Every governor over the past 25 years—Republican and Democrat—has learned a lesson from Gov. Jim Thompson.
Every governor except one.
Running for re-election in 1982, Thompson was in the fight of his political life, and the Republican speaker of the House was making things worse.
Illinois had plunged into recession under Republican President Ronald Reagan, and Thompson was running against a household name, former U.S. Sen. Adlai Stevenson III.
Then, House Speaker George Ryan of Kankakee allowed an anti-union “right to work” bill to move to the House floor. Organized labor was furious. Thousands of workers gathered on the Statehouse lawn in June to angrily denounce Ryan. Thompson was met with a resounding chorus of boos when he took the stage.
But those boos turned to cheers when Thompson vowed to veto the bill. He then invited the crowd to the governor’s mansion for free beer.
In the November election, the Illinois AFL-CIO endorsed Stevenson against Thompson. But the incumbent received crucial backing from several individual unions after Stevenson suggested things like replacing unionized highway workers with prison inmates.
Thompson defeated Stevenson by just 5,000 votes. His speech and a sharply divided labor movement were crucial to his success—even though Ryan, whom the unions despised, had become his running mate.
After the election, Thompson signed a bill to legalize collective bargaining for state employee unions. He interceded in contract negotiations to break an impasse, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees endorsed his 1986 re-election bid, followed quickly by an AFL-CIO endorsement.
Every governor since then has learned the Thompson lesson: Keep state workers happy.
Well, every governor except the current one. We’ll get to him in a moment.
What ended up happening was that union contracts got better and better for the employees. Republican Govs. Jim Edgar and Ryan were kind to the unions. And AFSCME claimed that Gov. Rod Blagojevich negotiated the most generous contract in the nation. Union negotiations in 2010 were satisfactory enough that AFSCME immediately endorsed Pat Quinn after the talks ended and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign.
Gov. Bruce Rauner deems this history “corrupt.” Quite a few people agree with him. The gazillionaire governor also claims that the millions of dollars he contributed to his own campaign last year and the millions he raised from his billionaire buddies are exercises in “freedom of speech.”
But you can’t on the one hand claim that contributions from billionaires are a constitutional right and on the other hand claim that contributions from working people are corrupt.
Plus, despite all this alleged “corruption,” Rauner won the election. The balance of power has substantially shifted.
His recent attempt to withhold some dues from the unions via executive order probably won’t succeed any time soon. Attorney General Lisa Madigan says Rauner is up against established case law and intends to fight him. Based on Madigan’s legal opinion, Comptroller Leslie Munger, a Rauner appointee, has said she won’t follow the order, effectively nullifying it.
Governors aren’t the only folks who learned from Jim Thompson. Legislators did, too. So, it’s highly doubtful the Democratic-controlled General Assembly will join any fight to undermine public employees’ legal rights.
A more adversarial relationship would be good for taxpayers in the short and the long run. But being adversarial is far different from this comically futile vow to destroy the other side. This could easily backfire and hurt everything else Rauner wants to do.
I asked the former governor what he thought of the current governor’s attacks on the unions. Thompson refused to criticize a sitting governor but said I was free to use any of his past comments.
Here’s one from 2013: “You can disagree with AFSCME, you can disagree with the teachers, you can disagree with other public employee unions without demonizing unions.”
Thompson was greeted by thunderous booing, but quickly calmed things by saying “Where’s Local (whatever number) from (whatever town)?” The union local members hollered and clapped and the whole tone changed. And by the time he announced that he would veto the bill, he had them eating out of the palms of his hands. I’ve never seen anything like it. That took real guts and real skill.
