Pat Quinn's long, surprising rise to governor
SPRINGFIELD -- One of the most extraordinary days in Illinois political history came to a quiet end Thursday with Pat Quinn taking his 91-year-old mother and the rest of his family home for dinner -- to the Executive Mansion.
Pat Quinn, governor of Illinois. It hardly seems possible.
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
Often treated in the past as the pariah of Illinois politics because of his incessant pleading for reform, Quinn was welcomed joyfully to the podium of the House of Representatives, where he took the ceremonial oath of office shortly after Rod Blagojevich’s dramatic ouster. His humble speech was in sharp contrast to Blagojevich’s theatrical exit just hours earlier.
Quinn told the hastily assembled audience that he was accepting a “duty, a mission, to restore the integrity of Illinois government.”
There are others on the Illinois scene who might make better governors, but for that particular mission, I can’t think of anybody better suited than Quinn. For as long as I’ve known him, he comes the closest to walking the talk.
I’d call Quinn the accidental governor, but that would be disrespectful, and not entirely accurate.
Quinn has been preparing for this moment his entire life, so it’s no accident. It’s just that it appeared -- until quite recently -- that it would always be beyond the reach of the perennial office-seeker.
The lieutenant governor, you understand, is not the governor’s understudy, and only in a legal sense is he the governor-in-waiting. From a clout perspective, it’s the lowest job on the totem pole of state constitutional officers and treated accordingly by others in power.
While they were two-time Democratic running mates, Quinn and Rod Blagojevich were always rivals. Quinn ran an independent campaign to get on the ticket with Blagojevich in the first place.
Whether or not he buddied up too much to Blagojevich for purposes of their 2006 re-election bid will be a subject of much discussion over the next two years. Republicans already are making it an issue.
Quinn didn’t want to talk about Blagojevich when he met with reporters after his swearing-in.
“I think now is the time to go forward,” Quinn said.
There will be time to do both in the coming days, but the record will show that he and Blagojevich have little in common other than fashioning themselves as populist Democrats, one difference being that Quinn is the real thing.
In his first test during this crisis, he seemed to lose his way somewhat in the handling of how to pick Barack Obama’s replacement in the Senate, when he should have been insisting on a special election.
We can only hope that Quinn holds fast to his principles in the days ahead, remember who he is and what he stands for.