Known throughout his career as a populist outsider, Pat Quinn, the political bomb thrower turned governor, has worked with the legislature since his ascension in 2009 to keep the state’s fiscal house from going up in flames. With one year under his belt as elected governor, Quinn is still struggling to craft a coherent message and artfully wield the power of the office.
Howard Dean, former presidential candidate and former national chairman of the Democratic Party, recently called Quinn “one of the most reform-minded governors in the country.” State policy has become more progressive under Quinn, with the abolition of the death penalty and passage of the Illinois Dream Act, which allows undocumented students to invest in college savings programs. Quinn also views the legalization of civil unions as a substantial victory. “Civil unions, that was something that is close to the governor’s heart — equality for all people,” says Brooke Anderson, a Quinn spokeswoman.
But the administration has sent mixed messages about civil unions. The Department of Children and Family Services ended contracts with Catholic Charities to administer foster care and adoption services after the religious organization said it wanted to refer couples in civil unions to other foster care and adoption providers. Meanwhile, the Department of Revenue originally said couples in civil unions could not file joint state tax returns because Illinois residents must file the state return the same way they file their federal paperwork, and the federal government does not recognize civil unions. The department recently backtracked, however, and now requires couples in civil unions to file as married couples using a model created in New York, which legalized same-sex marriage this year.
Quinn often touts his ability to keep businesses in the state. Since he took office in 2009, he has spearheaded deals with Ford, Navistar, Continental Tires and Groupon to remain in Illinois or expand operations here. “When I became governor, we had one shift at our Ford plant in Illinois. We have three shifts now,” Quinn said of his job-creating abilities on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. His most costly deal was inked with Motorola in May 2011. The state gave the company $10 million a year in tax credits over the next 10 years to stay in Illinois and create 3,000 new jobs.
Critics say that such incentive packages create an arms race between states — forcing them to give out bigger and better tax breaks to hang on to companies and jobs. “Sometimes, you’ve got tough decisions that need to be made to keep some businesses in the state,” Anderson says. She points to efforts such as the recent workers’ compensation overhaul that Quinn says improved the business climate for all employers.
When Quinn first stepped into the governor’s office, talk of a tax increase was already brewing. He advocated for an increase to the Earned Income Tax Credit for working low-income residents, and later campaigned on a 1-percentage-point increase in personal income taxes. However, after winning the general election, he signed a temporary tax increase that raised personal tax rates from 3 percent to 5 percent and corporate rates tax from 4.8 percent to 7 percent. The plan included none of the breaks he proposed for individuals. Quinn has again pushed for relief for individuals as part of a package of tax cuts for businesses, but his other goal of changing the state’s flat income tax to a tiered model would require a constitutional amendment.
Before the 2010 general election, the governor threw his support behind a concept called “Budgeting for Results,” which calls for budgeting decisions based on proven outcomes. It calls for the governor’s proposed budget to include only current revenues instead of planning on new revenue sources, such as a tax increase or fee hike that has not yet passed. However, Quinn waited to sign the new law until after he proposed his Fiscal Year 2012 budget, which included a borrowing plan and money from tax policy changes that had not been approved. “That will be the first point of difference with the governor and the legislature,” House Speaker Michael Madigan said after Quinn put forth a plan that included such funding.
Quinn took office in January 2009 in the wake of one of the most publicized Illinois scandals in recent memory. His predecessor was impeached and removed from office and has been convicted on 18 felony corruption charges and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Although Quinn was a breath of fresh air after Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s era of corruption and gridlock, his administration is not without its own ethical slips.
Quinn has drawn ire over his personnel decisions. Most recently, former DCFS director Erwin McEwen, whom Blagojevich had appointed, was accused of doing nothing while his mentor, George Smith, used his contracts with the agency to fleece the state by double billing for services, billing for services not completed and filing bogus expense reports. A report from the executive inspector general’s office found that Smith received millions in state grants that cannot be accounted for. The same report says that McEwen ignored “red flags” that DCFS employees raised about Smith and that he refused to cooperate with investigators. Quinn accepted McEwen’s resignation but did not comment on the reasons for his exit. He maintains that it would have been illegal for him to share any details of the report before it was made public. “We’re going to unearth all the information necessary to recoup that money. Part of my job is to clean up state government from top to bottom,” Quinn told NBC Chicago. But critics say the situation stems from a bigger issue of Quinn dragging his feet when it comes to replacing holdover appointments from the scandal-ridden administrations of Blagojevich and former Gov. George Ryan, who is currently serving time for corruption convictions. “Before he took office, one of the first things he should have done was demand the resignation of Blagojevich holdovers and then kept who he wanted to keep,” says Marengo Democratic Rep. Jack Franks, who is calling for hearings looking into Quinn’s handling of the McEwen situation. “Quinn has a history of keeping people on who are under a cloud.”
Franks says Quinn cannot seem to learn his lesson on controversial employment decisions, and that speaks to his ability to lead. “There’s no rational explanation whatsoever for doing this, except that he has done it in other cases.”
He adds: “I look at him as a guy who would probably be a pretty good shoe salesman but not the head of the company. Because he’s a pretty nice guy.”
Quinn inherited the state’s staggering deficit and corruption problems when he was thrust into the office — something he often points out to critics. Many lawmakers and Statehouse insiders were willing to cut him slack on early stumbles. The refrain went something like this: “His heart is in the right place, but is he cut out to be governor?” But as Quinn has recently taken to the bully pulpit instead of — according to some legislators — negotiating in earnest over contentious bills, the honeymoon period has quickly faded.
State Sen. Mike Jacobs, a Democrat from East Moline, tussled with Quinn over legislation that will allow Illinois’ two biggest utility companies to raise rates in exchange for grid investments and new so-called smart-grid technologies. Quinn came out publicly against the legislation, calling it a “bad bill” written by utility lobbyists to gouge customers in the name of innovation. Even before it passed, he vowed to veto it. As supporters tried to find the support to override his veto, Quinn launched a website that encouraged voters to call their state representatives and voice opposition to the plan. Speculation ensued that Quinn’s media trashing of the bill may have helped sponsors win their override because some fence-sitting lawmakers were unhappy with the governor so publicly throwing his weight around.
Quinn has long advocated for consumers and counts his role in the creation of the Citizens Utility Board, which also opposed the smart-grid legislation, as a highlight of his career. But Jacobs says Quinn’s brand of liberal grassroots advocacy is outdated. “I really believe that you have some of those politicians who were raised in the 1970s, who saw some [political] profit from fighting utility companies,” he says. “At this point, what I really see is the fight between the liberal left that is leftover from the ’60s and ’70s and the people who are trying to move this state forward.”
Quinn also clashed with supporters of a gambling expansion plan. They say he made no attempt to negotiate with them over the summer, instead opting to lay out his demands in a news conference about a week before lawmakers returned for their fall veto session. However, Quinn says he sat down with all interested parties and heard them out before weighing in on the issue.
Kent Redfield, an emeritus political science professor at the University of Illinois Springfield, says legislators underestimated Quinn’s resolve when it came to limiting gaming expansion. “I think a lot of people thought that he wouldn’t leave money on the table because of things he wanted to do in state government. But for the time being, he seems to be willing to do that.”
Skokie Democratic Rep. Lou Lang, a sponsor of the gaming legislation, tried to tweak frustrations with Quinn to assemble a veto-proof majority to pass a revamped plan. But the tactic didn’t work, and Lang’s bill did not even receive the simple majority it needed to pass in the House.
Quinn says it is his duty to act as “goalie” to protect the people from what he sees as bad policy, and that strategy has worked for him in the past. When the governor spoke to the news media against a bill that would have allowed Illinoisans to carry concealed firearms, the momentum behind the legislation petered out. “To allow concealed, loaded handguns in the possession of private citizens in public places will not enhance public safety in Illinois; it will not reduce violence. Indeed, it will increase violence,” Quinn said after vowing to veto the bill.
More than three decades ago, when Quinn was facing off with lawmakers and heading the organization known as the Coalition for Political Honesty, he embraced his adversarial relationship with the General Assembly. “If you've got a bill you want passed, I wouldn’t advise hiring me as your lobbyist,” Quinn told Illinois Issues in 1980. “I haven’t exactly endeared myself to the politicians in Springfield. … But sometimes it’s necessary to open some boils if you want to cure things.”
However, Anderson says Quinn the governor works well with the legislature on day-to-day issues. She says Quinn has signed more than 600 bills in the past year. “They don’t all get the kind of bombastic attention that gambling, for example, would get.” Anderson says Quinn has issued few vetoes because he works with lawmakers on bills throughout the process. According to the Illinois Legislative Research Unit, Quinn has averaged far fewer vetoes per year than the three governors who held the office before him: Blagojevich, Ryan and Jim Edgar. But only Edgar had a higher average of amendatory vetoes than Quinn. Quinn has used an amendatory veto on several occasions to completely rewrite legislation, but the legislature has yet to call any of those bills for a vote.
Lindsay Hansen Anderson, Quinn’s legislative director, said the governor’s past as a political rabble-rouser does little to make her job more difficult. “I am so surprised that it has as little impact as it does in the legislature.” She says the administration does run into problems with legislators if Quinn takes to the airwaves before he talks to legislators about a piece of legislation. “They know that we have good intentions,” Hansen Anderson says. “The challenge comes more when maybe we blindside them with blasting their bill, which we try to avoid doing.”
However, Redfield says that Quinn — and legislators’ opinions of him — have not changed much from that maverick of 30 years ago whose antics sometimes got results. Quinn famously spearheaded a push to stop lawmakers from collecting their pay at the beginning of their terms, and he led the charge to pass the 1980 Cutback Amendment, which drastically scaled back the number of lawmakers in the General Assembly. “There’s a sense in which it’s the same Pat Quinn with a lot of the pluses and minuses that people have known for years.”
Quinn declined an interview for this article, but his spokeswoman and top legislative staffer were available to answer questions.
David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, says Quinn has pulled back from media interviews in the past year — likely an effort to gain more control over his media presence. “It’s a product of being burned, but it is also a product of trying to manage his message.” Yepsen, who was previously a Statehouse reporter and political columnist for the Des Moines Register in Iowa, says Quinn’s tendency to shoot from the hip when dealing with the media is illustrative of his overall style in the office. “I think with Gov. Quinn, his media strategy reflects his entire governorship, which sometimes has a haphazard quality.” Yepsen adds: “He’s not some programmed blow-dried politician, and he’s kind of colorful. But that can drive press secretaries nuts and other politicians nuts.”
Redfield agrees that Quinn’s communication skills could use work. “He has kind of a communication style, a way of operating, that really goes back to his early politics. … In order to get attention, he had to be a bomb thrower and deal in media events and things to kind of get people to pay attention to his issues.” Redfield says Quinn is still struggling to find his stride. “He’s the elected governor now, and that certainly ought to be a huge plus. But it often seems like he hasn’t quite mastered the ability to use the office the way previous governors have.”
Illinois Issues, January 2012
