Victor De Grazia Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

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.