McHenry County Blog

In their 1993 out of print biography of former Governor “Dan Walker, the Glory and the Tragedy,” Taylor Pensoneau and Bob Ellis, not only write of the role of Pat Quinn in the 1972 campaign and the early years of the Walker administration, they trace his actions through the publication date of the book.

On page 357, the book tells of the decade and a half after Quinn left the Walker administration until 1992, when he was elected State Treasurer.

He “became an incredible thorn in the side of the establishment” using a group called the Coalition of Political Honesty.

He “spearheaded a drive to create the Citizens Utility Board, “to the horror of utilities.”

And, he led the petiiton effort to amend the state constitution to cut back the Illinois House from 176 to 108 members.

And in winning the State Treasurer’s post, Quinn

“predictably…had to circumvent the regulars in his own Democratic Party, which made him a chip off the old block in respect to the person who had brought Quinn onto the state political scene.”

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A pensive Lt. Governor Pat Quinn makes a scheduled appearance about a week after his running mate, Governor Rod Blagojevich, was arrested by the FBI. Impeachment was in the air and those regulars and their successors who didn’t want to see him elected State Treasurer were preparing to install him as governor.

Why did Pat Quinn leave state government?

Pages 356 and 357 of Taylor Pensoneau’s and Bob Ellis’ biography of Dan Walker gives this insight.

Quinn enjoyed the excitement of the campaign, but couldn’t adjust to the daily tedium of state government.

Wearing a tie didn’t excite him either.

His jobs included being Walker’s personal ombudsman where he learned how state government didn’t work for people and even got a taste of handling patronage the book says.

Government was just too tame for him.

“…the energy and enthusiasm of the administration was obviously beginning to wane after several years in office. Walker was no longer enough of a populist for me…His administration had stopped being a vehicle for organizing citizens.”

He was frustrated trying to operate as a “government insider.”

“He was itching to get back on the streets again, eager to resume raising cain with the political establishment, to further nurture the spirit of political mutiny at the grass roots unleashed by Walker.”

(Isn’t that a marvelous sentence?)

Quinn told Walker “it was time to hit the road again, time for me to do what I do best—which was organizing people to bring about change.”

“…no hard feelings. I just old him I was a better outsider than insider.”

Tomorrow – From the perspective of the 1993 out of print book, what did Pat Quinn do after leaving the Dan Walker administration?

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The picture is of Lt. Governor Pat Quinn facing a camera wearing a tie about a week after his running mate, Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested woken by the FBI–as a courtesy–before being arrested.

The title of former Governor Dan Walker’s biography is “Dan Walker, the Glory and the Tragedy.”

Written by Taylor Pensoneau and Bob Ellis, it reports on page 355 what Pat Quinn thought of Walker’s term as governor.

Playing off Blackburn College political science professor John Forbes’ opinion that Walker had fallen “from a very promising guiding light in the Stevenson tradition to a largely confusing mishmash,” the book says,

“Patrick Quinn would not go that far, but he too was not satisfied that the full potential of Walker’s governorship was being fulfilled when the young political activist left Walker in 1975 after holding a series of posts in the administration.”

Tomorrow – Why did Pat Quinn leave the Dan Walker administration?

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Here’s a picture of Pat Quinn standing in the background as the man he replaced as Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, speaks. The photo was in an ad run by the Illinois Republican Party.

You’ve read what others thought of Patrick Quinn’s role in Dan Walker’s 1972 primary and general election gubernatorial campaigns.

Today, we look at what Taylor Pensoneau’s and Bob Ellis’ biography of Dan Walker heard from Quinn himself. It’s on page 356:

It “was entrepreneurial in every way. It changed the way candidates ran for office. The citizens coalition it flowered was was a truly unique happening, a rare moment in history for the iconoclasts, the mavericks and the independent thinkers to bloom.”

Tomorrow – Pat Quinn evaluates Dan Walker’s term as governor.

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The picture of Patrick Quinn is from another press conference during the Governor Rod Blagojevich ouster process.

In Taylor Pensoneau’s and Bob Ellis’ biography of Dan Walker, “Dan Walker, the Glory and the Tragedy” is information on how Governor Pat Quinn apparently got his start in electoral politics.

Besides his primary election role, there is a bit about what he did in the 1972 General Election campaign.

On page 168, Quinn is described as

“the hard driving Patrick Quinn, by then campaign director for southwestern Illinois.

“…people like Quinn were supposed to be paid,” according to Steve McCurdy, but “I doubted it because there did not seem to be any money.” He said Quinn “ate” his expenses.

“Quinn was an interesting case,” the authors explain, “if only because of the unusually strong impression he made on those he encountered and because of his frenetic activism in Illinois pubic life in the years to follow.

“The living room of the Kolker home in East St. Louis provided free sleeping quarters for Quinn…

“Thinking back Sue Kolker recalled that ‘Quinn seemed to be everywhere at once, soothing the Walker to keep them going and yet trying to play games with the regulars by telling them the Walker effort was no longer completely independent. So serious and still humorous about it all, I never saw a politician work harder. He only slept a few hours a night.”

Tomorrow – The 1972 campaign in Pat Quinn’s word.

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The photo is of Governor Pat Quinn on his first day in office after he took over form impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich.

In Taylor Pensoneau’s and Bob Ellis’ biography of Governor Dan Walker, the two write of what Pat Quinn did in college.

On page 169 appears a sentence fragment about now Governor Pat Quinn’s college days:

“…he holder of an economics degree from Georgetown University, where he made Phi Beta Kappa, was sports editor and a columnist for the college paper, The Hoys, and attended every anti-Vietnam War War protest he could.”

Tomorrow – What Quinn did in the Dan Walker’s 1972 General Election campaign.

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The photo is of Patrick Quinn during the run-up to the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich. Quinn was still Lt. Governor.

In their biography of former Governor “Dan Walker, the Glory and the Tragedy,” Taylor Pensoneau and Bob Ellis, write of the role of Pat Quinn in the 1972 primary election campaign.

Quinn first appears in a couple of sentences about the primary election on page 139 of the biography:

“Populous Madison County obviously posed special problems for the Walker campaign in regard to organizing and other tasks.

“Consequently, several weeks before the primary, a 23-year old Chicagoan who had become a top troubleshooter for the campaign, Patrick Quinn, was dispatched to Madison.

“Almost overnight, the tireless Quinn pulled off a headquarters opening and galvanized scores of impressionable college students to go to bat for Walker.”

Tomorrow – What Quinn Did in College?

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The photo of Patrick Quinn was taken right after he was sworn in as Governor of Illinois, replacing impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich.