
Former Illinois House Representative and Senator Tom Bennett came to talk to Eastern students on Wednesday at 4 p.m. in Coleman Hall Room 2210.
Bennett is a graduate of EIU, getting his B.A in education in 1978.
He was a teacher for seven years and would serve on school boards in locations he wasn’t teaching at. After that, he got an applied computer science degree from Illinois State University.
Bennett would work at State Farm IT for 30 years before getting into state politics in 2012.
He ran for the 106th district of the Illinois House of Representatives where he would finish second in the Republican primaries to the eventual winner Josh Harms.
In the 2014 elections, Bennett was appointed to run in place of Harms who was retiring. He faced Democrat opponent William Nutter and won with 26,349 votes out of the 32,865 total votes, or 80.2%.
Bennett would stay in the office until 2023, running unopposed in every election from 2016 onward.
In 2023, Bennett was appointed to the 53rd district of the Illinois senate after then Senator Jason Barickman resigned.
“I enjoyed the Senate more than the House,” Bennett said. “We had a lot more people in the Senate district, but I had more people to help me [in the House].”
The eight years in the House of Representatives did give Bennett the necessary help, he said.
“I’m glad I was in the House first and then went to the Senate because otherwise you would be drinking from a firehose,” Bennett said.
Bennett would hold his position in the office until resigning in January of this year.
“I had health issues, but at the same time, it felt like it was the right time to go for me,” Bennett said.
“Serving in the general assembly has been the best job of my life,” Bennett said. “It gave me the chance to help people in a lot of ways.”
Bennett told a story about when he was told about three older women who were unable to get out of their condo driveway due to the traffic from a nearby intersection. Bennett said he worked with the Illinois Department of Transportation and the local officials to make a no turn on red sign to help with the traffic in that intersection.
“We didn’t make any big noise about it,” Bennett said. “But it made those people happy.”
Bennett got interested in politics when his father took him to a Lincoln Day dinner, which are Republican fundraisers that happen in Illinois, where he heard a speaker.
“He was talking about how a government can be there to help people, but it is not there to do things for people,” Bennett said. “The government cannot be all things to all people, but it can sure make things better in certain situations. They defend us. They protect us from other places and that kind of thing, and I liked that idea.”
Bennett said that the most impactful bills he put out with were in education.
He noted the creation of a task force in looking at the edTPA system. edTPA was a system used in Illinois to assess student teachers. The task force found that many people disliked the system.
“It was being directed by the top folks down and not the folks at the grassroots level,” Bennett said.
Bennett sponsored a bill that no longer required edTPA in Illinois.
He also emphasized throughout the need to keep talking even when disagreeing.
“We disagreed on things, but do you stop talking when you disagree? They can’t. We just can’t.” Bennet said.
Bennett discussed working with people on the other side of the aisle.
“There were times that it got heated,” Bennett said. “For good reason. We’re people, and we disagree strongly.”
Bennett said that they have to work past disagreements.
“You make your point and move on because the next bill might be mine and I need 11 democrats to vote with me on the next bill,” Bennett said.
Bennett made it a point to meet outside of the legislator.
“On the other hand, we will go out to dinner,” Bennett said. “That’s one thing I always tried to do. I would get three republicans; three democrats and I would get lobbyists; they’d buy the meal.”
Bennett also has met with both current Gov. J.B Pritzker and former Gov. Bruce Rauner over dinners where they would just talk about ideas and themselves.
“It was really a lot of fun,” Bennett said.
Jason Coulombe can be reached at 581-2812 or at jmcoulombe@eiu.edu.