Victor De Grazia Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

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