* Anybody who has paid any attention for the past few years has heard Gov. Bruce Rauner talk about his Swedish grandparents. He particularly idolized his grandfather…
“My best friend growing up was my grandfather on my mom’s side. Swedish immigrant. Didn’t speak much English. Lived in a double wide trailer in a cornfield outside Whitewater, Wisconsin. Dairy farmer. Taught me to milk cows. Taught me about huntin’ and fishin.’ Taught me about hard work and giving back.”
I also idolized my maternal grandfather and spent countless glorious days on his farm. Rauner and I spoke briefly about this shared history a while ago. My paternal grandmother lived in a trailer for a time, so we had that in common, too.
It was of little surprise then that, as he appeared with immigrant activists to sign a controversial law putting limits on policing of the undocumented, Rauner retold his own favorite story of immigrants — the Ericksons from Sweden.
“My grandparents were proud immigrants to the United States of America, here to Illinois in the late 1800s,” Rauner said. “My grandparents did not speak English when they were young.”
Variations of the Erickson story have been staples of Rauner appearances for years. But the key word here is “variations,” because the governor has not always been consistent in the telling.
“He kept on talking about his immigrant grandfather, immigrant from Sweden who could barely speak English, sometimes he would say he didn’t speak English. He also said his grandmother was like that,” said the BGA’s Bob Secter, who authored the piece in partnership with Politfact. “So we went back and looked at the census records to find out about it and they just aren’t immigrants. They were born in Wisconsin.”
In a YouTube compilation on the topic, there was only one time (of several instances in which he discussed his immigrant relatives) that Rauner, when asked by a reporter, clarified that he was speaking about his great-grandparents.
Records from U.S. Censuses taken between 1910 and 1940, the latest year publicly available, clearly show that both of Rauner’s maternal grandparents were born in Wisconsin — Clarence Erickson in 1901 and Viola Erickson (nee Wedin) in 1900. In other words, neither of them were immigrants.
What’s more, the census shows that Viola’s mother — Rauner’s great-grandmother — was also born in Wisconsin. Viola’s father, while born in Sweden, emigrated to the U.S. at age 6 in 1868. As for Clarence, the census describes him as speaking English and having a seventh grade education. In the 1940 count, his profession was listed as “buttermaker.” […]
We have no reason to doubt that Rauner’s grandparents meant the world to him. But the Census plainly refutes his claim that they were immigrants. What’s more, both couldn’t have come to the U.S. in the late 1800s because they weren’t even born until the early 1900s — in Wisconsin, not Sweden. Rauner’s assertion in August that his grandparents immigrated to Illinois is yet another inaccuracy.
Since we don’t have a time machine, we can’t say for certain what language was spoken in the Erickson and Wedin childhood homes. But to the extent that Rauner implies the Ericksons’ facility with English was limited, Census reports refute that notion as well.
Topping all that is the acknowledgement by Rauner himself in his 2014 Tribune interview that his grandparents were not immigrants. Still, he continued to repeat the claim on many occasions.
Census records and Rauner’s own admission show that this statement has no credibility. That is why it earns our lowest possible rating, Pants On Fire.
Frankly, this revelation has disturbed me more than anything else I’ve ever read or learned about Gov. Rauner. To lie about his own grandfather, a man he clearly loved, to score political points is just beyond the pale.
And if he won’t tell the truth about that, how can anybody trust him on anything else?
