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1 Introduction: Try to Be Fair and Evenhanded I’m never voting for you as Senate president unless you give me the Empire State Building. In my fourteen years as the Senate president, from 1979 to 1993, I never had what I considered to be a solid majority of Democrats. The Senate had fifty-nine members; it took thirty to have a majority. We Democrats had between thirty and thirty-three members in various years, but I never had all their minds on my side. There were factions; there were individual egos; there were people with agendas far smaller than the big picture. I had more difficulty with my own Democratic caucus than I did with members on the other side of the aisle. That was just a phenomenon that I learned to live with. Of the seven times I was elected Senate president at the beginning of a legislative session, every two years from 1979 to 1991, only three went without a hitch. A few disgruntled members who were upset with me would hold out for something, maybe a leadership position in the Senate Democratic caucus. It was as if those members were each saying, “I’m never voting for you as Senate president unless you give me the Empire State Building” or some stupid thing. So I dealt with those people, talked to them, and worked things out. Others weren’t happy with me because they wanted me to beat up on Governor James R. Thompson, a Republican. They thought partisanship was more important than doing the work we were sent there to do. I had to remind my members that on any given day, they might want me to go down to Thompson’s office on the second floor of the State Capitol, one floor down from us, and ask him to sign their bill. “Why are you so eager for me to criticize him?” I would say. “After I do that, you want me to ask him to sign your bill, which he probably doesn’t care about?” That didn’t make sense to me, and I told them that. Some of my members also wanted me to afford no opportunities for legislative success for their Republican colleagues. introduction 2 I did my best to tell them and teach them and show them that it’s possible to be partisan and fair at the same time. In my twenty-two years in the Illinois Senate, I respected the fact that every member of the Senate had been elected to office, just as I had been. All of them represented many thousands of Illinois citizens and had a responsibility to make government work for those people. So if any member wanted to raise an issue, Republican or Democrat, he or she had a right to raise it. That’s the process I believe in. Don’t get me wrong. I was proud to be a regular Democrat—a member of the Democratic organization of Cook County and the state of Illinois. So while I was fair to the Republicans, I also made it known that we, in turn, could work to defeat any Republican idea, and that’s the process. I just never believed that it was fair to toss them aside and not give them a hearing. If you’re always fair, then people know where you stand. There was a time in history, for instance, when parents could not get their newborn babies insured. There was a waiting period of a week or a month or longer, depending upon one’s insurance policy. That didn’t seem fair to parents who suffered financial hardships because their infants got jaundice or some other medical condition. So I set out to change Illinois law. The insurance companies opposed me. But they knew where I stood, and I told them they were going to look foolish if they opposed this too publicly. I also indicated that it would be fair to adjust insurance premiums to allow for this coverage, as long as the coverage was there. It was common sense. They battled me for a while, but the General Assembly prevailed and got this law passed in 1975. The insurance issue is a good example of what I mean when I say the number one function of government is to help people. Government exists so that we will have an orderly society. It should improve or enhance the quality of life for all who live under its jurisdiction...

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