(gentle music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues) - Welcome to "CapitolView" on WSIU.

I'm Jeff Williams, sitting in this week as we take a look at what's making news around the state in Illinois politics.

At the top of the newsfeed this week, we remember the life and times of former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, who passed away over the weekend following a battle with pancreatic cancer.

We also remember conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot to death on a college campus in Utah last week.

We'll take a closer look at those stories, plus probably a few more things, this week on "CapitolView."

To help lead the discussion are Hannah Meisel, State House and Chicago reporter for "Capitol News Illinois," and Dan Petrella, political reporter for the "Chicago Tribune," both of you, welcome back to the program.

- Thanks for having us.

- Good to be here.

- Now, the state of Illinois is mourning the loss of its 38th governor, Jim Edgar.

Edgar was governor from 1991 to 1999 and secretary of state a decade prior to that.

He also served in the Illinois House, just a longtime public servant.

And I think it's probably safe to say he's had a significant impact on the state of Illinois, even beyond his time in office.

Hannah, you did a retrospective this week of the governor.

How do you think he's going to be remembered?

- Well, I mean, you know, at the time of his death on Sunday, he had been out of office for longer than he had ever actually served in office.

But even so, he remained one of the most popular governors, you know, we've ever had.

(laughs) And I think some would joke that the bar is low.

Some people know about the book (laughs) that's called "Illinois Governors, Mostly Good Incompetent Men," and, you know, which maybe would exclude the four who have gone to prison.

But, you know, Jim Edgar was, you know, kind of the consummate statesman.

He was brought up under Governor Jim Thompson, who was known for his, you know, big personality, who could sometimes be brash.

Jim Edgar was a little bit more reserved, but, you know, nonetheless, could work across the aisle.

Of course, you know, it was a much different political time.

Jim Edgar considered himself a moderate Republican and, you know, didn't shy away from the fact that he was a pro-choice Republican, which was, you know, a label that, you know, a political generation ago was not that radical.

It was still a bit rare, but, like, in Illinois where Republicans reigned for a long time, hard as it is to believe now, you know, he was not alone.

There were other pro-choice Republicans that were massively popular.

And you know, Jim Edgar, like I said, he's been out of office for longer than he really ever served.

But he remained in and around political circles, and in 2012, he started up a program called the Edgar Fellows, and it was focused on developing political government leaders in a bipartisan way.

I have many friends and acquaintances who have gone through the program, including, you know, this most recent in August, and last week there was a dinner.

And unfortunately, because former governor had been in the hospital, I believe, at that time, he was unable to attend and, of course, died on Sunday.

But I think, you know, he's gonna remain in the imaginations of many Illinoisans, just as he had before, as one of our, you know, very good governors and someone to aspire to, even though, you know, he said many times publicly that his brand of politics would probably not succeed today.

- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dan, your memories of Governor Edgar.

- Yeah, he's a really interesting figure, and I think if you look at the way he has related to our past two governors, that tells you a lot about him as a person and about where his party has gone over the last couple decades.

You know, he had a very tense relationship with former Governor Bruce Rauner, a member of his own political party who he was not shy about criticizing when he thought that Governor Rauner was being too extreme in his demands, for example, curtailing the rights of labor unions.

And he's had a very cordial relationship with Governor Pritzker, who considers him a friend.

So it's been very interesting.

I think, looking at the political positions that Jim Edgar held in the 1990s, you know, when I was growing up, he's really my first memory of an Illinois governor, and like Hannah said, kinda set the bar at least for governors since, (laughs) a bar that several have failed to clear, including his two immediate successors, who went to federal prison.

So, you know, I first encountered him at an election-night party, I guess you would call it, for Judy Baar Topinka, who was the Republican nominee for governor in 2006, who lost to Rob Blagojevich when he won his second term.

It was not a close race.

As I was pulling up to the hotel for the election-night party AP, as polls were closing, called the race for Blagojevich, but I ran into Edgar kind of in the ballroom watching the returns on TV.

And I was just a young, just-outta-college reporter, but he was very kind and generous with his time and spoke to me, and encountered him again as a graduate student at University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign, where he would come and speak to both undergraduate journalism classes and graduate classes in the journalism program there at U of I, was always very generous with his time and sharing his insights about, you know, how politicians interact with the media, you know, and I think it's worth mentioning that there are some issues where he has been criticized on.

Mayor Daley likes to call him Governor No 'cause they butted heads on a lot of issues, you know, and some people blame our current pension situation on this 50-year ramp that he helped create, although others would argue that the problem is not the ramp itself but the fact that they didn't keep up with the payments (laughs) all along soon after it was created, you know, and another idea that he had that was pretty, would've made a big change in the way the state deals with its finances is this idea of this property tax swap where you'd raise the state income tax, and lower property taxes, and better fund schools, which he actually, I guess borrowed would be the kind word, from his reelection opponent, Dawn Clark Netsch.

And it ended up being Republicans in his own party in the State Senate at the time who killed the idea, so just, you know, a very important figure in Illinois politics, especially over the last generation, and certainly someone who has left a big impression and I think is just a real sort of signpost of where the party was when it was more prominent in the state and where it's gone since.

- Well, I'm gonna date myself because I had the opportunity to cover Jim Edgar at the end of his tenure of secretary of state, as well as his campaign for governor and into his first term.

And I got to cover the back end, the tail end of his second term when I returned to Illinois.

A lot of words have been used to describe Edgar, but I think for me as a reporter, it was forthright and compassionate and that then Governor Edgar, or Secretary of State Edgar, he really was the yardstick that I used to measure other politicians that I covered throughout my out my years, and just one quick personal note.

Had an experience with Jim Edgar when he was secretary of state when I was, I think eighth grade at the time.

He came to speak, and I think he was probably giving some sort of grant or award maybe to our local library.

But a group of students from our government class went, and after the news conference was over, he took the time, he sat down, and he answered every question that all of these seventh and eighth graders that we had for him, including from this future reporter.

And I'd mentioned him, at the time, that I collected license plates.

Well, a few months later.

- Oh wow.

- This arrived in the mail, and obviously, this is a sample plate.

You would see these at the DMV on display, and I'm sure some staffer made a note, "Oh, send the redheaded kid who asked a bazillion questions about license plates a license plate."

But it also came with a short but very thoughtful handwritten note from then Secretary of State Edgar, and that has stayed with me for years.

And looking back, I think it really underscores the compassion that he had for people of all ages to take (laughs) the time and answer all the questions from a bunch of junior high school students.

That really underscored a lot of what has been said about the former governor and really kind of underlined the experience that I had with him and how that's had an impact on my reporting and how I look and view politicians.

So anyway, thank you for (laughs) allowing me to share that.

- Well, that's a great, I wanna note that he is gonna lie in state in the Illinois capitol on Friday, this coming Friday, the 19th, in the afternoon, which is the first official to lie in state in a long time.

I actually can't remember the last time, certainly not George Ryan when he passed earlier this year.

I'm sure that maybe Jim Thompson would have, if he had not passed in August 2020, you know, when COVID was still, you know, kind of at height.

- Yeah, yeah, well, we also want to turn our attention to Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist originally from Illinois, who was tragically shot and killed during a public gathering on a college campus in Utah last week.

His Turning Point USA organization, it's popular, popular on college campuses across the country, including here on the SIU campus, an absolutely tragic and horrific event, regardless of your political affiliation or what you may have thought of Charlie Kirk personally.

Dan, what kind of impact does an event like this, do you think, have on society, especially when there is so much political polarization in the country right now?

- Yeah, it's really a terrible sign of where things are at in our politics.

And I think one of the concerning things is, you know, the rush from people on both sides of the political spectrum to try to assign the shooter to the other camp based on, you know, scant pieces of evidence that have come out.

You know, it is really concerning.

I was speaking with Robert Pape, who's an on political extremism and political violence at the University of Chicago yesterday, and he talked about this idea of sort of this violent populism is, I believe, the term that he's using now to describe rising violence, both on the right and on the left, just over the last few years with the assassination of the state lawmaker in Minnesota, and the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, and the assassination attempts on President Trump when he was running for a second term, and the attempt to burn down Governor Josh Shapiro's house in Pennsylvania.

And, you know, it's really concerning the way it is being, you know, just what it means for the state of our politics and the level of violence that we're seeing.

And also, you know, it's concerning to see the ways in which the Trump administration has responded and, you know, before all the facts are known, using it as a way to, you know, declare war maybe is a bit of an extreme term.

I can't remember the president's exact words off the top of my head, but, you know, stoke this animosity toward folks on the left, you know.

Governor Pritzker has gotten some criticisms for his response that he made, you know, in the afternoon after the shooting happened.

I believe it was before it was known that he had died, pointing to the president's rhetoric and violence on January 6th and things like that as sort of this culture of political violence that we're in right now.

But, you know, it's concerning, I think, as well to see some folks on the right, in one breath, holding up Charlie Kirk as a champion of free speech and then, in the next breath, trying to use his death as a reason to clamp down on First Amendment rights.

We had the attorney general in an interview earlier this week invent a hate speech exemption to the First Amendment that, as far as I am aware, (laughs) it does not exist anywhere in legal precedent in the United States.

You know, and that's, you know, I think an idea that was really anathema to many conservatives and Republicans, you know, previously.

So just, like you said, you can debate the merits of Kirk's viewpoints, and I think it's not really debatable that some of the language that he used was, you know, shrouded in racist language, and misogynistic language, and homophobic language.

But he was somebody who would go out and speak with folks who had different points of views, which is something that not everybody is willing to do these days, so you know, add to that all the concern over what's going on with the president's threats, of which I think we're gonna maybe get to (laughs) a little bit about using the National Guard or these immigration crackdowns and things that it's sort of just adding to this powder-keg environment that we're in right now, which I think is scary for a lot of folks and folks all across the political spectrum because, you know, as I alluded to earlier, this is not happening just, you know, from one side to the other.

It's really, you know, over the longer scope of history, more violence has come from the right, but it's rising on both sides right now, and that's a very concerning environment to be in.

- Yeah, and the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, is charged with murder, and the prosecutor said that they will seek the death penalty in that case.

Dan, as you alluded to, Operation Midway Blitz continues in Chicago, an intensive immigration enforcement crackdown by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.

Dan, what's the latest in terms of what's going on in Chicago and surrounding area?

- Yes, as we are taping here on Wednesday morning, September 17th, just yesterday morning, in two suburbs of Chicago that have significant immigrant populations in Elgin and West Chicago, there were big ICE raids that happened, you know, early in the morning, which resulted in several arrests, including the brief detention of a US citizen.

You know, these are a result of, there's this big immigration-enforcement figure who had apparently led a lot of raids in California over the last several weeks that resulted in, I believe, 5,000 arrests there.

He's now turned his attention to Chicago.

These arrests in Elgin included him, and I guess Kristi Noem was actually, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was briefly also physically there for the beginning of the raid.

You know, these arrests are highlighted on social media and friendly conservative media.

And, you know, these are apparently separate-ish from Operation Midway Blitz but all really the same thing.

And, you know, last week, we also saw the shooting death of another undocumented immigrant in Franklin Park related to an ICE enforcement action.

So, you know, things are ramping up.

We have so far, you know, sort of separately not seen the National Guard deployed to Chicago despite the war of words between President Trump and Governor JB Pritzker.

But like Dan said, you know, at least according to Governor Pritzker and, I think, a lot of other folks who've studied, you know, how this kind of pressure tactics work, you know, the idea is to have these raids kind of spur protests, which then becomes a pretext to sending in the National Guard and militarizing the city of Chicago or even beyond.

- Yeah, - Yeah, and one of the things that's really concerning about the arrest in Elgin of the US citizen, or he wasn't arrested, the detention, was that the Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem actually shared a video that included him being led away in handcuffs, and then she appeared to hop onto the truck where he was taken.

And then, you know, she doesn't ever say or, as far as I'm aware, has not said that this was an accidental detention of a US citizen in the immigration raid.

So, you know, and this is not the first story where something like that has happened.

So that is quite concerning, I think, to anybody who is concerned about civil liberties.

- Yeah, this type of enforcement, I would imagine, has to take its toll.

What is your sense of the feeling within the city?

- I think people are very tense, I think particularly in, in immigrant communities.

You know, the recent Supreme Court decision allowing sweeps to continue in California, you know, that had been halted due to concerns about racial profiling, I think raises that concern.

You know, folks are scared.

There's reports of, you know, people not going out to eat, or to shop, or being concerned about, you know, taking their kids to school.

The gentleman in Franklin Park, I believe, if I remember correctly, had just dropped off a kid at school when that incident happened.

So really it is a heightened level of concern.

You know, we saw State Senator Karina Villa in West Chicago sort of chase away some ICE agents yesterday or who appeared to be ICE agents, federal agents of some kind.

So there are folks who are out there, you know, sort of, from their perspective, protecting members of their community.

But it is a very tense situation.

You know, this Elgin situation, they, you know, blew in the (laughs) doors of this house, basically, at 6:00 in the morning.

And the gentleman, who is a US citizen who was detained, said, "You know, my kids stay here with me on weekends.

I'm glad that, you know, they were not here when this happened."

So I think people are very much on edge.

There are people who, you know, support this as well, you know, and think that if people have not entered the country through legal means, they should be deported.

But I do think there's a heightened level of concern all across the Chicago area.

- We'd also be remiss to not mention that this is happening around Mexican Independence Day, which is September the 16th.

And there are, you know, very big populations of Mexican immigrants who have been here for many, many years.

You know, in addition, of course, in the last several years, a lot of the focus has been on these newer immigrants who have come from places like Venezuela, Colombia, who have come up through Mexico.

But it's also, you know, affecting these immigrant communities who have been long, long established, who, you know, unlike asylum seekers, are working and have been working for many years, are taxpayers.

And, you know, because, of course, these newer immigrants who are seeking asylum, they can't work because it takes a very, very long time for them to get work permits, if at all, and, you know, it's very disruptive.

Because the US Supreme Court, like Dan mentioned, has, you know, basically, given tacit approval to racial profiling, it means that federal agents can target places, you know, including, you know, where folks would, you know, show up for, say, day laboring, or landscape work, or, you know, anything that you can imagine.

And, you know, Governor Pritzker, I believe, said this week, basically, they're targeting people with brown skin, and, you know, according to the Supreme Court, that is, again, tacitly approved.

- In the couple of minutes that we have left, wanted to take an opportunity for each of you, what are something that you're gonna be watching in the days or weeks ahead?

- Well, I'm hoping that this situation we've been talking about calms down a little bit and we can move on to some other things, but I think, you know, the way that this proceeds is gonna be, you know, a top story that we're gonna be following.

In particular, I think one of the concerns is the lack of transparency from the federal government on who the folks are that they're detaining and where they're being taken.

And, you know, some of the limited information they do release about the folks who are taken into custody isn't always easy to check out, or, you know, they claim they're the worst of the worst, but then when you go and look at the actual court records, it tells a different story, or they claim, you know, folks have been taken as part of this operation, but actually you find out that they were detained previously in a different state and that sort of thing, so, you know, trying to get as many answers as we can out of an administration that is, frankly, not very interested in answering questions, I think, is gonna be very important and then seeing what the political consequences are, you know, again, Trump going back and forth, it seems, every other day about whether he's going to use the National Guard here, yeah, and just (laughs) whether anything happens in the coming weeks to sort of lower the overall temperature of everything we've been talking about today.

- Hannah.

- Well, in just a few weeks, former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan is set to report to prison.

Last I checked, I don't think he has been assigned a certain facility yet within the Federal Bureau of Prison systems, but, you know, he's been, as I've said on the program before, sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

I covered his trial and all of the other related trials, (laughs) and we'll have to cover at least one more redo of a trial in those long line of them.

And, you know, it's really gonna be an interesting kind of coda to this whole long saga.

And, you know, some have speculated that maybe he would try to appeal to President Trump.

I personally feel like he is too proud to do that, but others have pointed out that he would do anything to save his own skin.

I did think it was interesting that, after Jim Edgar passed, he and his wife put out a statement, you know, honoring his legacy.

So, you know, he still believes himself to have that sort of responsibility and believes himself to be part, you know, in the mix.

- All right, Hannah Meisel, "Capitol News Illinois," Dan Petrella, "Chicago Tribune," thank you both for joining us this week.

- Thank you.

- Glad to be here.

And I'm Jeff Williams.

Thank you for tuning in for "CapitolView."

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