later then, you get better
candidates because you find that when the party is winning elections,
better candidates come out. But just like in suburban areas now,
Democratic candidates as a whole are pretty mediocre because they feel
they have no chance of winning, so good people who are Democrats don't
think about getting into politics.
Q: You say Stevenson couldn't do that now. Do you think Walker could do
it now?
A: If he were elected?
Q: Yes.

A: Sure, sure.
Q: By just continuing the process that he . . .
A: Yes, yes.
Q: I guess I'm wondering if we're not simply moving away from political
parties as we've known them in the past.
A: Oh, I guess we always are and always have. You know, when Jefferson
was appointed secretary of state the first job he gave out, a patronage
job, was to a friend of his who published a newspaper that supported
Jefferson and continued to support Jefferson while he was working for the
state department. He kept publishing this little newspaper for
Jefferson. So you know, the more things change the more they remain the
same.
Now there are wave-like movements that go on, but I don't see the two-
party system disintegrating. I believe it really is that continuum of
strong Democrat, to strong Republican. There are some shifts that
continually go on in the middle there, back and forth, and people may
describe it and the newspapers may characterize it as a burgeoning
independent movement. It I s not; it 's just people calling themselves
something different. It's like, you know, you ask somebody on the
southwest side of Chicago or the northwest side of Chicago, pockets of
racism, and you ask them if they're racist. No, they're not racist.
They may have all the characteristics of a racist but they aren't racist
because it's not nice to be a racist. For a long time it was not nice to
be called a conservative, and if you did a poll and you asked people to
put themselves on a spectrum they did not like to be called a
conservative. Now it's a nice thing to be called a conservative. So
more people say they're conservative. It will change again.
July 27, 1981, Tape 6, Side 1
Q: Edgar Crane also says in his book that Walker's directness was alien
to a political system which is so indirect, and that's one reason it was
difficult for him to work with those politicians who had been around
forever working within the system.
A: Does he mean directness in speech?
Q: I think, yes, his very straightforward way of wanting to get things
done, I guess, as a corporate executive would get things done. And Crane
believes that the political process doesn't work that way.
A: Neither does the corporate process. Only academicians think that the
chief executive of business can tell people what to do and they do it.
(laughs) I mean, that's somebody who's never been in business.
Q: Well, we want that kind of security somewhere. (laughter)

A: Yes, but unfortunately we're dealing with people. I've gone through
a number of administrations and I saw the way Kerner, for example, worked
with the legislature. I remember when the gray wolves of the senate had
Keraer by the throat and made him do something he didn't want to do, I
mean really didn't want to do, knew it was going to hurt him personally,
and they just did it. People tend to forget some of the things that went
on in the past . . . when there was a Budgetary Commission that had mare
power than the governor. Kerner certainly was a person who came up
through politics and was very skilled at talking around things and gentle
and indirect in those terms. But the legislature when its got its back
up murdered him. They massacred his budget. They did all kinds of
things that hurt him.
So part of the thing is, we have this agitated media that is always
making media events. It's hard for anybody who hasn't sat down there [to
understand what it is to] feel like you're a creature, not of what is
really going on, but of what the media is saying is going on, because the
media is provoking everything from the U.S. attorney investigations,
grand jury investigations in the county and all kinds of things, or
reporters are coming in and demanding information, or department heads
are getting worried because they think that they're going ta get fired.
The media's influence and the media's belief that politics is the most
important thing in the world, has, I think, done more to make that
happen.
Look at what's going on with Reagan now. They've been waiting, and now
they've got one in the CIA. And this guy Casey they're going to put
through the wringer. And that's part of their operation. It's not a
conspiracy but I find it . . . God knows, you could never accuse Reagan
of being too direct or anything. But so, I think that's a fact of life:
that incumbents catch hell and, with the one exception of Thompson, most
incumbents are in trouble all over. Look at Carey, for example; terrible
trouble in New York. And the other exception is Koch, mayor of New York.
Those two are inexplicable.
Q: In junior high we learn that legislators make laws and governors
implement them, How do you respond to that statement?
A: It's not true. Nowadays, we're supposed to have a program, and you
propose a program to the legislature and the legislature then "operates"
on it, in all senses of the word, and then sends it back to the governor
for his approval or disapproval. Although the legislature does produce a
lot of its own ideas, particularly since now they have staffs. In the
old days they didn't have a staff, or not a staff worth using. Now they
have huge staffs in the house and senate, both sides, the minority and
the majority both have large staffs. And this is a powerful weapon for
them and I think has been the major reason for the shift in the balance
of power with the legislature asserting itself more.
Q: I mentioned before that Walker was the first governor to have a full
term under the new constitution, and he did use his veto a lot and his
vetoes were overridden to an extent that no other governor had ever
experienced. Now does that work? Was it an effective means by which he
had real input into the process of lawmaking?

A: Well, you know, it'd be interesting to do a count on that. I'm not
so sure that's true.
Q: Which is true?
A: That he vetoed more things than any other governor. On the overrides
it may be true, but the overrides were on money bills for the most part
and they were money bills that Chicago was interested in, so it waa a
question of the Republicans trying to embarrass and Daley trying to get
money, that caused overrides. Governors vetoed a lot of bills in the
past. That was part of the system. You pass a bill and the governor
would veto it. Some legislators kept getting elected on bills they would
pass if the governor would veto. And then they'd go back and campaign on
the basis of that. Sometimes the governor would sign the bill and veto
the appropriation. There were a lot of vetoes. But I'm not sure that
that's so, that he vetoed more bills than any other. And if you take out
the appropriation overrides, I wouldn't be so sure that he was overridden
more than any other governor. Perhaps, but not many. But they were
dramatic and very public.
Q: Yes. He was able to veto parts of bills . . .
A: Yes.
Q: . . . as governors had nor been.
A: No, not true.
Q: Not true?
A: The governor always had the item veto in Illinois.
Q: What about reduction? Is that what was new?
A: Yes, reduction veto and the newest of all, which was the amendatory
veto, which is really a brilliant idea.
Q:
Tell me how that worked.
A: Well, the idea was that it assumed a partnership: the legislature
would pass a bill; the governor would say, "1 like the bill but there are
certain parts of it that T don't like. Now if you will change those
parts then I will approve it, but if you don't change those parts then
it's dead," So then it would go back to the legislature. In order to
accept the governor's changes it only needed a simple majority, But to
override it then it needed a three-fifths.
Q: Did you see that idea of the amendatory veto coming over a period of
years? Yqu said it was brilliant change.
A: No, I didn't see it at all. I was amazed that the Con Con* produced
it. And it took the legislators awhile getting used to it. There was a
*I970 Illinois Constitutional Convention.

lot of fuss there for awhile and there was talk about knocking it out of
the constitution, but I think it's set now. I think a lot of legislators
understand it better and like it now. Sometimes, for example, the
legislqture will pass a bill and there will be a mistake in it and they
didnt t 'catch it. Now the governor, in the past, would just have to veto
it. Now he just corrects the mistake and it goes back and that's it.
Q: Can you think of a specific example . . .
A: Of a mistake?
Q: . . . well, a mistake or when Walker used the amendatory veto and it
was really a very helpful tool.
A: Well there was one, I remember one bill . . . darn it, Bill Goldberg
would remember. It was in either 1975 or 1976. I remember that the
legislators were very excited about it and they thought that was so great
that it could be changed, because they wanted that bill; they desperately
wanted it passed and signed. It had to do with its effective date or
something like that.
Q: There was an error in it?
A: Yea. Those errors can happen very easily, especially in the closing
days of the sessions.
Q: What about the whole question of patronage In the Walker
administration? Twenty years ago every governor had an aide who was his
patranage man and it was a highly regarded, highly respected position and
everybody knew how you got a job. Walker was opposed to payroll jobs, to
putting people on the payroll who weren't working or werent t necessary.
A: Right.
Q: But he didn't do away with patronage. But his critics criticized him
for not doing away with patronage. How do you square that?
A: A part of it was due to an error in . . . Dan always campaigned
against the evils of patronage and he would spell out the evils of
patronage: forcing a person to work in a political campaign in return
for getting a job, forcing a person to contribute--those were evils of
patronage. But giving a job to a qualified person who had helped you was
not an evil practice. It was a good practice. The further away we get
from that practice the worse off we' re going to be. As more and more
departments become post offices where it's impossible for anything to get
done, we become terribly inefficient and there's no way you can remove
anybody. Do you read Washington Monthly magazine?
Q: No.
A: Are you interested in government?
Q: Yes. Should I read it?

A: That's the one magazine I would recommend you subscribing to.
Obviously nobody will agree with a magazine all the time, but they put
the finger more on the problems of the bureaucracy in an entertaining
way. It's not a dull magazine. It's very interesting. But it's a
disaster we're heading toward in terms of getting something done. It's
like the Italian economy. You can't fire anybody in business. I mean,
business in Italy is civil service and you cannot Eire anybody. You can
only pension them off. You have to pay them if you fire them. It's an
absurd situation, and we're moving in that direction, which to me is just
a ghastly, inefficient way of handling things: where a new
administration cmes in and has to take on people who may not agree with
the administration's policies. You're elected to do a certain thing, and
you have a bureaucracy that fights it.
Q: In what ways was there evidence of that problem in the Walker
administration?
A: Children and Family Services . . . without question, the worst
department. And Public Aid. But Children and Family Services is even
worse than Public Aid because in the whole shebang there were only, I
think, five jobs you could change. All the rest were civil service.
That's insane. And it shows up; more things go wrong in that department,
more kids are hurt, more children are abused, displaced; more bad things
happen in that department than any other. It's just awful. Yet there's
nothing you can do about it.
Q: And you think that that might have been somewhat alleviated if you
could have appointed more people?
A: Oh, sure. You could get rid of the people in there who were not
doing their jobs. To get rid of somebody is very difficult when they're
on civil service. Very difficult.
Q: Is there a solution to the problem?
A: Well, yes. I think we ought to start moving down the level. In a
sense, maybe sort of a squeeze. The way we usually do it is we exempt
from civil service those lowest paying jobs, who are really the people
that need the most protection. And the ones at the upper levels we put
under civil service, "'cause you're smarter," therefore need protection.
But those are the ones that give you the trouble. The garbage collector
doesn't give you the trouble. ~t's the foreman that gives you the
trouble, or the assistant superintendent gives you the trouble, and those
are the ones who are on civil service. I'm for a strong patronage
system. I think there are less abuses of the public by that method.
Q: By a strong patronage system, you're talking about what we had in
Illinois twenty years ago? Under, say, the Stratton administration?
A: Stevenson. Stevenson had a patronage system. His patronage guy from
Bloomington, now what the heck is his name? Wonderful guy. Larry Irwin.
And there was a system: a guy was recommended by the county chairman--he
had a form--county chairman, state central committeeman, and then into
Larry. And it was accountable and responsible too.

Q: How do you respond to people that say, "Okay, that's fine, but then
in four years you dump all those people and you bring in people who don't
know anything and you have to train them all over again."
A: Well, there's really not much training you need to do a government
job. (laughs)
Q: Oh, come on.
A: No. Which jobs are you talking about? Tell me what you are talking
about. (laughter)
Q: No, no, we want to think that there's real expertise involved.
A: Who's we?
Q: We, the people of Illinois. (laughter)
A: (laughs) No, the people don't, I don't think the people want to
know. I think the academicians and media people think that's so, but
let's start drawing some lines. Now what, truck drivers? You'd say no.
You don't have to train a truck driver. Although somebody'd argue,
"Well, it's better to have somebody who's had four years experience on
highway truck driving. "
Q: The secretary of state's office is said to pretty much run itself
because of the bureaucracy which is in place and has been in place for
years and the secretary of state doesn't do a lot.
A: Yes. That's right. (laughs) There's not much to do there; you can
shoot off a cannon in there.
Q: Yes, but if every time a new secretary of state came in, he could
replace half the people in the department, would it run as well?
A: You wouldn't notice. (laughs) You would absolutely not notice it.
If you replace three-quarters of them you wouldn't notice, you really
wouldn't. And the same thing is true, as far as I'm concerned, of any
department in state government except maybe (pause) I was going to say
prisons, but even prisons. Because you see, it isn't a process of, okay,
tomorrow everybody's fired. A guy takes over as director of a
department, and say it's the prisons, he knows he can't just throw out
all the guards. Be's got to phase it. But there are so many jobs that
you can find people that can do it: electricians, operators, equipment
operators and things like that. And office jobs . . . caseworkers, what
a bunch of baloney that is.
Public Aid is something ~'ve
been involved with on and off since the
1960's. The current head of Public Aid, this guy named Jeff Miller . . .
we took him out of the Bureau of the Budget, put him in the Department of
Public Aid. He was to design a computer system. Jeff, being a good
bureaucrat, has worked himself up and now he's director. Recently there
was criticism from the federal government that Illinois had not put this
program into operation. Well, Jeff had the marvelous gall to say, "Well,
that was the fault of the previous administration." He was the guy,

ight? (laughs) He was the guy that we put in that job to produce the
system, which he never produced, and he became director and blamed it on
us, which I thought was really a marvelous kind of thing. Well, that's
the way the bureaucracy works too often.
For example, mental institutions. Sure, doctors, nurses; but ward
attendants? I could make a case that Democrats would make better ward
attendants than Republicans. They feel more empathy towards people than
Republicans and, therefore, we should have all Democratic ward
attendants. Now I'll go back to my original statement: the Republic
would not fall, it wouldn't even totter, if you went back to a very
strong patronage system.
July 28, 1981, Tape 7, Side 1
Q: I'd like you to talk today about Walker's relationship with the
congressional delegation in Washington.
A: I think the relationship wasn't terribly good in the very beginning
but when we improved the staff there by bringing in a woman named Olga
Corey, the relationships improved tremendously. She has a marvelous
personality and a wonderful way of getting along with people. Olga is a
good strong Democrat, but she managed to win the confidence of
Republicans like Derwinsky and Henry Hyde and even Crane, people you'd
never expect a Democrat to be able to win over. And so the relationship
with the delegation was pretty good.
Of course there was always the Daley problem, the Daley Democrats and how
they felt, and it is strange, you spend not very much time with the
congressional delegation, a governor's staff. Maybe it should. Now the
Transportation people spend a lot of time with them, and particularly
they spent a lot of time in Washington because of the Crosstown and
trying to block it and change the money from the roads to mass transit,
and so they spent a great deal of time in Washington working with our
delegation and working with other delegations too, as well as the White
House.
Q: What about Walker's relationship with Stevenson?
A: Well, after that campaign it was never very good. And that's about
all I can say.
Q:
But he didn't need to relate to him.
A: No, Stevenson was not a person you would go to for assistance on
anything.in getting something in the administration.
Q: Bow about Percy?
A: Percy was better and certainly easier to talk to. In one way we were
kind of fortunate. Langhorne Bond, our secretary of Transportation, was
a wonderful guy and went on to be head of the Federal Aviation
Admiriistration under Carter. But he had been head of the Pennsylvania

Democrats for Nixon. (laughs) And so that gave him a certain cachet
during the Nixon administration, and it allowed him, I'm sure, entree to
the places that Democrats normally wouldn't get.
Q: W t about some of the representatives. What about Rostenkowaki?
A: Oh, well of course he reported straight and totally to Daley. Some
people think he lost out on that fight he had for leadership there
because of Daley, because of animosity towards Daley nationally. We did
a poll once, a national poll, and asked people about Daley. An amazing
number of people around the country knew who Daley was. And an amazing
number did not like him.
Q: What year was that?
A: That would be probably 1975.
Q: So it wasn't even close to the 1968 convention when people saw him?
A: No. But of course that would be forever inscribed on many people's
minds. It was such a dramatic . . .
Q:
What about Walker's relationship to the White House?
A: None.
Q: There is no need to connect there?'
A: There was none that I know of.
Q: It's been said that any governor of a large state is a potential
candidate for president. How close was Governor Walker to being a
candidate for president?
A: Very close, very close.
Q: Tell me about that.
A: We learned later that the one person the Carter people--internally
Ham Jordan and those people--that the one person that they were worried
about in the country was Walker and I can see why, because [he had] the
same kind of appeal only better looking, better on television than Carter
certainly was. But Carter had spent his time, after he had left the
governorship, running for president. And he did, in a sense, what Dan
Walker had been doing running for governor for a number of years. And
everything was done in those terms. It really boiled down to a decision,
and it was a real back-breaking political decision. It came down to two
choices in the advisory group: should Dan not run for reelection and run
all out for the presidency, or should he run all out in the primary and,
if successful, then run for the presidency at the convention? The second
one was, I guess you'd say, the "minimax" formula. The committee split,
by the way, split almost angrily, but there was no anger there; it was
just that everybody felt very strong emotions.

Q: Which committee?
A: Well, we called it the advisory committee. It was not an official
ccmmittee, it was just a group of people whose judgment Dan respected.
By the way, in retrospect I often think that the decision was wrong, the
decision that we did take of going in the primary. That is, that we
should have gone straight out for the presidency.
Q: When were you making those arrangements? Was that in the summer of
19751
A: Oh, after that.
Q: Fall?
A: Yes.
Q: Right before you announced?
A: Yes.
Q: Was he receptive to the run for president at that point?
A: I think if we had reached agreement on that he would have done it,
yes.
Q: Given the fact that his first four years were pretty rocky, how did
he feel about four more?
A: Well, in all the years that I was associated with Dan before and
through government, he nevex complained. He didn't believe that because
things were bad one should sit around and moan and complain about unfair
treatment.
Q: Was he excited at the possibility of four more years?
A: As governor?
Q: Yes,
A: Sure it appealed to him. Any feeling of not running for reelection I
think would have been based on wanting to do something else, not being
hit by the media.
Q: In November of that first year (1973), he organized the Office of
Special Investigations. How did that come about and why?
A: I'm not sure. Well, there were problems with the IBI and the state
police, and who had responsibility for that. Some people felt that there
should be an internal investigations unit that would look into
allegations of corruption and things like that,
Q:
But it would be allegations specifically in the executive department.

A: Yes.
Q: And it's just not clear to me why he as governor thought that there
was a need for this entirely new unit.
A: Well, there was nothing that mirrored that. And God knows, no matter
what you do there's corruption in administration, and it's certainly a
lot better if you find it than somebody else. (laughs) So I guess
that's the underlying reasons.
Q: At the end of the first year what were the reflections? Was it a
watermark? Did you take stock at the end of that first year?
A: Nope. I don't think we ever took stock. On a short-term basis you
how, like you'd take, say, the legislative team and sit down for an
afternoon or a day and talk about the problems and what had gone wrong
and what had gone right and what should we be doing the next session.
But you have certain things you're trying to do and you just keep trying
to do them, You don' t sit back and say, "Now did I?" They're not goals
you can measure that accurately.
The 1974 elections, right? Now that could be measured. We saw what
happened, we were excited and delighted by what went on, not only in the
legislature, but on all the local races, and that kind of thing. So in
that sense the goal of starting the reform of the Democratic party was
moving along. But the goals that Dan set were goals so large, I would
think, that you really can't say, well, we're halfway there or a quarter
of the way there; so we made some progress and we're moving along, or we
haven't gotten anywhere on it, we're going backwards, but some sort of
chart to measure how far we grew was not a part of this. Maybe Dan did
it. I was not involved in it.
Q: When he announced his 1974 budget, in March of 1974, believe it or
not there were articles, there was at least one article in the press,
that said, "Be seems to be doing what he said he was going to do. He
seems to be cutting back on spending and reducing the size of the
bureaucracy." Did you feel that you were making progress, that you were
making headway?
A: Oh, yes. We did lop off a lot of jobs, no question about that. And
nobody noticed really. (laughs) A lot of them had been put on at the
end by Ogilvie, An example of the kind of thing that media let Ogilvie
get away with: Ogilvie decided he was going to give civil service status
to maintenance workers in the Department of Transportation; those are the
traditional patronage workers. He set up the dates so that the six month
period, probationary period, during which you can fire anybody without
giving any reason, extended from before the election until after the
election so that if they didn't work politically they would be fired
after election. It was beautiful. I mean it was only a Republican that
could figure out that kind of elaborate scheme. (laughs) It was
beautiful, and it worked. He had a lot of people working for him who
worked for the Department of Transportation. But we hollered about it.
It didn't become a great scandal, God knows it should have been, it was
such a blatant grab but . . .

Q: At some point during the administration five thousand jobs were
shifted from civil service to patronage, and the idea was to hire more
women and minorities, I believe. And the IVI screamed about it. Do you
remember that?
A: Not really.
Q: Not even vaguely? (laughs)
A: No. What kind of jobs were they?
Q: I don't even know. Does that make sense to you?
A: Well, (pause) it would make sense, but it would be very difficult to
do, shifting five thousand jobs. They have to go through the Civil
Service Commission and to be decertified, all kinds of hearings, and
stuff like that, so it's not an easy thing. No, no I don't recall. But
it is true that Dan brought in more women and more blacks than any other
administration, certainly more than Ogilvie and Stratton, Thompson.
Q: Bow do you go about doing that? How do you actually implement
affirmative action?
A: Well, you have to get a network going, tom-toms beating, so that the
word goes out that there are jobs available for qualified people. And
you send people out looking for people. It's not an easy task but it's a
lot easier with women than blacks for government jobs. The kinds of
government jobs that are available mostly are jobs that women have had
better training for than blacks have.
Q: Like what?
A: Casework jobs, white collar office type jobs. It's a function of
education more than anything else.
Q: What was it like to be in a meeting with Dan Walker-like, say, a
budget meeting or , . . How did he preside over meetings?
A: I was going to say sternly. (laughs)
Q: I was going to ask i f he was scary. (laughter)
A: ~ ' m sure to the people who participated in the budget meetings he
was, 'cause he always asked the wrong questions as far as they were
concerned. The little things they were trying to hide, he saw. And so
there were really sometimes pretty bloody meetings. Of course the Budget
Bureau people loved him because they saw in Dan, for the first time,
somebody who was on their side in making a department head and his staff
justify their budgets. That's what a budget department does, and to have
a governor then step in and do the same thing . . . they enjoyed that.
Q: Rid he like it?
A: Yes,

Q: That kind of thing?
A: Yes. The only kind of meeting he didn't and doesnlt like is the
kind, oh, where you sit around and brainstorm or ruminate, a sort of pipe
smoking kind of meeting. Those meetings he cannot tolerate.
Q:
Even with intimates, he doesn't like that?
A: Probably with Dave Green and me he would come the closest to that
kind of stuff but even then, after a while he'd say, "You guys work it
out and let me know what you think.''
Q: We've talked a little about whether or not it was wise for you to go
into the administration, for the campaign staff to become the staff to
the governor. Along with that goes the problem or the advantage of his
taking his closest friends into the government. Is that a good idea and
does it strain the friendship?
A: It certainly didn't strain the friendship. Well, I guess the best
examples are Dave Green and me. Dave Green stayed out of the
administration. There is no question that if Dave had been in the
administration on a day-to-day basis things would have been better.
Q: What things?
A: Well, just because Dave's considerable talents in being able to stand
back and look at everything and not get caught up in the heat of the
battle are missed often. I'm a partisan and it's very hard for me to be
nonpartisan. I like to take sides and Eight for my side. And that's why
David and I make such a good team because we balance each other in that.
Ogilvie used Drennan. Drennan was his campaign manager. And I remember
the first thing that happened, he gave him a hundred thousand dollar
contract with tourism. And there was some fuss about it in the paper and
Ogilvie said, "He elected me and what better qualification can a man have
than that to come up with a tourism program?" As it happened, he came up
with one of the worst in the world with that terrible slogan, "Illinois:
We Accommodate," you know that one. One of the worst things Drennan ever
did for the state of Illinois. (laughs)
Q: I don't remember that.
A: Yes, well that's right, that's how bad it was. They spent hundreds
of thousands of dollars. Signs everywhere. Every piece of paper had
"Illinois: We Accommodate ."
Q: What, this was to attract business to Illinois?
A: No, tourism.
Q: Oh, tourism. Oh, 1'm sorry, okay.
A: Really goofy. But, so anyway Drennan would travel back and forth and
meet with Ogilvie. (pause) It's still a puzzle, I should have probably
gone in for awhile and then gotten out because by then the lines of

communication with everybody would have been known and established. If I
had stayed out from the very beginning it would have been very difficult
as people got into their jobs. Like any operation, you have people who
are always jockeying for close in position, If I had stayed out there,
it would have been a great deal more of that that Dan himself would have
had to get involved in, which would have been not good. And my ability
to communicate with everybody would have been made much more difficult.
So, probably I should have gone in for awhile, maybe a year, and then
gone out. I don't know, it's still hard to say.
Q: Was his routine different from other governors or do you think he
spent about as much time in the office and out as other governors? How
did that work?
A: Well, my guess is he spent more time than any other recent governor.
Q: In the of £ice?
A: Yes, working. You know, when Stevenson was governor he spent most of
his time in the mansion. Talk about a relationship with legislators, I
mean he disliked them so much he wouldn't even sit in the same building
with them, (laughter)
Q: And it's a big building. (laughter)
A: Yes, and it's a big building. And my perception of Ogilvie is that
he did not spend . . . I know he didn't spend as much time on the actual
budgets and that kind of stuff as Dan did. What he spent his time on I
don't know. This same guy, Michaelson, wrote an article that became
famous because we used it as a campaign thing. Michaelson was one of
Ogilvie's administrative assistants which makes him very well-qualified
to comment on Walker, right? (laughter) He's an academic so he can do
-
it. But he wrote an article which was picked up by Time magazine on the
governor's time, and Mlchaelson said that 25 percent of Ogilvie's time
was spent on public relations. So, we had a good time with that in the
campaign, (laughter) Twenty-five percent public relations. (laughter)
Q: Was Walker accessible? Could people come in off the street and get
to him?
A: Yes.
Q: Relatively, on a regular basis?
A: Relatively easy, yes.
Q: Did that happen often?
A: Oh, not too often because most people feel like you can't. But then
in addition, Dan always would go off somewhere. Some community. He
especially liked to go to grain elevators and things like that and sit
around and talk to the farmers and small store owners. And as Ear as the
staff was concerned he was eminently accessible.

Q: What about his relationships with the other constitutional officers?
A: Well, of course there was the Neil Hartigan problem which I guess we
can put aside, Mike Howlett was always easy to get along with, no
problem, until he was forced into running. (laughs) He kept coming to
me and saying to me he never was going to run. He would just not let
Daley push him into the box. He didn't want to run. He was happy where
he was. As Jack Touhy said, "He has an office as big as Hitler's."
(laughs) The secretary of state's office is the biggest office in the
state capitol. Then of course Lindberg was the comptroller and he was
kind of a pain. He had Mandeville as his assistant. We tried to hire
Mandeville as budget director. He's an extraordinarily competent guy and
an extraordinarily partisan guy for a budget man. As he functions now
under Thompson, he sounds like a politician when he talks. Alan Dixon
0 . .
Q: Let me stay with Lindberg a minute. Walker and Lindberg really got
into it during the summer of 1975. Lindberg kept saying that the state
was on the verge of bankruptcy and Walker was obviously fighting to keep
the money situation under control. But the papers were reporting that
Illinois was on the verge of losing its credit rating and on the verge of
bankruptcy, and Lindberg kept that going. What was the truth?
A: Well, as far as I knew, we were never on the verge of bankruptcy.
There were cash flow problems at times, which is something that you
expect. Lindberg was obviously shooting for higher office, and shooting
at Walker was a good target because if you hit at Walker you'd always get
good publicity, so he did it. But to the best of my knowledge we never
were on the verge of bankruptcy. There was always plenty of money.
There is always plenty of money in various funds. It's sort of like
somebody who has a series of bank accounts, and he set up this as an
educational fund for his son, and this for his daughter, and this for his
pension fund, and then he's got his operational checkbook and his
operational checkbook is very low. He's not near bankruptcy because if
he really gets into a tight squeeze he can reach over and borrow money
from those and then return it when things get better, so that concept of
bankruptcy is baloney.
Q: Olay, how about Walker's relationship with Dixon?
A: Well, Dixon's eyes were on Chicago as all the other elected
Democratic officials' were. The only really bad part came at the end on
that decision by Alan that he was going to wait to resign until Thompson
was sworn in to allow Thompson to appoint Dixon's successor. Do you
remember that?
Q: But hadn't he offered to resign early?
A: Well, he and Dan, and he and I, talked about trying to agree on
somebody as a successor. But my feeling was that Alan , . . well I know,
at the the when Alan was saying, "Let me think about the names you've
suggested; you think about the names I've suggested." At that exact time
he was dealing with Thompson and they had agreed on Smith as the
replacement. So that was dirty pool,

Q:
Well, what about Walker's relationship with Bill Scott?
A: Well, it's very hard for me to speak about Scott. I consider him a
contemptible person. He--and we only learned this by accident--he used
to go around the state as the attorney general, meeting with newspaper
officials, editors--you'd have an editorial board and reporters would be
sitting there--and he would say to them, "Now this is confidential
because it's under investigation. But we're investigating an organized
crime tie-up and tie-in with the governor's office." My being the
number-one Italian, right, everybody figured that they were investigating
me as an organized crime figure. Jack Clarke, the guy who Daley assigned
to investigate me, when a group came to him and said they had proof that
I was connected with organized crime, said, "Don't be a damn fool, no
organized crime figure would live in Hyde Park." (laughter) That was, I
think, a good answer.
But Scott got caught at that. We would have never known what he was
doing because papers respected his statement: "investigation . . .
secret." But once at the Alton Telegraph he forgot to say that this is
all off the record and confidential, so they printed it and Dan let him
have it, And then all of a sudden a lot of newspapers started treating
Scott differently, realizing that they were being had by him, Scott used
that office very well politically. He had key lawyers in every county on
the payroll, and managed to be the darling of the media for years.
Q: What precipitated the fight between Walker and Scott over the lawyers
within agencies?
A: T'hat's a fight that always goes on.
Q: But was there any incident that made Walker decide to . . .
A: No, I think Scott pushing and our pushing back, or our pushing and
Scott pushing back . . . Ramsey, what's his name? The guy I was trying
to think of yesterday. Darn.
Q: Which one?
A: The guy who had told me about Ogilvie, that they knew that they had
peaked just prior to election. When I talked to him--we were friends,
neighbors--and I said, "Tell me, do you have any problems with Scott?"
And he said, "Well, the biggest problem is he's never around to get an
opinion out of him. And you write and you ask him to give an opinion and
he's in Hawaii or Bermuda or somewhere." (laughter) And so the Ogilvie
administration had a great deal of difficulty with him too. Ours was
more public, But there's always that fight. It goes on all the time.
I'm sure it's going on now even with a guy like Ty Fahner who owes
everything to Thompson. I'm sure that his staff is saying, "Now wait a
minute, we should be representing the Liquor Commission on this," and the
Liquor Commission people are saying, "We should get our own person."

Tape 7, Side 2
Q: Tall me what you consider your finest accomplishment during that four
years ,
A: Well, as you know, in government it's sort of like the myth of
Sisyphus; you never feel that you accomplish anything. And the higher
you get in government, the harder it is to accomplish anything because
the problems that rise to the top of the administration are the ones that
are most difficult to solve. And therefore to solve a problem that
usually came across my desk was extraordinarily difficult. All you could
do would be maybe to ameliorate the problem or. . . .
The one thing really I did, that I know I did--I'm sure I did a lot of
things both good and bad that I don't know I did--was a man came to see
me and his son had been arrested in DuPage County and was, he said, being
railroaded, and I talked to the man and then I talked to his son. And
his son had been a policeman in the local community and one evening,
driving, had run over a girl on a bicycle, a young girl. But he was
having the book thrown at him by the DuPage County prosecutor. And as I
heard about it, it seemed to me hard to believe--I really believe in
justice and the young man said, "This is all because I was active in the
Democratic party in DuPage County." And as you may know, DuPage County
is the most Republican county in the universe, and I found that hard to
believe.
So what I did was I got Dick Schultz of Tom Foran's office. Dick used to
be an assistant U.S. attorney and Tom used to be the U,S. attorney, and
they both were good friends of mine. And I asked Dick as a pro bono
publico thing to look into this. Well, he looked into it and said, "The
guy's getting railroaded. No question about it. But it's going to be a
very tough thing." So I asked him, as a personal favor, if he would do
it, and he did it. And he worked for months. It took months and months
and months and reversed all of the bad things that had been done. It was
an accident. The girl was driving without lights on her bicycle, and
there was no light on in the road. It was not manslaughter, it was not
anything but an unfortunate accident.
And it probably took a year, but it worked. And the father came to see
me and he was very grateful, but I felt so good because it was something
that I knew that, if I hadn't been there, wouldn't have occurred. And as
I said before, the higher up you go in government the fewer opportunities
you have to actually know that you have accomplished something. You can
see movements; you can see things happening. I mentioned before,
politically, you can see more Democrats being elected downstate and you
know that's important to the Democratic party, but you can't say, "Well,
I did that." You helped, you pushed, you might have, you know, given
some good advice; but this was something I know I had done myself, and
that was fun.
Q: When writers write of the accomplishments of the Walker
administration they write about the ethics legislation; they write about
limiting spending, cutting the bureaucracy. Those are the things that we
read over and over again. Are those the kinds of things that you think
were accomplished by the Walker administration?

A: No. When we started this conversation three years ago, (laughs) we
started talking about the cabinet, and implied in the question you raised
with me was that the cabinet was not very good.
Q:
I didn't mean to imply that.
A: (laughs) Well, some people have said that, but you look at, for
example, the medical cabinet with Lee Levitt, Mental Health, and Joyce
Lashof, Public Health. And you look at Langhorne Bond in Transportation,
and the head of Prisons, the head of Law Enforcement, Harvey Johnson;
they all were top flight people. Certainly better than the Thompson
administration. Certainly better than any administration that I know,
including Stevenson. Walker's cabinet was the best. And when you have
good people you get as much done as good people can get done, given the
problems of the bureaucracy in government and politics.
That is not to say that, where I sat, they all liked me or I liked each
of them. Our relationship often was a hostile one because my job was
different from theirs, but I recognized in them really top flight people.
The Bureau of the Budget people, Len Schaeffer, you know, really top
flight. And so I think when the record is written of the administration,
one will look back with less partisanship than people who have written
thus far that I've read at least or seen, and see that there were
beginnings. What Ogilvie did was he generated a fantastic amount of
money for the state of Illinois, if you look at any chart before the
income taxlafter the income tax. But they didn't have the slightest idea
of what to do with that money, and they set up things that made it
awhlly difficult. For example, in the welfare area--and this is one of
the toughest areas with my liberal friends and with many people, and
Thompson is facing the problem now and Reagan is facing it too--the
Ogilvie administration said anybody on welfare could have free
eyeglasses, dentures, all kinds of things like that, and my view and
Dan's view was, "What about the middle class people?" A lot of them
needed help in the medical area and weren't getting that help. I mean,
it's no fun to be poor, I was raised as a poor kid; but on the other hand
poor people shouldn't have better things than the middle class, because
that just poses impossible problems in a democracy. And Reagan is one of
the responses to that. It's going to take a long time before we get
back.
In my view the American people are generous, are humane, are bigoted and
perverse, and they're just great human beings. But they're always
willing to pay if they feel they're getting what they're paying for.
They are not willing to pay--and I cannot say I blame them-for glasses
for poor people when they can't afford it or when they have to sacrifice
for it. Or podiatrists or taxi cabs. Do you know the Department of
Public Aid pays for taxi cabs for welfare recipients to go to the doctor?
Now there's something wrong with that, It pays their moving expenses,
When I was a kid, when we moved we did most of the moving ourselves. And
middle class families moving, it's a terribly expensive proposition, The
poor people on welfare, the state pays for it. And it's marvelous . . .
and, of course, they move more often than middle income people do.
These are the problems you wrestle with and you try to figure out how to
do it, and there really is very little right and wrong about government.

They're trying to accomplish things. Jefferson has said something on
every side of every question, you know. And some of the things he said
about jaedia would curl any first amendment lover's hair. (laughter) And
the bhiness where, you know, the government is best which governs least
is not true. But at this point all the Democrats are on the defensive,
and I think that's a mistake. And I think the Democrats who are going to
get elected in the future are going to be those who say we have to take
care of people.
Q: When you think back over that chunk of your life--that was four
pretty intense years--were there real disappointments during that time?
A: Disappointments, no, except losing; that's a disappointment.
Q: Well, that's a big one. (laughs)
A: (laughs) That's always a disappointment. But I think
accomplishments, maybe, yes: electing Bill Redmond Speaker, I think was
one of the greatest things that we did. It would have been Impossible
without us, impossible.
Q:
Are there other accomplishments of which you're really proud?
A: You know, I don't think that ethics bill is such a hot bill myself.
(laughter) So 1'm not sure that should be added to the list of
accomplishments. (laughs)
Q: Well, you can take it off the list. Why do you say that?
A: Well, I'm starting to believe that there's no evidence that I've seen
which shows that government has improved, the quality of people in
government has improved, or that chicanery has decreased since we've had
ethics and disclosure. Abscam and those things happened after ethics and
discloeure. Always used to say you can't legislate morality, and I think
that the whole movement away from privacy is a bad one. I think a
person's entitled to privacy and just because they take a job with the
government, that doesn't mean they should lose their privacy. The media
does. The media believes that once you're in government, they can call
you at 2:00 in the morning and ask you a question.
Q:
If you were going to do it again, would you get involved?
A: In government?
Q: Well, you have said you have misgivings about your being in the
administration; perhaps you should have been in for awhile and then out,
perhaps you would have been more effective on the outside. If you were
going to do It again, aside from the fact that you're all ten or eleven
years older and wiser and more mellow or whatever happens, would you make
significant changes in the way it was done? Would you approach it
differently?
A: In government, you mean?

Q: Yes.
A: Well, yes, because circumstances have changed. You see, there aren't
enough good people for three parties. And you need to have the total
Democratic party pool in order to have a Democratic administration that's
good, that is the best you can do, and that wasn't available under Daley.
It would be now. A lot more people would be available and it wouldn't
have to be that they would have to swear the loyalty oath to Chicago
before they came. So, when you look at it, it's kind of amusing because
Daley was director of Revenue under Stevenson, and he was not dominated
by Chicago. He was a good director of Revenue. He learned there how to
make sure Chicago, (laughs) when he was mayor, got everything. But I
think that's the most important thing that would happen is just that the
pool would increase, and people could go to work without feeling that
they were taking up sides, and that would help.
You see it happen, Look at Reagan in Illinois. He's stuck with Donald
Totten. He doesn't want Donald Totten, but Totten was for him when
Thompson and the rest were for Connelly, so what does he do with Totten?
You know, he just can't say, "Run away,'' yet the pressure is constant,
I'm sure, on him from the regular organization because nobody likes
Totten; he's an outsider. From Governor Thompson, from Percy,
everybody--"We don't want this guy in." And now Totten is talking about
running against Percy, He's an outsider, yet that was all that Reagan
could get at that time. So, he grabbed him and now what does he do with
him? He can't throw him away just because he was there when nobody else
was, That is always the problem of the outsider galloping in and taking
over, and that's the problem we had. We had to take in a lot of people
you wouldn't ordinarily take in.
Q: Is it more exciting right now to think about being involved in
politics, in Democratic politics in Illinois, than it was ten years ago?
Is it more open really?
A: More interesting. I think this next election, if it goes the way it
appears to be going, is going to be a real watershed kind of election.
It's going to . . .
Q: Why?
A: Well if Richie Daley fields a whole slate of candidates against the
regular organization candidates, it's going to be, you know, a real
choosing up of sides, and it's going to have impact downstate too.
Because a lot of people downstate believe--not a lot of people but some
people, some leaders--believe that Stevenson would be the best candidate.
And I don't think that's true, and I don't think the people up here think
it's true, but it will be very interesting. Exciting, well, I think I've
gone through too many campaigns to get excited by campaigns. ~hey're
interesting, they're fun, but exciting . . . .
Q: As an individual, was that four years a real time of growth for you?
A: (long pause) I learned a great deal. Whether it's useful, I don't
know. That I learned a great deal doesn't mean much, except to me. As I
look back on it, I enjoyed more learning about raising hogs and sheep and

veal and what went into a farm rather than . . . learning that was a lot
more fun for me. And as I look back on it those are the things I
remember with the greatest affection.
Q:
Did you learn things about yourself?
A: I do that every day so it's not . . . the process wasn't speeded up I
don't think. I learned that I could be as bad as other people and as
good as some.
Q: Do you consider yourself to have been exceptionally good at the job
you were asked to do?
A: Yes, Yes. I know nobody else could have done it.
Q: What are the qualities?
A: Well, in my case it was my relationship with Dan. When I was talking
before about the kind of jockeying for power , , . there was an
established hierarchy so that there was jockeying, but it went on at a
lower level, always does, And at the upper level we could a11 work,
doing our jobs aa best we could without jockeying. Now part of that was
because we had all worked together for a long time, Norty and Bill
Goldberg and . . .
Q: I have enjoyed this. I hate for it to end.
A: You're all through?
Q: I think so.

Adante, Beverly, 38
Administrative technique: bill management, 37,
42, 48, 57; executive orders, 32; management,
49, 56, 61, 63, 72; office and staff, 7-8;
relationships, 4-7 passim, 34-35, 45-54 passim,
58-59, 67-68, 74-76, 77, 79, 80; representation
philosophy, 46, 50, 57, 59, 72-74; tactics, 33;
veto, 33-34, 39-40, 56, 57, 62-64
American Federation of Labor, 33, 54
Annapolis, 16
Arrington, W. Russell, 51
Banks and Trusts, Commissioner, 50
Begin, Menachem, 23
Berwyn, 21
Bettag, Otto L., 7
Better Government Association of Cook County,
52
Blair, W. Robert (Bob), 33, 37, 40, 50, 51, 59
Bloomington, 4, 65
Bond, Langhorne, 32, 67, 77
Boyle, Ken, 45
Bradley, Gerald A,, 44, 45
Brenner, Terry, 53
Budget, Bureau of the, 66, 71, 77
Building Program, Accelerated, 54
Byme, Jane M., 28
Capital Development Board, 54
Caravello, David, 44
Carpentier, Charles F., 5
Carter, James E. (Jimmy), 35, 46
Central Intelligence Agency, 31, 62
Champaign, 43, 44
Chicago, 4, 9, 12, 17, 20, 21, 25, 29, 30, 34, 41,
48, 49, 51, 54, 57, 58, 61, 63, 79
INDEX
Chicago City Hall, 52
Chicago Conservatory of Music, 1
Chicago Transit Authority, 33, 34
Children and Family Services, Department of,
65
Chiles, Lawton, 13
Choate, Clyde L., 19, 43, 45
Cicero, 21
Clark, William G. (Bill), 5
Clarke, Jack, 75
Clement, James, 2, 52
Collins, Philip W., 40
Columbia University, 20
Commissions: Budgetary, 62; Civil Service, 71;
Illinois Public Aid, 6, 50; Liquor, 75;
Metropolitan Planning, 49
Committees (Non-legislative): on Illinois
Government, 2; Riot Study, 9; to Elect a
Democratic House, 51
Connelly, Tom, 79
Conservation, Department of, 33
Constitutional Convention, 63
Cook County, 20, 25,51,59
Corey, Olga, 67
Corrections, Department of, 31
Crane, Edgar, 57, 62
Crane, Philip N., 67
Crazy Eight, 57
Crosstown Expressway, 40-41, 67
Daley, Richard J., 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 14, 19, 24-25,
30, 33, 34, 37, 38-45 passim, 49, 50, 52, 54, 57,
60, 63, 67, 68, 74, 75, 79
Dean, Anthony T., 33, 38
Deerfield, 5, 14
de Grazia, Victor, 1-2, 7, 12,

de Grazia, Victor: employment
(non-government), 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9; family, 2;
illness, 31; political career, 6-8, 35-37, 46
Democratic Federation of Illinois, 3
Democratic Party, 3, 4, 9, 12, 23, 43, 57-58,
59-61, 70
Derwinski, Edward J., 67
Dixon, Alan J., 20, 74, 75
Drennan, Thomas, 43, 71
Du Page County, 20, 31, 45, 76
East Harlem, 9
Economic Development, Board of, 6,34
Edelman, Joel, 50
Editors-in-chief of Law Reviews, National
Association of, 16
England, Church of, 42
Epstein, Elliot S., 2
Ethnic groups: Irish, 20, 43, 45; Italians, 20
Fahner, Tyrone C., 75
Federal Aviation Administration, 67
Finance, Department of, 53
Fisher, Frank, 2
Fogel, David, 31
Foran, Tom, 11, 12, 76
Foster, Jack, 34
Garth, David, 23
Gerty, Francis J., 6
Gibson, Robert G., 33, 54
Goldberg, William, 64, 80
Governor's Mansion, 52
Governors State University, 8
Graham, John A. (Jack), 51
Green, David, 8, 23, 24, 26, 29, 36, 72
Hanahan, Thomas J., Jr., 35
Hanrahan, Edward, 8, 24-25
Hartigan, Neil, 25, 30, 74
Hodge, Orville E., 3
Hoffman, Abbie, 10
Hoge, James F., Jr., 11, 28
Howlett, Michael J. (Mike), 24, 30, 36, 45, 54,
55,74
Hyde, Henry J., 33-34, 67
Independent Voters of Illinois, 12, 28, 52-53, 59
Inland Steel Corporation, 50
Investigation, Bureau of, Illinois, 69
Irwin, Lawrence E., 65
Jefferson, Thomas, 61, 78
Johnson, Lyndon B., 8
Jordan, Hamilton, 68
Joyce, Jerome J., 57
Justice, Department of, 8
Kane, Douglas N., 34, 45
Kankakee, 57
Kay, Norton, 8, 15, 80
Kennedy Family, 44
Kennedy, John F., 8, 16, 23,50
Kennedy, Robert, 8, 9
Kerner, Otto, 6, 7, 8, 34-35, 52, 62
King, Martin Luther, 9, 14
Koch, Edward, 62
Kramer, John D., 32
Lake County, 20
Lake Forest College, 1
Lashof, Joyce C., 38, 77
Leahy, Mary L., 38
Legislation, 37
Legislation: budget and appropriations, 34, 38,
56; civil rights, 14, 55, 71-72; crime and
corrections, 39, 42; education, 47; elections and
reapportionment, 37; ethics and conflict of
interest, 42, 76, 78-79; fiscal reform, 76;
industry and labor relations, 54-55; legislative
reform, 57; mental health, 42; public aid,
health, welfare and safety, 77-78; revenue, 77;
transportation, 33-34, 37, 40-41
Legislative technique: caucusing, 57
Levitt, Leroy P., 77
Lincoln, Abraham, 45
Lindberg, George W., 74
Lobbyists, 3, 52
Lynch, William J., 3
Macoupin County, 44
Madigan, Michael J., 41, 51
Madison County, 41
Mandeville, Robert, 74
Maremont Foundation, 6, 8, 9
Maremont, Arnold, 3, 4, 6, 7
Matijevich, John S., 44
McCarthy, Eugene, 23
McClain, Michael F., 57
McCormick Family, 44
Mental Health, Department of, 6, 42, 77
Michaelson, Ronald, 73
Mikva, Abner J., 2, 9, 13, 52
Milgram, Morris, 5

Miller, Jeff, 66
Mitchell, Steve, 3
Moore, Don A., 50
Moran, Jim, 2, 9
Morris, Bill, 57
Murphy, William J. (Bingo Bill), 40
Netsch, Dawn Clark, 57
New York City, 20
New Zealand, 18
Newspapers: Alton Telegraph, 75; Chicago
Daily News, 30; Chicago Sun-Times, 12, 26,
28; New York Times, 26; Washington Star, 26
Nixon, Richard M., 31, 50, 68
North Central Association, 1
Northwestern University, 16
Novak, Bob, 46
Ogilvie, Richard B., 21, 22, 26, 27-28, 29, 38,
43, 49, 52, 55, 70, 73, 74, 76, 77-78
Partee, Cecil A., 39
Peoria, 43, 49
Percy, Charles, 67, 79
Peters, Everett R. (Nub), 51
Politics, 3, 57, 76
Politics: blocs, 57; campaign techniques, 2, 3,
11-28, 30, 31, 42-45, 48, 49; elections, 10, 11,
18-19, 20, 21, 23-24, 28-30, 31, 42-44, 45,
47-50 passim, 59-61, 68-70, 80; ethics and
conflict of interest, 31, 45, 50, 53, 55-56, 70;
fund raising, 18, 21, 55; nomination
procedures, 5, 24-25, 69; patronage, 56, 61,
64-67, 71; retirement, 78
Public Aid, Department of, 65, 67, 77
Public Welfare, Department of, 7
Quinn, Patrick D., 44, 57
Reagan, Ronald, 60, 62, 77, 79
Redmond, William A., 5, 20, 39, 40-41, 45, 50,
52,78
Regional Transit Authority, 37, 40-41
Registration and Education, Department of, 6
Religious groups: Catholic, 20, 45
Republican Party, 43
Revenue, Department of, 79
Rock Island, 49
Rock, Philip J., 39, 50
Rockford, 43
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 42
Rostenkowski, Daniel D., 68
Sachnoff, Lowell, 7-8
Schaeffer, Len, 77
Schultz, Dick, 76-77
Scott, Maurice W., 53
Scott, William, 75-76
Shapiro, Samuel H., 8
Shea, Gerald W., 34, 41, 43, 50
Simon, Paul, 3, 9, 11, 18-19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 55
Singer, William, 13, 38
Special Investigations, Office of, 69
Springfield, 2, 34, 43, 49, 51, 53
St. Louis, 27
Stanford, 2
State of Illinois Building, 11
Stevenson, Adlai E., 2, 23, 31, 52, 66, 73, 77
Stevenson, Adlai, 111, 2, 9, 10, 11, 20, 59, 60-61,
67,80
Stratton, William G., 3, 65, 71
Sullivan, Thomas, 2
Taxpayers Federation, 53
Teamsters, Brotherhood of, 54
Television, 21-22, 27-28
Thompson, James, 16, 24, 32, 34, 47, 50, 53, 55,
58, 62, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78
Time, 73
Totten, Donald, 79
Touhy, John P., 28, 36, 42, 74
Transportation, Department of, 32, 70, 77
Truman, Harry S., 36, 42
United Jewish Appeal, 18
University of Chicago, 1, 2
"Walker Report" 21
Walker, Daniel, 1, 21-35 passim, 38
Walker, Daniel: education, 16; employment
(non-government), 16
Washington Monthly, 64
Washington, D. C., 40, 67, 68
Watergate, 31
Waukegan, 57
White House, 49, 68
Wirtz, Willard, 16
Women Voters, League of, 54
Wrigley Building, 56