MIKE LAWRENCE

Ogilvie Revisited

Dick Ogilvie was elected governor at a critical time; the state was going broke, the roads were crumbling, education needed help, and public aid was a mess. In this interview with Mike Lawrence, about one month before this fall's election, former Gov. Ogilvie tells bluntly how he handled his campaign, his promises and the decisions he faced during his term, 1969-1973

Photo Courtesy of Illinois State Historical Library

SHORTLY after being chosen Illinois' 37th governor, Richard Buell Ogilvie was handed a package of ticking time bombs by none other than trusted campaign aide William Hanley.

"Bill kept a very careful account of all my promises. And, right after I was elected, he gave me a black notebook with every damn promise I'd ever made — both those I had done in written form and those I would just throw in during the course of the campaign," Ojilvie chuckles.

"I still have that book somewhere in my archives. I'll tell you it was really a hairshirt. But I had made those promises and I decided I'd try to keep them."

The task would not be easy. There was no overflowing state treasury to tap. The opposite was true. Radical revenue measures would be necessary. That would take bold lobbying with the legislature. And victory in the mission could translate into instant unpopularity and even defeat at the polls four years later.

But it was a task timed for a man with Ogilvie's leadership style and philosophy, a tandem tailored by a "very strong-minded" mother, Ivy League university professors and a world at war.

His mother, Ogilvie says, had insisted "no matter where you are, if you work hard enough to succeed and achieve, you can do it."

At Yale came the direction. "I happened to go to a university where there was a strong emphasis that you're not here just to get an education, you're being educated to be a leader. And that came through from day one of freshman indoctrination, that you were to be part of a very exclusive group of scholars, that you were being prepared to go forth and do things. I was naive enough to believe it, and I still believe it."

In the United States Army during World War II came the techniques. "I remember," he says, "a rather small thing, but it made a deep impression on me as a very young man in the Army. I drew military police duty one time, and I remember a rather grizzled old sergeant who I'm sure had been a police chief, a sheriff or something like that. He was instructing us as to what our duties were and we were all issued a '45' automatic — the first time I'd ever seen one. It was explained how it would work, and he said, 'Now, godammit, don't take that thing out unless you're going to shoot somebody, and, if you take it out, shoot him.' That stuck with me until today. If you're going to do it, then godammit, make up your mind and do it. You've got to be a person of commitment as to what you are trying to achieve, a person of integrity at least in the sense that if you tell somebody you're going to do something, you are going to do it."

Later, as a World War II tank commander, came the facial wound that would rob him forever of the warm smile that politicians flash to ingratiate themselves to potential voters. But the experience gave him something more valuable. "It was damned clear to me that somebody had to call the shots, we couldn't have a committee meeting before whatever the action or whatever we got into and decide how we were going to do it. Somebody had to make a decision: 'We're going to go from here to there, and we're going to get there.' "

That was the Dick Ogilvie who came to the governorship at a critical juncture in Illinois history.

For more than a year, he had campaigned for the prize he won in November 1968. His pledges had mounted. Education in Illinois needed help. Mental health facilities needed

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more funding. Public aid financing was in trouble. And there was the state's crumbling road network.

"I had campaigned on what had to be done with our road system, which was just terrible. Everywhere I went in downstate Illinois, you know, they had an intersection where people had been killed or a lousy road section or whatever. And, of course, I was going to try to solve all their problems."

What he had not promised to do, however, was raise taxes. Neither he nor his opponent, incumbent Democrat Samuel H. Shapiro, had really been pressed on revenue issues, especially the possibility of a state income tax. The top newsmen in Illinois, Ogilvie says, were "smart enough not to pin anyone down" to the point where he would be hamstrung if elected. Neither candidate attempted to corner the other. "Sam and I never had a formal understanding. But we just didn't talk much about it. I would answer questions about the income tax by saying something like, 'It's a terrible idea,' " Ogilvie says.

"You know," he adds with a laugh, "it was a terrible idea." But his plethora of campaign promises had not included an ironbound commitment to hold the line on taxes. And, even before Ogilvie had the opportunity to determine the most comfortable chairs in the Executive Mansion, he was confronted with stark reality. Illinois was going broke. Its patchwork revenue structure was palpably impotent. The new governor had assigned one of his whiz kids, John McCarter, to make an assessment "and, God, he came back with this really grim appraisal as to where we were in terms of revenue and what our needs were."

It was not a question, Ogilvie says, of whether state coffers needed sustenance. It was only a question of how to fatten them in "the fairest way." And that he explains, "was not to increase nuisance taxes, it wasn't to increase the state sales tax, it was to try to finally break through and get Illinois into a modern situation with a state income tax."

Although bolstered by a blue-ribbon commission's report, Ogilvie faced obstacles, not the least of which was an anachronistic state constitution. The administration, as Ogilvie recollects it, hired a former Internal Revenue Service commissioner to help draft a proposal. "We came up with what we thought was a constitutional, fool-proof way of doing it — a flat 4 percent."

But that did not fly — even with him and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley in lockstep. "I ran into the situation where Clyde Choate [a leading House downstate Democrat] didn't feel that individuals should pay the same as corporations, sort of a classic Democrat position. And Daley, while he was very powerful, was limited on what he could do and he could just not deliver enough downstate senators to pass that revenue program. And I had, of course, a serious problem in my own party."

"I had a number of votes I could count on, but it had to be a bipartisan effort and we finally had a compromise. After I talked to Daley, he said, 'I just can't get those guys. It's going to have to be a 4 and 2'/2 split.' So, holding my breath, we agreed to do it and I really wasn't very confident the Supreme Court was going to accede to it. But, of course, it did and we had the program in place."

Yet, there was far more to the enactment of Illinois' income tax than an agreement between Ogilvie and Democratic leaders on percentages and constitutional fretting. The governor needed help from his own party, from

It was not a question, Ogilvie says, of whether state coffers needed sustenance. It was only a question of how to fatten them in the 'fairest way'

the rank and file of the other. And one of the key moments in those endeavors came at a breakfast meeting at the Mansion in the winter of 1969.

At such meetings, legends are made. Ogilvie was seated at the head of the table. At his left, he recalls, was the Senate Republican leader, aristocratic Russ Arrington of Evanston, the most powerful Illinois lawmaker of the 1960s; at his right, ambitious House Speaker Ralph Smith, an Alton Republican. And the message the flinty governor had for them was pulse-quickening. "Arrington's face got red and his neck swelled. I remember his words exactly. He said, 'Who is the crazy son of a bitch who is going to sponsor this thing?' I looked at him, 'Russ, you are.'"

Ogilvie continues, "I had two really competent legislative leaders in Ralph Smith, who had his own agenda but coincided it with mine, and Russ. I think history has not yet given Russ his full due. He was one of the most remarkable men ever in our state government. In any event, they took the lead, and when they needed help, they would ask me to step in."

The former governor does not remember precisely how he stepped in. "I am sure, while I don't know what I put it quite as bluntly as 'For your vote, I'll give you this,' that I sure as hell told them, 'For your vote, you are going to make a good friend of the governor, who will remember it clearly.' I don't know that I had to do that with Newhouse and Chew, although I used to take pretty good care of them, too."

Indeed, as he reconstructs the event of 1969, it was left to him to recruit Sens. Richard Newhouse and Charles Chew, both black Chicago Democrats, their votes vital to Senate approval of the income tax. Senate Democratic Leader Arthur McGloon of Chicago, Ogilvie says, had told him he could not deliver them.

"Well, I had known both of those fellows for a long time. In fact, I can remember when Charlie was not a Democrat," Ogilvie reflects parenthetically with laughter. "At any rate, I asked Dick to get ahold of Charlie and come down. I reasoned with them for quite a while, pointed out the tremendous implications it had for the people in the districts they represented, that it was really going to help them as much as any other part of the state. They listened and after a while Dick said, 'Let Charlie and I go talk.' And then they left my office and a little while later Dick came back and said, 'Okay, we'll support you.' Those were the final two votes I needed to pass it in the Senate."

But the income tax was not the sole revenue boost Ogilvie sought. To honor his campaign pledges on roads, he was forced to fortify the road fund. "We did increase license fees and the gasoline tax. I remember my friend John Swearingen of Standard Oil was

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very upset. It was a very modest increase — nowhere near what since has taken place in terms of the price of gasoline and fuel oil. But then we had the resources to go with. I knew I had to get more money for education. I had to do the road situation. Medicaid was then a terrible problem because the legislature had made the commitment but we had to raise the funds to do it."

Thus he led. He was roundly booed at the State Fair that year. Death threats came. But he was, nevertheless, hopeful that the people of Illinois

Ten years ago last month, Ogilvie became Illinois' first martyred governor since John Altgeld. Yet, he has few regrets . . .

would forgive his activism, even applaud it, once they had tasted its fruits.

That did not occur. Ten years ago last month, Ogilvie became Illinois' first martyred governor since John Altgeld. Yet, he has few regrets, although he wanted very much to defeat Democrat Daniel Walker and win reelection.

"I've described myself, and I really mean this, as an optimistic fatalist. It was something I had to do. I was fatalistic as to what was going to happen. I was hopeful, of course, that I could overcome it. In fact, I damned near did. In fact, to carry this out, I think if I had only done the revenue program, I have been reelected. But you combine that with the environmental program [he created the state Environmental-Protection Agency] and the animus that engendered in the Republican party community, the opposition I had, you remember, from the Illinois Farm Bureau because of the [extension of] the East-West Toll way. That was a commitment I had made and kept to the people out there. I was going to finish that road," the former governor says.

He harbors little rancor — with at least two exceptions. He has few, if any, laudatory words for Walker. And he is not pleased with the lack of support from one special-interest group he believes he helped immensely. "One of the things that really galled me more than anything else in the election was when the teachers endorsed Walker after what I had done in terms of aid to primary and secondary education. I failed to communicate in that area."

In the main, though, his reflections are laced with satisfaction. He recalls a news conference soon after he lost. "I said I would not have done anything different, and I mean it to this day. I would not have pulled back on anything we did. It had to be done. I think the state is better for it."

His biggest post-mortem concern, he says, "was what my defeat meant to the programs we had undertaken and also the people who had dedicated themselves to our administration. Suddenly, it was just not going to be an orderly transition, but in four weeks, or whatever it is between the election and the inauguration, they were going to be out on their ear. That hurt. I felt reasonably confident that I was going to end up some place and it was going to be suitable."

His fear for his minions proved fundamentally unfounded. "Nearly everybody, with very few exceptions, has gone on to much better and important things. You look at those top guys who worked for me, and they're all doing well, which has made me very proud."

But his confidence about his own future proved prophetic — and then some. He flirted for a time with going to Washington — perhaps as the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission or perhaps as administrator of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. But he ultimately opted for a position with Isham, Lincoln and Beale, one of Chicago's major law firms. And he is now, at the age of 59, chairman of the firm's managing council, a prestigious position.

After serving as counsel to the trustee of the bankrupt Milwaukee Railroad, he became the trustee when his predecessor's health failed. According to public records, that position and membership on the boards of directors of nine corporations bring him about $250,000 annually, a tidy supplement to whatever he earns as a partner in the law firm.

Moreover, Ogilvie has been active in civic affairs. He served, among other things, as national chairman of the American Trauma Society for three years, headed the board of directors of Pace Institute, was chairman of the Illinois Olympic Committee, secretary of the Chicago Club and secretary of the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry.

But he has not lost his taste for government and politics. Ogilvie has been a key fund-raiser for several Republican candidates. And, though he cautions he is somewhat removed from the scene, he is willing to offer opinions on aspects of public life in the '80s. Among them:

• Populism. "One of the banes of American life today is populism. It is just a terrible thing, trying to get things done. I suppose it goes back to the polling you are talking about to find out what people are thinking.
• "Look at Walker's campaign — starting at the south end of the state with all the phony trappings. A corporate lawyer shows up in walking boots, blue jeans and a bandanna neckerchief. You know, he borrowed that from Lawton Chiles when he was elected senator from Florida. And, you know, the media bought the thing. They gave it a great deal of attention. It was a gimmick."

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• Polling to help determine policy. "I think you're elected to lead. Remember my inaugural address? I really laid it out there for everybody to see: I was going to lead this state and, for better or worse, I was going to do it . . . I don't want to be critical of anybody using devices that I didn't use, but I just happen to think being re-elected is not the goal of public service or public opportunity. That sounds a little bit, I suppose, like an afterthought. But I was elected to be governor, and I was going to govern and not just occupy the office.

  'I think I did a good job there and that every once in a while somebody like me ought to come along and be governor of this state'

  "The public doesn't know always what's in its best interests. I think that's the history of the world. And, if you let the man on the street make decisions that will affect the common welfare, he in time will make enough wrong decisions to ruin everything."

• Local government service. "I think I had a rather unique preparation to be governor, having served in the two offices I had. Being Cook County sheriff gave me an interesting perspective into the public safety and corrections fields. Later, the presidency of the county board gave me perspective into the areas of public aid, hospital care and county roads. So, I had the real opportunity to see what the inadequacies of state government were in helping at least half the population of the state. . . .

  "I think it [local government experience] is highly valuable. Somebody might be able to pass it by and still do a creditable job. But I think there is a period when you ought to be learning about the give-and-take of government. And, without getting into personalities, that's one thing Walker never had, was any spirit of compromise."

• How to lead full-time legislators anticipating healthy pension benefits and, therefore, concerned primarily about reelection. "It probably is a complication. On the other hand, in the old days, you had a lot of guys who did not depend on their legislative salaries to survive — many honorable, who did it by practicing law or whatever and some less honorable, and I think they were subject to being influenced by economic considerations of a different nature. I think it's a wash. There is no perfect system."

  However, he adds, there probably should be a limit on the consecutive terms a legislator, either federal or state, can serve. "He could sit out and go back. But I think there ought to be a respite."

• Passing a significant tax increase today. "This is highly speculative, but I think probably yes, that if the governor and the mayor of Chicago were to agree on a program and both were to use the considerable resources that they do have, that they could pass almost anything. They might have to pay a political price later, but I think it could be done."

Typically, Ogilvie is straightforward, even blunt, in his appraisals. But, for a moment, he becomes philosophical. "Gosh," he says, "sometimes I wonder what would happen if somebody ran an old-fashioned, front-porch campaign and would say, 'Hey, I'm not going to go around kissing babies and to county fairs, but I'm going to sit here and I'm going to talk about important things because it's what I'm thinking and not what I'm doing that makes a difference.' Maybe, somebody might try it and it might just work."

Would he? "I would say categorically I am not going to be a candidate for mayor of Chicago. If I were ever to be a candidate for anything, it would be on a statewide basis."

To be sure, he has hinted he might seek in 1984 the seat now held in the U.S. Senate by Republican Charles H. Percy, who has indicated he is reelection bound. But how about governor again? Would he like to return to the Mansion? "Yeah," he replies crisply. Why? "I think I did a good job there and that every once in a while somebody like me ought to come along and be governor of this state."

Mike Lawrence is Springfield bureau chief of Lee Enterprises.

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