Chancellor Janet Gooch sits down with former Congresswoman and UIS alumna Cheri Callahan Bustos for a conversation about authentic leadership as part of the Chancellor’s Thinkers Series on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. Gooch and Bustos discuss what it means to lead with purpose, stay true to yourself, and build trust with the people around you. Bustos draws on her experiences in public service, journalism, and community advocacy to share her perspective on the importance of authenticity in leadership.
Melissa Snider:
Today on Community Voices, an event you might have missed, the University of Illinois Springfield's Chancellor's Thinkers Series from September 15, 2026. Chancellor Janet Gooch talks with former Illinois State Representative Cheri Bustos, a graduate of the Public Affairs Reporting or PAR program at UIS.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Let's kick this off. You've led across journalism, public service, and community advocacy. As you've moved between those different environments, what has remained constant about who you are as a leader and what have you had to do to evolve?
Cheri Bustos:
Okay, so I'm going to start by giving a shout out to UIS. It's actually pretty easy. And so interestingly, did anybody go to college, got your degree, realize that wasn't the best degree? And you didn't really want to do what you got that degree in. So that actually happened to me as an undergrad. So I majored in government and politics, and I went to University of Maryland undergrad. You know, sometimes you can learn what you don't love through internship programs. So I interned with the Illinois State Senate. I was in an office all day long analyzing bills. I come from a political family, but I realized it wasn't the policy analysis that I liked. at age 21. I get done with this internship program and I'm like, shoot, this is what I thought I would want to do. And I didn't. I just knew it was a terrible fit. It was actually my sister, Lynn Callahan Ridley, who's here also, Lynn, raise your hand, who had heard about the public affairs reporting program. She had a friend who had gone through that. And so I ended up applying, what was at the time, does everybody remember what I was saying, I'm in State University, got accepted. And I will tell you, Chancellor, that was a perfect fit for me. Everything about me, I just felt like I was made to be a journalist and really made to even cover public affairs because I had that government and politics background. I'd been around politics my whole life. The public affairs reporting program, the PAR program, I consider that my foundation through all four of my careers now. I think if you can write If you know how to communicate, that will serve you well in really, it's kind of like whatever you do. But to your question, that through line of being able to write, being able to communicate, I feel like I have a relentless level of curiosity, which served me well as being a journalist. So 17 years as a journalist, I would have stayed as a journalist probably the rest of my career had the state of journalism not begun to deteriorate even back in 2001. I had survived 3 rounds of layoffs at the newspaper where I worked. Out of the blue, I get this offer to run corporate communications for a health system because I did profiles of the new CEO of this health system. They offered me this job and I told the president who called me, I'm like, no thank you. So I go home that night and I tell my husband, hey, the health system offers me this job to run communications. And he said, what did you say? And I said, I told him, no, thank you. I was happy in my job. And he said, you know, you will never retire from that newspaper. you will be laid off at some point. And I probably would have. I know. So I end up taking this job. Again, if I didn't know how to write, if I didn't have UIS, but the background in public affairs reporting, I would have never gotten that job. I do that for 10 years. We're lucky enough to have a CEO who encourages his senior team to get involved in the community. I end up running for city council. of East Moline, Illinois. I'm on the city council. I won a competitive race for that. Was in my second term on the city council when our region elected a guy whose major focus of being a member of Congress was to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. I'm working in health care. I understand health care really well. I know that the Affordable Care Act was not a perfect piece of legislation, but I also know that we were on an unsustainable path in America. There was only one thing in America where prices were going up more than health care at that time. This would have been in 2010. Does anybody know what it was? There was one thing going up, what? Higher education. That's exactly right. That was the only thing where the price was going up faster than health care. So we were on this unsustainable path. Prices were going up, but results, patient outcomes weren't getting better. And he wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which was at least an attempt to get this in a better place. I was already an elected official on a very low level. And then on a very personal level, my sister and I had one brother who was the oldest of our siblings, and he got this rare form of cancer. And while he had insurance, he was a coach at Southern Illinois University. He had good insurance and everything, but it wouldn't cover the care that his doctor said he needed to stay alive. So my sister, my parents at the time, who have passed, but my parents and I, and then we did fundraisers, we helped pay his medical bill so his wife and two kids didn't have to go through bankruptcy. He dies within a week of that election. So I had a personal reason, I had a professional reason, and so I end up running for Congress. Again, I wouldn't have been able to be in that position had it not been for the PAR program, UIS, being a journalist, running corporate communications for health system, and then ended up running, defeated a sitting member of Congress. And then I was reelected 5 times. I was a Democrat in a Trump district. Politically pretty hard. It just meant that every two years I had a really, really tough election. I was on the House floor on January 6th. And so for my family, that was their last straw. It was like, okay, by Washington standards, you're young enough to have another career. Now by other standards, not so much. But so we made a family decision that I wasn't going to run for reelection. I leave office in January of 2023, and then we start Mercury Illinois. Mercury is part of a bigger public affairs operation, but we started Mercury Illinois then again, you can't do public affairs and advocate for causes, et cetera, without that through line. So I would just say, Chancellor, that, yeah, I mean, there's a through line that like you got the foundation and you just keep building on that. And I would say what motivated me as a journalist motivated me doing corporate communications and in Congress and in what I do today.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Great story. All right, so we hear the phrase authentic leadership. We hear it a lot. But authenticity can mean a lot of different things to different people. What does authentic leadership mean to you and how do you know when you are practicing it?
Cheri Bustos:
Well, you know, I just think that you don't change who you are depending on what setting you're in. And I will tell you, politically, has anybody here ever run for office? What's your office? School board. School board.
Gregg Bagel Johnson:
State legislature.
Cheri Bustos:
State legislature. So when you're talking with a group of students or with your constituents, you don't change that message. We have a saying in our family, know everything you talk about, but don't talk about everything you know. And it is a great way to live your life. But that said, you don't change your message from one audience to the next. And just like I believe the same thing in leadership, I see some people who might have been old enough to have been over at the state capitol at some point back when they used to have elevator operators? So you remember that? Do you remember also they would have that stand where they would sell, I don't know, back in the day, probably cigarettes and cigars and candy and that? So this goes back to like being a little girl when my dad was also a newspaper reporter. He wrote a political column. He worked at the state journal register, which back in the day was they had the register and they had the journal. And so we would go with him over to the Capitol. Then he was a deputy press secretary for a couple governors. And we would ride up in the elevator. He knew the elevator operators' names. He knew the names of the people who sold the cigarettes and the candy. He knew the people who would come in and empty the trash can when he was there late. He knew all of their names. He knew who they were. And he didn't treat them any differently than he did the governor. or then he did the lieutenant governor or the state treasurer or the secretary of state or the US senator. So there's a couple things about that, you treat people well, whether it's somebody serving you food at Saputo's where we had supper last night, whoever it is, you know their name, you know who they are, you treat them well no matter who they are. So that was one thing we learned. But the other thing was when we were around people in power, We also weren't intimidated by them. When I was elected to Congress or covering elected officials, I never ever felt intimidated by people who had higher titles or even people who viewed themselves as self-important. And so I think that's part of authentic leadership. You don't change depending on what group you're in front of. and you're respectful to whether it's the person working at the snack bar or the governor of the state of Illinois. Can I throw that question back to you? I mean, you're in all settings. You're with students, you're with prospective students, you're with parents. You've got your board, and I guess I'd throw that back at you as somebody who's made it all the way up to the chancellor's position. What is authentic leadership to you?
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
I think it is about holding true to your values, right? To me, in this role, the university and our mission is the most important thing to me as a leader. Everything that I do, the decisions that I make are centered around that. I think it's being able to explain that when you're talking to people at all levels, right? every constituent. We're here to see students graduate. We're here to see students get valuable careers. We're here to see students develop into whole people. And that needs to be at the core of my decision making and my message to everyone, whether it's staff, students, faculty, alumni, you know, people in the community.
Cheri Bustos:
So it's like you have your North Star and that is there no matter what.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Exactly, right? That's authenticity. It's not only showing up when things are good. It's about taking responsibility, accountability, all of that. I think we're on the same page.
Cheri Bustos:
Yeah, I agree.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Trust is difficult to build and remarkably easy to lose. From your experience in public life, what behaviors matter most when a leader is trying to build genuine trust, particularly with people who may not agree with you?
Cheri Bustos:
Well, I think, first of all, being true to your word, back to what we were saying before, you don't tell one person something and another person something else. never lie. My first beat that I had at the newspaper where I worked was the police beat. If you want to talk about a group that can be hard to build trust with. they're naturally untrusting of people because they had to deal with all walks of life. And since that was my first beat, I was darn sure to make sure that I built good sources and I wasn't ever going to burn anybody. If you were not to reveal a source, you didn't even tell your editor who that source was. If somebody says, this cannot get out, you better make sure that doesn't get out. So I think that is point #1. The same thing is true in politics. If you give somebody your word that you're going to vote for it is, you better make sure that you're voting for that bill. I have a really interesting story. So in Congress, when you're running for a leadership position, that is voted on by your caucus. So it's your fellow, in my case, your fellow Democrats who vote. And when you're running for a position, you have a grid. Like I've run for positions, I've been on whip teams. So there's this guy, Frank Pallone, who is from New Jersey. He is chair of And now he's the lead Democrat, but if Democrats win back the majority in the midterms, he will be chair again of a very high-powered committee called Energy and Commerce. Like major legislation goes through that. He asked if I would serve on his whip team. So that meant helping him gain support. And you learn a lot when you've got colleagues who are afraid to be a yes or a no. Another saying I have is no is the second best answer because you don't want to keep going back to people. You don't want to, well, let's talk next week, or I'm not sure, or even if they say, I'm gonna be for you, but I'm not gonna tell anybody, you put them in the no column. And so I was on his whip team, which meant I was public, I was gonna support him. And there was a woman from California who was running against him. She never gave me the time of day. At this point, I was in my second term. and she was running against him. So she calls me and it goes to voicemail. I'm in the middle of something and I call her back and she starts asking for my support. And I said, hey, I don't want to waste your time because I know you got a lot of calls to make, but I do want to let you know I'm supporting Frank. And she goes, why did you call me back? And I said, I return every phone call. I thought it would be more important for you to know that I'm supporting Frank rather than leave you wondering. So votes on the House floor got called right after that conversation. I was in another building. I go on the House floor and to the point I made before, I didn't even think she knew who I was. She must have had like a sheet that showed my picture that she needed to contact me and I'm walking on the floor and she said, hey Sherry, I wanted to talk with you about my rent. I'm like, we just spoke on the phone. That was me. Again, so many life lessons about trust, being true to your word, getting back to people. And I see some of the students in here that I met with earlier, but one of the things that I think is really, really important, and I would have like 5 pieces of advice that I would always share with young people when I'd go and talk to high schools or whatever. And I would always say, these are five things that don't take any talent. Things like be nice, don't waste your lunch hour, which meant don't sit at your desk and eat a sandwich. Go get to know somebody. But one of them is do what you say you're going to do. I don't care what age you are. That's the thing that most people get wrong. For every one thing that I was able to do when I was in office, my scheduler would say there were probably 10 to 15 things that I couldn't do. And so once we committed to something, it was very, very important that even if a better offer came along, that we still did the thing that we said we were going to do. That will serve you well no matter what. And that's part of trust as well.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Yes. And I really appreciated what you said in your story about coming out and just saying, I'm supporting the other candidate. Because I think part of authentic leadership is having people know where you do stand and not leaving that ambiguity, right? Because if you don't come right out and say, people will wonder. So coming out, whether even if it is a no.
Cheri Bustos:
And that can be hard. I mean, worry about hurting somebody's feelings? Do you worry, what is that going to mean long term? What would have happened if that person won the chairman's job? Well, you know, she wasn't going to do me any favors anyway. I don't always choose right, but I will tell you this, in politics, if people will tell you the truth, even if it's something you don't want to hear in the end, I certainly appreciate that.
Melissa Snider:
That was UIS Chancellor Janet Gooch talking with former Illinois State Representative Cheri Bustos. We'll be back with more from the Thinker series, Community Voices 91.9 UIS.
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Melissa Snider:
Community Voices, an event you might have missed. University of Illinois Springfield's Chancellor Janet Gooch speaking with former Illinois State Representative Cheri Bustos. part of the Chancellor's Thinkers series from September 15th, 2026.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
All right, authenticity sounds easy when our values and the expectations around us align. Can you talk about a moment when staying true to yourself or your values carried a professional or a personal cost?
Cheri Bustos:
I was an investigative reporter at the time. I was doing an in-depth piece that I had committed a lot of time to, and it involved criminals. I was working with an organization that gave me access to people who were felons but were trying to get their life in a good place. So this program gave me access. I sat in on discussions. I talked to them one-on-one. It was going to be like this really good story. Out of the blue, this program was part of a parent organization. The parent organization found out that I was going to all these meetings and the people who gave me permission got in big trouble and were going to get fired for giving me this permission. So I thought about was it worth it for me to do this story when these people innocently gave me the permission to talk to these people? And it was going to be a pretty good story. And I made a unilateral decision. I didn't go to my editors at the time. I just said, I don't want these people to lose their job. And I thought if I could approach the story in another way without them losing their job. because they had really bent over backwards to be helpful to me. And so I told them on the spot that I was going to drop the story. My editor was furious with me. He said, you know what time you've invested in this? And I said, I know, but I said, I don't feel right doing this. And so at the paper, yeah, it probably hurt me I guess he could have fired me for doing that, but I knew he wasn't going to fire me. I was a good reporter and I thought it was the honorable way to handle that. I thought it was the right way. I thought it was the ethical way to handle it. I can look back at it and actually see it either way. I know that had I made the decision to go with that story, it would have been one story that would have been forgotten at some point and these people would have lost their jobs and I just didn't think that was right.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Sounds good.
Cheri Bustos:
How about you? Can I throw that back at you? I'll play reporter for a second because it's a great question.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
It is a great question. I think one of the best examples I can come up with, without having thought about this, because this was your question. I was in kind of a middle management role at the university chair level. And we had a student who won a rather significant state award. that later we found out maybe didn't deserve that award. And it was to the point where this was going to go very public at a state convention. And I knew the information associated with why she did not deserve the award. And she was supposed to be backed by the department chair, who was me. And so it was quite contentious at the faculty level because there was the attitude, oh, no one will ever, you know, no, that's not going to be known. And I was like, I would rather not take this risk. I think we should, like you said, do the right thing, withdraw the nomination. I'll have a conversation with the student. But it really divided the faculty. We couldn't come to a unanimous decision, but as the department chair, I felt that it was the best.
Cheri Bustos:
So ultimately it was your decision to make.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Yes, it was. And it was, like I said, it was difficult because I knew that there were faculty who were going to possibly begrudge me. I just said, look, these are the reasons why. Thinking forward, I would rather not have this be the news bite.
Cheri Bustos:
Yeah
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Yeah, we need to do the right thing here.
Cheri Bustos:
And you did the right thing.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Well, I think it was the right thing at the time. It was just an unpopular thing. And it certainly put me in a position where there were faculty members who had been in the program longer than me, and I just had to.
Cheri Bustos:
Yeah, but the buck stops with you.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Exactly. And I think that's a part of being a leader, right? You have to make the hard decisions along with those that are easy. It's easy to make decisions when everyone's unanimous.
Cheri Bustos:
Yep, absolutely. It's harder when they're not.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Exactly. All right, this is for our student audience. Any emerging leaders, we have, I'm sure, some out there who are still trying to develop their voice. What advice would you give about finding that voice without feeling pressured the version of a leader that someone else expects you to be? I think
Cheri Bustos:
that's a great question. Well, first of all, I will say that as you are going through your education and as you start entering the workforce and you'll have your first job, you may question whether you know all you need to know to be good at it. There's always that concern how good you're going to be at your profession. There's also going to be opportunities that will come your way in your profession and you will be in a position where you can make a decision. Am I going to raise my hand for this opportunity or am I a little afraid because I don't know everything about that? And I think the main thing that I would encourage is to say yes to things that scare you before you can talk yourself out of it. I used to not say yes to a lot of stuff because I can look back and say I had a fear of failure. I wanted to make sure that whatever it was I was going to go for that I could do. When I made that decision that I was going to say yes to something that was scary, I just figured I will figure it out by the time what I have to execute will come about. I just think the best piece of advice that I can give you is do say yes to those things. Something that helped me a lot, I know when I was considering running for office, I was having a really hard time figuring out how was I going to manage this. I had to quit my job because when you run for Congress, it's a full-time job. My husband's a police officer, so I was the major earner in my family, so I was like, how am I going to afford to do this? My husband wasn't overly crazy about the idea of me running. I had genuine concern about running for Congress. One was, am I going to be able to understand all these very complicated issues? genuinely I was thinking, I don't know if I can figure that out. And I remember expressing this concern to my father and he said, you are smarter than most people in Washington. Now, I don't know if that was true. And then he said, and I never want to hear you say that again. You can manage everything that comes your way. So whoever that person is in your life who will say something like that to you as you are navigating your careers and as you are taking that first job, as you are moving up in your careers, it is really important to have those kind of people in your lives. I needed that. was really, really important to me. Realizing that I needed to say yes, that was me. That was me figuring that out, that I said no to a lot of things that I could look back on and go, God, why did I say no to that? I just should have done it. And once I made that decision, it changed my life. Believe me, if I hadn't made that decision, I never would have run for Congress, ever. And so that is my advice to the younger people here, is have encouraging people in your life and say yes to things that are scary but ethical. Make sure they're ethical.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
That disclaimer. Yeah. And your answer, Sherry, reminds me of a conversation that we had in the preparation for this. And one of the things that I talked about with Sherry was the idea of vulnerability and how that played into leadership and how being vulnerable has a space in leadership. And that's important to not act like you know it all if you don't and to reach out for help. Look to people who are on your team to help you make decisions because you're not always going to be right in and of yourself. So I would definitely agree with everything that Sherry says because that's my motto too, say yes. It's way easier to say no than it is to say yes in a lot of circumstances. But if you're not completely confident, that's okay because I think that there are people out there who can help you even when you don't know. And sharing that you don't know can be a power in and of itself.
Cheri Bustos:
And I appreciated you bringing that up because I think I don't know if that's natural for you to be vulnerable. I will say for me, that is not easy. And part of that is when you are You know what, though? I can't really compare this because you're the chancellor of a university. I mean, like you're out there all the time and you're going to have people look at you and be critical and wonder and all that kind of stuff. But as an elected official.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
As a member of Congress, I think you were in the same.
Cheri Bustos:
Well, no, but what I'm saying, though, is it is really hard for me to show vulnerability. It is to this day. we now have our Mercury, Illinois office. We have 25 people and we built this from nothing three years ago. I always want to kind of display strength and that we're going to be great. And I saw a couple athletes here. Raise your hand if you're an athlete. Yeah. You know, look, I mean, you always want to show your teammates too that you got it together. And I don't know, I carry that over. I played college basketball and volleyball. I think sports is also one of the greatest foundations you can have. Don't you win 5Ks, by the way? Aren't you like a champion 5K runner?
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
No.
Cheri Bustos:
Yes, you are.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
That's for another day.
Cheri Bustos:
Oh my gosh, I'm so jealous. I wish I could run a marathon. But I really do think that is really hard for me and I admire you that you're able in a position like you're in that you can show vulnerability.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Yeah, thanks. I think the lesson that I've learned from that is that, if you are constantly this face of assuredness and confidence, people have a hard time coming to you with their vulnerabilities.
Cheri Bustos:
That's a great point.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
It's hard for them to ask you for help if they think you never need it.
Cheri Bustos:
That is my takeaway from today.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Okay.
Cheri Bustos:
It really is. I think that is a great point. And you didn't say that when we were talking earlier, but I think that's a great point.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Okay, good.
Cheri Bustos:
Especially for people starting in your careers. I think that's a great point. Not everybody in the audience is starting their career. I'm just guessing. Just guessing.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
I think that's true.
Melissa Snider:
And you have been listening to Community Voices, a production of NPR on 91.9 UIS. The Thinkers series from September 15th, 2026. UIS Chancellor Janet Gooch interviews former Illinois State Representative Cheri Bustos. More when we get back.
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Melissa Snider:
And we're back with more on Community Voices with an event you might have missed. The University of Illinois Springfield's Chancellor's Thinkers Series from September 15, 2026. Chancellor Janet Gooch talks with former Illinois State Representative Cheri Bustos, a graduate of the Public Affairs Reporting or PAR program at UIS.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Okay, I'm going to ask you one more and then maybe we'll open it up to the audience. I think this is a good one because of the number of people that you've interacted with over your career. When you think about some of the most effective leaders you've known, what made their leadership feel authentic rather than performative?
Cheri Bustos:
The people who want others to succeed around them is really, really important to me. I'll be 65 next month. I'm not gonna be one of those people who die in whatever I'm doing. I've got 3 grandkids and three grown sons and I wanna enjoy all of that. I want the people to run what I'm running right now to be those who want to help others succeed, care about other people's success. That's what I love about sports to the athletes. We met with some of the female athletes earlier. So if you think about sports, if you play team sports especially, when one of your teammates is having a bad game, what do you do to help make sure that they know that was one game, we got another game in two days, and put that behind you? When you've got somebody who sits the bench and all of a sudden they're the player 6 and they get in the game and they have a turnover the first time they're handling the ball, come on, it's all right, it's all right. Just cheering other people on, those are the kind of people who I want to be around, who I want to have on our team, but that care about others' success. If you alone are successful, trust me, you didn't do that on your own. It is one way or another, it's a team sport, and you had other people who helped you get there.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Absolutely. Yeah, I agree that part of being a leader is being a mentor.
Cheri Bustos:
Absolutely, and taking the time to do that.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Absolutely, for sure. All right, why don't we turn it over to our audience. Ryan will walk around with the mic, and if you have a question, just raise your hand.
Speaker 1:
I thank you for coming here tonight. You've had a lot of experience that a lot of people in Congress haven't had because of your leadership that you were involved in, traveling around A lot. So why has Congress been so lame in not performing the decisive body of Congress that was intended for? They were to be the key of the three groups, and they haven't come close.
Cheri Bustos:
Well, look, I think the worst part of politics is how we've gerrymandered these districts. And so the vast majority of congressional districts in the entire country lean either very heavily Republican or very heavily Democrat, that no matter who comes out of those respective primaries, they're going to win the general election. And if you notice what's going on in the midterms right now, you even have people who are being outrighted and outlefted. And so the next session of Congress, you're going to have further extremes. The district that I represented for five terms was a swing district. There's none of those left in Illinois even right now. Nikki Budzinski is in one of the swingiest districts, but it still leans Democratic by several points. And so that gerrymandering really leads to more extremes. So I think that's number one. I think if we had more swing districts where the people who support you require you to get along with people on the other side of the aisle, it would be a lot better. I think we're in a bad place in America as far as these extremes. One of the more interesting questions was in a political science class, and this young man asked, why are there so many old people in Congress, and how can we get them out? And I said, vote. If your age group went to the polls in the same numbers that senior citizens go to the poll, that's how you get them out. And by the way, I don't know how I feel about term limits, but I will say that there are people who have overstayed their welcome. Look, Dick Durbin, I consider one of the best public servants the state of Illinois has ever had. I give him such credit for saying, you know what, I'm gonna leave office. And now we're going to have a new US senator. I think Juliana Stratton will likely win. And that's good. We'll have new ideas and all of that. But I give him a lot of credit for recognizing on his own that he was going to step aside.
Speaker 2:
Thank you all for being here tonight. You touched on the midterms a little bit. Are you making any predictions on the midterms? And more importantly, what do you think are the key factors that'll result in what your prediction is?
Cheri Bustos:
Again, I don't know people's political persuasions, so don't start throwing tomatoes at me. But even the best of the best political prognosticators are saying that Democrats are going to win back the House. You now have people who are very sophisticated at looking at this, thinking that Democrats could even win the Senate. There was a story in the New York Times today that looked at the top political prognosticators who are saying Democrats could hold 50 to 51 seats in the Senate. Obviously, if there's 50, Vance will break any tie, because it's the vice president who breaks any tie. If there's 51, then that's the majority. Most votes in the Senate still require 60, but there are certain votes where I think it's even like Supreme Court just require 51, right? Correct? I'm looking at Brent. I think that's right. I should know that. But what the story today in the New York Times is saying is that Democrats could have 230, 232 in the House. You need 218 to be in the majority. That's A 20-vote margin. Thank you. That's why I was a writer, not a mathematician. So to that point, the Democratic socialists who have won, who are already saying they will not vote for Hakeem Jeffries for speaker, He could afford to lose, you have to have 218. Is that right? Wait, whatever the math is. But he can afford to lose historic. I was elected the same year as Hakeem. He and I are in the same class. We also were elected to go into House leadership as co-chairs of what's called policy and communications. So we're close and it would be historic in that he would be the first black speaker of the House in American history, just like Nancy Pelosi was the first woman, first and only woman. Hakim right now is the Democratic leader. He has working groups. So HR1, House Resolution #1, is typically what sets the agenda for who's ever in the majority. So I think it will have something to do with money in your pocket, money out of politics. I think that will be a theme Young people are hurting right now. The fact that they can't afford to buy a house to what's the average age of new home buyers now? 40. I mean, think about that. What was I? 26 when I bought my first house. I think it will be focusing on younger people so they can afford to live a better life. That said, it's also going to be around oversight. Businesses who are ripping off American taxpayers, ripping off the people have cheated. They're going to be in the oversight crosshairs. You're going to have Jamie Raskin as chair of judiciary, and I can tell you that guy's a bulldog.
Randy Eccles:
You were talking about the breakdown of the journalism model all the way back in 2001, and it's gotten worse. And now there's also the FCC coming down on media organizations news. What can we do legislatively? What can we ask our leaders to do to make journalism what it should be and hold people accountable?
Cheri Bustos:
there's got to be an economic model for journalism to work. So you've got ProPublica now, that is a nonprofit investigative journalism arm. The Sun-Times now is nonprofit. I don't know exactly what the structure is. It will require, if people want to contribute to those causes, try to support that financially. And so my husband and I typically will go out on Friday nights for, whether it's pizza, beer, now I like martinis. And then we'll go home afterwards and we'll go up where we listen to records. And in our little record room, we also have all of our books. And you guys know what the Illinois Blue Books are? Okay, none of the students did. But it's like the history of government in Illinois, right? And our Blue Books go back to 1960. But anyway, so I pull out the one from 1960 and they have a list in there of all of the newspapers in Illinois. The list of newspapers was several small print, several pages long. They had the daily newspapers listed and the weekly newspapers listed. And it's like, oh my God, it's just heartbreaking because who's keeping an eye on all of the forms of government that we have in Illinois? So I don't, look, I think journalism is the greatest profession in the world. I loved every moment of my career and it breaks my heart because nobody's keeping an eye on what you know is corruption out there. Thank you for your question. And there's going to have to be some changes to help make sure that journalism somehow survives.
Trinity Miles:
Hi, I do agree with you when you say that journalism is the best Hi, my name is Yavia. I am on the Observer. That's the school newspaper. And I do have a question for you. What advice would you give to communications or journalism students that want to work in media or public relations?
Cheri Bustos:
Well, you got to figure out how you're going to make a living, right? I mean, it's kind of like, question, we've got to make sure journalism can thrive. There are organizations that are hiring young people to work in newsrooms. This is under a nonprofit model. And take a look at those where you will get paid for those. The PAR program, do they still pay? Are you in the PAR program? Do you know about the PAR program? So here at University of Illinois at Springfield is a program called the Public Affairs Reporting Program. Did we get paid while we interned? So you get your master's degree in journalism and public affairs reporting, and you get partnered with a news organization that covers the state legislature, that covers state government at the state capitol building, and you get paid while you're doing that. So you've got to look for organizations like that. And if you're good at your craft, and I think if you're a good writer, there will always be jobs for you, because most people are not good writers. I don't know, does anybody have any great ideas of how we can make sure journalism survives? Like we should all get together and figure it out. Sir?
Speaker 3:
Yes, I would love if someone had the solution there, but I have a slightly different tact that I'm going to take. First of all, I represent the faculty union here on campus, so all of our tenure track and non-tenure track faculty, and I just want to extend a sincere thank you for not crossing our picket line back in April because I think that shows true authenticity from your background as a Democratic elected official. And I wanted to just come back to the notion of authentic leadership and specifically the kind of crux of what happens when you have the buck stops here mentality when you're in a leadership role versus knowing when to be contrite. And what I mean by that is not the same thing as the vulnerability that you were talking about before, but recognizing when you were wrong, even if you had to make a difficult decision, owning up to it so that the organization that you lead can then proceed from there. So being able to be contrite in a situation where you realize you may be Yeah.
Cheri Bustos:
I had to change my vote on two different matters when I was in elected office. I shouldn't say I had to. I did because I was wrong on a piece of legislation that we actually introduced out of our office. And I'll give you a quick history on it. Minor league baseball, they had a model for how they paid their players. and they didn't pay him very much. But their argument to me was that if they changed that model, they could not survive in these smaller markets. And we had a minor league team in the Quad Cities. It was in the Iowa Quad Cities, but still it was a minor league team. And so we sat down with some folks and they said, this is a survivability thing for our franchises. We didn't do our due diligence and Talk with the players. Back to supporting the workers. Now keep in mind, I've never crossed a picket line in my life, nor would I. am very pro-labor. I had a near 100% pro-labor voting record when I was in office. And so we introduced this legislation, it blows up. Like I got beaten up like crazy. And on day one, when I heard the arguments for why this was bad legislation, I told our team, I'm like, we're not going there. Take this thing out. Like this was a bad idea and it was bad to have my name associated with it. So it was literally introduced, withdrawn. It was like a 24 or 48 hour process. And that was basically, we just didn't do our homework and didn't get that right. But that's pretty embarrassing. Like to this day, if you Google minor league baseball and Sherry Bustos, you will find that story. And every time I cringe about it because it was such an unforced error. Speaking of sports, it was an unforced error.
Trinity Miles:
Hello, my name is Trinity. I'm a freshman here at UIS.
Cheri Bustos:
Trinity Miles.
Trinity Miles:
Yes, Trinity Miles. I have a question. How do you practice, well, most times we see that unethical leadership is honestly most effective. How do you practice and study leadership to find what's actually effective while also protecting your authentic and ethical self?
Cheri Bustos:
Okay, so I'm gonna repeat a conversation that we had in the bathroom. And I said, well, have you been in positions where it's been hard for you to be authentic? And she said that sometimes you're not sure if you want to ask the question because you don't necessarily want somebody to think that you don't know that you don't know. And I said, I guarantee you, if you ask the question, there are other people that are wondering the same thing. So I do. I do believe that phrase that we also say in journalism, there's no such thing as a stupid question. There's nothing wrong with asking that. To me, that is a sign of authenticity, right? That you ask something that you're not sure, well, maybe other people know the answer to that. And I just, I think you're always better off asking. I always realized in my life that if I didn't ask the question and I made assumptions, that's where I got in trouble.
Gregg Bagel Johnson:
Thank you for being here. I'm Bagel Johnson, the new dean of public affairs and education. where PAR is housed. So 2 quick questions. One, I see UIS and my college in particular as being committed to the public good. What organization or group in Illinois should we partner with that we aren't already partnering with? And second, we have some amazing graduate students, say, in the PAR program. You have a firm. Do you need any interns?
Cheri Bustos:
So let's answer the internship program first. The classes I spoke with today, I passed out my business card liberally, and I told them we have an internship program. And I said, get your resume to me. But I'd love to officially partner with you for our internship program. We are public affairs. We do communications. We do, I call it government relations, but some people call it lobbying. It's such a dirty word. But We advocate for good causes. So the answer to that is yes, and I'd be happy to talk with you further about how we can make that look. We pay, I think it's $18.75 an hour or something like that. We have interns in the spring, in the summer, and in the fall. Sometimes, depending on where they are in their lives, sometimes we can even keep the interns. Much of our junior staff started as interns and then we've hired them to stay on with us. As far as who UIS should partner with, younger people who might not know enough about higher ed, what was the program, Ryan, that you were telling me about out of Decatur? Are they represented here today?
Ryan Bye:
I don't see Dr. Morris here, but yes, and Dr. Morris is an alum, the DCLI, Dawson Civic.
Cheri Bustos:
I love that idea because they're high school students, right? And are they high school students who might not otherwise know about what it means, like first generation college students? I love those kind of programs.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
We asked this question of all participants in the Chancellor's Thinker series. So it wouldn't be a Chancellor's Thinker series if I didn't ask you this question.
Cheri Bustos:
Okay.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
So what keeps you expanding your thinking and challenging your perspectives?
Cheri Bustos:
I would say I really am relentlessly curious about everything in life. I am now to the point where I don't read anything that is not a legitimate news source. I'm kind of boring in that I don't read fiction. I'll close with an example. Number one, every Saturday I did something called Supermarket Saturdays. Our congressional district was 14 counties, 7,000 square miles. 85% of the towns had 5,000 people or fewer. We would go to every Saturday, we'd go to grocery stores. Some of them were six aisles wide. So, you know, these were small. Some of them were bigger, the high Vs and et cetera. But we would walk the aisles and anybody who would make eye contact with me and wasn't rushing through with their kids And on a mission, I would say, my name is Sherry Bustos and I represent this area in Congress. I'll be flying out to Washington on Monday. What do you want me to know? And I would never lead them. I would never say, what do you think of Donald Trump? Or what do you think of the Affordable Care? I would never lead them. It was always open-ended. And I would almost not have to poll every election cycle because I did that every Saturday and I would know the first thing out of people's minds. I could chart it. I could go back and look at my notes and could chart, well, this election cycle, it was healthcare. This election cycle, it was never foreign policy, by the way. It just never was. But I could almost chart it. But that helped me understand what was top of mind. The second thing we did is I did something, it was called Sherry on Shift. So I would job shadow people. And it was mostly blue collar, hard, hard jobs. And you realize how much pride people take in their work, how hard some people's jobs are. And I did 130 of these over time. And I would wear whatever uniform it was. I sacked groceries. I worked at Hy-Vee. I was a UPS driver. I was a postal driver. I processed carp out of the Illinois River. I was a barge operator. I worked at a forge where people were working around this hot steel where it was 100 and some degrees inside. 130 of these. And I would always try to be out of earshot of their boss because I wanted to have a real conversation about their work, how they were treated. And I would always ask, what do you do for fun? Which was a much more polite way than to ask about their disposable income. And you just realize, again, how lucky many of us in this room are that we could take a family vacation every year, that we were able to go to college one way or another. That helped shape me and my votes and in my relationship. So I would say my answer, Chancellor, is keep talking to people be curious about people and help people. I felt like every day I walked into the newsroom, I could make a difference. I also felt like every day I walked into my congressional office, I could make a difference. And that is really, really important to me that I have that feeling, you know, one way or another, whatever my next career is. And I am writing a sitcom, so my next career might be being a sitcom writer. And I can tell you about that over our food.
Chancellor Janet Gooch:
Thank you.
Cheri Bustos:
Thank you, Chancellor. It was really enjoyable.
Melissa Snider:
And that was the Thinker Series from September 15, 2026. University of Illinois Springfield Chancellor Janet Gooch and former Illinois State Representative Cheri Bustos, a graduate of the PAR program at UIS. We would like to thank the University of Illinois Springfield for putting on this event, as well as the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Ryan Bye, for his assistance. We would also like to thank the UIS Office of Electronic Media for providing the audio. Community Voices 91.9 UIS.
Dialogue transcribed by Microsoft Speech Service, an AI feature of Microsoft Word. Reviewed by humans for readability and accuracy.
