Who Is Pat Quinn?

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Dec 11, 2008 9:10PM

Today, following-up on his somewhat awkward Tuesday press conference in which he kinda sorta said Governor Blagojevich should step aside, Lt. Governor Pat Quinn has finally gone all-in and called for impeachment proceedings to begin against Blagojevich. In a press conference this morning, Quinn said, "I don't think the Legislature next week should fail to address the issue of impeachment and should move forward immediately. If they don't, they won't be listening to the voters." Quinn's more aggressive assertion today seems to be based around his desire to move into the Governor's role so he can name a successor to President-Elect Obama in the U.S. Senate, citing that a special election would be time-consuming as well as costly.

So who is Pat Quinn, the Man Who Would Be Governor? The Sun-Times ran a profile of Quinn today that tossed around the following words and phrases to describe him:

• "demagoguery"
• "mellowed"
• "a whirlwind of energy"
• "organizational style is eccentric"

Hmmm. Lucky for us, it wasn't that long ago that our own Kevin Robinson had the chance to talk with Lt. Gov. Quinn. Among the nuggets we discovered was how he got his start in Illinois politics:

Passing petitions. I came back from college, and I believe in grassroots democracy, and there was a campaign for governor, and the first thing I did was I passed petitions to get the candidate on the ballot

his support of allowing voters to put propositions on the ballot:

So yes, unequivocally I support initiative. I’m the biggest supporter of direct democracy in Illinois. I think the voters are for it, but a lot of elected officials in the legislature I think unfortunately haven’t embraced it.

and taxes:

The biggest problem with Illinois right now is that it has a regressive tax code.

One of the more interesting segments - his thoughts on becoming governor - is after the jump.

C: Have you ever considered running for Governor?

PQ: No. No I haven’t.

C: Why not?

PQ: Because I like this job. [Leans forward and picks up a book off the coffee table.] Paul Simon, right below you there, that’s the book. He was an excellent public servant in my opinion. His daughter gave me one of his bowties. [Holds up the bowtie] And Paul Simon was Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. That was his only executive office his whole life. He was State Rep, State Senator, US Congressman, US Senator, and also Lieutenant Governor. And he did that job well. I was in college when he got started, he got sworn in, and he said he wanted to be an ombudsman. I didn’t exactly know what that word meant, so I looked it up. It means the people’s person in Swedish. So that’s what I want to be, in his footsteps. I think this job, you can be the people’s person. This term I intend to really speak out on grievous problems in Illinois. Utility issue we talked about, the tax reform issue, I think ethics is another area that Illinois needs serious improvement in.

I ran against George Ryan for Secretary of State in 1994. I lost the election, but I didn’t lose my conscience. I said all the things that were going wrong there. And they came true, well, they all were proved true, let’s put it that way. They were already true, and people found out about them. So I think the election of 2002 was the voters sending a message to clean up the mess of state government, and I don’t think that’s complete. I believe we need campaign finance reform, and the practice of contractors being able to give campaign money to politicians who issue contracts to them. I think we need stronger whistleblower laws at the local level. The state law, we have one, I was involved in getting that passed, but we need one for every local unit of government, including the CTA and RTA, and all the other TA’s out there. And I also think we should have a law that prohibits utilities from making contributions. They’re supposed to be public utilities and they’re running around, acting in their own interest. Those are some of the ethics reforms I’ll be pushing this year.