Former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar spoke to a crowd of EIU and Charleston community members about stories and lessons learned from his life and career in Illinois politics. 

He began by speaking on his past. Edgar’s family moved to Charleston when he was 3 years old. Edgar recalled the uniqueness of Charleston. 

“You had the best of both worlds, small community. People knew everybody; you didn’t have to worry about locking your doors,” Edgar said. “You had the advantage of the small town, but you had that advantage of a university that gave you an opportunity to have a broader vision of the world.” 

Edgar’s first foray into politics happened in the first grade in 1952. It was the presidential election between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, Edgar said. 

Eisenhower was a five-star general that oversaw Operation Overload, codename for the D-day invasion of Normandy, France. At the time of the 1952 election, Eisenhower was overseeing post war operations in Europe and serving as the president of Columbia University. 

Adlai Stevenson was the governor of Illinois at the time of the 1952 election.  

“I knew that Dwight Eisenhower was an army general, and any red-blooded American boy in 1952 would be for the army general, and I was for Eisenhower,” Edgar said. “That’s how I became a Republican.” 

Edgar worked with upperclassmen to convince his classmates to vote for Eisenhower, who ended up winning the school’s mock election. 

“I was so excited. I ran home, told my parents I helped Eisenhower win the school election,” he said. “That’s when I found out my parents were Democrats.” 

Edgar won his first election in the second grade when he was elected as a Red Cross representative. 

“Back then, we used to collect little things to send off to children in other countries that weren’t as fortunate as we were,” Edgar said.  

Throughout his primary school years Edgar served in many roles in student government.  During his run for vice president at the Lab school at EIU, existing from 1899-1974, he said learned two valuable lessons. 

“I learned more from losing an election than I did winning,” Edgar said. “I learned you can always lose, and one other thing I learned is I never wanted to lose again” 

Edgar arrived at EIU after spending his freshman year at Wabash College—an all-men’s school located in Crawfordsville, Indiana, about an hour west from Indianapolis. 

Coming back to Charleston, Edgar worked in a clothing store.  

“That’s how I got to know people,” Edgar said. “When I got ready to run for student body president, that’s how everybody knew me” 

Edgar was appointed to the student senate as the representative for the young Republicans.  

Edgar was charged with redistricting due to the amount of senators  

“What I learned in student government came back to help me later,” Edgar said. “Later on in the legislator, I worked on redistricting for the senate Republicans.” 

Once Edgar was in the position of student body president, he combated the curfew hours that were imposed on women living in the dorms. While the men weren’t imposed any hours at all, the women had to be in by 10 p.m. on a weeknight and by midnight on a weekend. 

The student senate worked with former University President Quincy Doudna and got a compromise. 

“We didn’t get a complete reversal of women hours, but we got steps,” Edgar said. 

The experience taught Edgar the importance of compromise, he said. 

“Compromise is not a dirty word. It’s I think the essence of an affective democracy,” he said. 

After his time at Eastern, Edgar received a legislative internship. 

“I got a chance to go to Springfield and work in the legislature” Edgar said. “I sat on the [senate] floor and kept a book on all the bills and would tell [the senate president] what staff recommendations were.” 

Afterwards Edgar became a staffer and chief aide to Speaker of the House William Robert Blair. 

Edgar was involved in the plan to create the Regional Transportation Authority.  

The RTA oversees the Chicago transit Authority whose buses and L trains serve Chicago, as well as Metra Commuter Rail and Pace Bus, both of which serve Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. 

In his first race for the 53rd district of the Illinois House of Representatives, Edgar finished third in the primary for the republicans. In this defeat, he said he learned another lesson on politics.  

“Elections aren’t only determined on who knows the most, who’s the smartest. It has a lot to do with who people know,” Edgar said. “There’s a phrase called retail politician—somebody who goes out and can really meet people.” 

Edgar didn’t take the defeat laying down instead deciding to keep working and supporting the Coles County Republican party. 

“When you lose, you can’t take your bat and ball and go home. Because there are no straight lines in life” Edgar said. “They asked me to be party treasurer.” 

Republicans won in a landslide in Coles County. 

“The day after the election, [party leaders] came up to me and said, ‘Next time there’s an opening you’re our guy,’” Edgar said. “Not because I knew state government but because I worked in the party and did my party chores.” 

The 1978 election saw Edgar win the 53rd district seat. 

While in office, he was offered a job by Gov. Jim Thompson to be director of legislative affairs, which worked on behalf of the governor in dealing with the legislative branch. 

In 1981, Edgar filled the vacancy in the security of state position after Alan Dixon left for the U.S. Senate.  

“I had a great opportunity handed to me, and I had to make sure that I took advantage,” Edgar said. 

Edgar needed to campaign to maintain his role in the 1982 election. He spoke at Lincoin Day dinners which are major fund raisers for the Republican party doing 38 as opposed to the other primary runner Tyrone Fahner who only did two. 

Edgar won the 1982 election and started his work mainly focusing on drunk driving laws. 

“Illinois had the weakest drunk driving laws in the nation,” he said. “We needed to toughen them up” Edgar said. 

Edgar ended up helping create harsher laws for drunk driving. Also creating mandatory auto insurance for Illinois drivers and a literacy program in Illinois to help the tens of thousands of adults in Illinois who couldn’t read.  

He ran for governor in 1990 after Thompson had stepped down after being the longest serving governor in the history of Illinois.  

Edgar ran against Attorney General Neil Hartigan in a close election.  

“We both had 95% name recognition. We both had $20 million dollars to spend, and we both had our parties behind us,” he said. 

The big issue for that election was in the year before there was an income tax increase that expired in the first year of the governor’s term  

“I got asked, and I said we are going to have to keep it, we don’t have that kind of money. We are broke as a state,” Edgar said.  

This worried his fellow Republicans, and it was neck and neck heading into election night. 

A CBS 6 poll showed Edgar down by 18 points.  

“I’m pretty depressed,” he said. “I thought it was going to be embarrassing when they beat me by 15-20 points.” 

Exit polls showed Edgar up, however. Edgar won the election with a narrow 50.75% to 48.17%. 

Coming into office, Edgar said he faced the largest deficit in Illinois history. 

“I cut everything,” Edgar said. “We had to lay off thousands of people.” 

This angered democratic legislatives and groups that received funds from the state. 

“I had every group in the state that got money from the state picket my office for the next three months,” Edgar said. 

Edgar saw that many also understood what had to be done. 

“A lot of folks in the hinterlands understand you can’t spend money you don’t have,” Edgar said. 

Edgar ran for re-election and won by the biggest margin in the history of an Illinois governor election, winning 101 of 102 counites.  

“Folks trusted me,” Edgar said. “They didn’t always agree with me, but they trusted me.” 

Edgar fielded questions from the audience after the speech 

He encouraged anyone with political aspirations to get involved and for those not interested in running to be informed on what is happening in politics. 

Edgar looked at what the future holds for the Republican party. 

“The Republican party that I was a member of doesn’t exist today,” he said. “The Republican party of today is a Trump party. It’s not the Republican party of Eisenhower or Bush or even Reagan.” 

Edgar looked to the first two years of the Trump administration and 2026 elections.  

“[Trump’s] got a third of the electorate no matter what he does,” Edgar said. “But he’s got about another third that is subject to flip back and forth as we’ve seen between two presidential elections.” 

Jason Coulombe can be reached at 581-2812 or at jmcoulombe@eiu.edu.