- If you look at the results of my time as governor, I truly believe I was, I'm gonna say this, I really believe it.

Put me on the, give me a Bible, I'll swear on it.

I believe I was the best governor in modern Illinois history by far.

Ask yourself, what has your governor ever done for you?

Think about it.

I can't think of anything Governor Thompson ever did for me or Governor Edgar did for me as a regular person, or George Ryan or Dan Walker before them.

Ogilvy raised the, he brought the income tax on that hammered people.

But me, I would get letters in prison from moms thanking me for the all kids program that saved their child's lives, their children's lives, children who have pediatric cancer because of the program that we put in place, every child getting affordable healthcare in Illinois in 2005, way before any other state.

Senior citizens and disabled people in Illinois riding public transportation for free because the Democrat machine led by Madigan wanted to enact another sales tax increase on poor people and seniors, people living on fixed incomes.

We have the highest sales tax in Cook County of any place in the country because of the "Madi-goons," you know, that Democrat machine kind of politics that nickel and dimes ordinary people and low income people.

And I wasn't for that.

So when they did that, I rewrote their bill and gave seniors and disabled people and the vulnerable free public transportation.

And that was the first time they wanted to impeach me for having done that, which is an amazing, which is a matter of profound amazement to me that that was something that they should impeach a democratic governor for.

When we're Democrats and we're supposed to follow what Hubert Humphrey used to say, which is, "You can judge the quality of a society by how it treats those in the dawn of life, its children.

How it treats those in the twilight of life, its elderly.

And how it treats those in the shadows of life, its disabled."

That was right up exactly the kinds of things that the Democrats say they're for.

So preschool for all, record investments in public school education, open road tolling to help commuters.

153,000 women didn't have health insurance in Illinois, couldn't afford mammograms and pap smears, and Madigan wouldn't call the bill, Mike Madigan, 'cause he's building his political empire.

And he and his family get rich in this system down there.

And so I decided to do it by executive order.

I did it on my own.

If they didn't like it, sue me.

Sue me.

And we saved lives with that because it's a matter of fact that if a woman catches her breast cancer early, she has a 94 to 96% chance of living.

But if it's late, it's less than 30%.

So mammograms and pap smears.

And these ideas came from my life experiences growing up at Cicero and Grand Avenue, because I saw my cousin, Eli, who was 12 years old die of pediatric cancer, leukemia when I was 10.

He was like a brother to me.

I saw my cousins, beautiful cousin Carol and her sister Patsy, first cousins, die of breast cancer before they were 40.

My cousin Carol died before she was 30 because they didn't diagnose the breast cancer on time.

It was a different era back then, and they didn't get adequate healthcare.

So healthcare became a real priority for me because what I saw growing up and for the first time in my life, I had power.

I could actually do something.

So the presidential stuff in my mind was, if I do a good job being governor, maybe that could happen someday later.

- [Interviewer] So we'll stay on the positive for now.

You were highly popular during your first term.

People responded to those programs that you put in place.

Did you look at those poll numbers?

Did you feed off of the fact that you were a popular so-called populist governor at the time?

- I was a populist governor, but I was not.

When you say that, I look at those poll numbers.

I mean, I invested political capital to get these things done for people.

Almost all of it was hard.

You would think that with a Democrat speaker Madigan, who's the chairman of our party, this stuff would be easy to pass.

But he fought me every step of the way.

And so I had to invest political capital fighting him politically.

And along the ways you fight powerful forces like that is you have to be strong politically.

And one way to be strong politically, a principle way of being strong politically is you have to raise a lot of campaign money so that you can afford to make enemies.

If your heart is right and you're doing it for the benefit of the people.

None of those things would've happened if I was weak politically.

And when you talk about popularity, I mean, it comes and goes.

I mean, there was moments when I was popular in polling, but most of the time it wasn't so good.

And part of it was because they thought I was fighting too much, and I knew that.

But I felt too that I should not be like a typical elitist, upper class phony, reformer politician.

When I say phony reformers, they come up with all these things for ethics and all the rest, and we did some of that too.

But they won't do anything to get into the arena and actually mix it up to get results for people.

They just don't wanna get muddied at all.

So they say all the right things, they do all the right things, they sponsor certain bills that go nowhere.

They criticize others who are actually fighting to get things done for people.

But nobody's life has been improved or the burdens for everyday people have been lessened.

They're just typical fake politicians who just look a little better 'cause they look like they're reformers.