Victor De Grazia Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

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