Jim Edgar, a two-term Republican governor of Illinois in the 1990s praised for his moderation and bipartisanship, died Sunday in Springfield at 79. His family said he died in a hospital from pancreatic cancer.
Known for a sober, understated style of leadership, Mr. Edgar forged budgets with Democrats, supported abortion rights and boosted school funding even as he trimmed spending elsewhere to tackle a record budget deficit.
In retirement, he became one of the few Republican officials to openly criticize President Trump. “We’ve had chaos for four years we didn’t need to have,” he told The Peoria Journal Star in 2020. “A president should be trying to bring people together.”
Mr. Edgar surprised Illinois politics in 1997 when, near the end of his second term, he announced he would not seek a third term or run for the U.S. Senate, despite Republicans viewing him as a likely winner against incumbent Carol Moseley Braun. The year before, he was reportedly a strong contender to be Bob Dole’s running mate.
Polls at the time showed Mr. Edgar’s approval rating above 60 percent statewide, but he insisted on leaving politics. “I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done, but I’ve done it,” he said at the time. “Some people stay too long in politics. Sometimes if you don’t go out on top, they throw you out.”
His two successors, George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich, went to prison on corruption charges. Mr. Edgar, by contrast, was untainted, though he did testify in the bribery trial of a contributor.
“He was part of a tradition of Midwest moderate Republicanism that has kind of faded,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama. “He was known for sitting down and working out budgets in a collegial way. He was a professional.”
Current Illinois Governor JB Pritzker called Mr. Edgar a “friend and mentor” and a “model public servant.”
Perhaps Mr. Edgar’s greatest accomplishment was confronting a nearly $1 billion budget deficit — the largest in Illinois history — that he inherited in 1991. Refusing to repeal a temporary income tax increase, he made it permanent while cutting social spending and the state workforce to preserve education funding.
Over time, he built a working relationship with Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan. “By the end of the session, when we were in overtime, about every day he’d be down in my office, and we’d have lunch together,” Mr. Edgar recalled in 2015. “We knew we were going to have to compromise.”
Nicknamed “Governor No” for his fiscal restraint, Mr. Edgar was described by colleagues as polite, austere and a teetotaler. Before becoming governor, he led a decade-long campaign against drunken driving as Illinois secretary of state.
As governor, he clashed with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley over the future of a small downtown airport, but he also pushed a major Medicaid expansion extending coverage to more than 40,000 additional children from low-income families.
He emphasized careful stewardship over grand visions. “What a governor has to do … you got to manage,” he said in 2010. “If you can’t manage, a vision doesn’t do you any good.”
James Robert Edgar was born July 22, 1946, in Vinita, Oklahoma, and grew up in Charleston, Illinois. He was 7 when his father died in a car accident; his mother supported the family by renting out rooms.
He graduated with a history degree from Eastern Illinois University in 1968, worked as a legislative intern and salesman, then won a seat in the Illinois House in 1976. Governor James R. Thompson appointed him secretary of state in 1981.
Mr. Edgar narrowly won the governorship in 1990 and was re-elected in a 1994 landslide, carrying 101 of 102 counties.
After leaving office in 1998, he founded the Edgar Fellows Program at the University of Illinois, mentoring more than 500 aspiring public leaders.
He married Brenda Smith in 1967. She survives him, along with their two children, Elizabeth and Brad, and five grandchildren.
“There was a humility to the guy that would be an aberration in the current environment,” Axelrod said. “There was never a hint of scandal associated with him. He stands apart from what we’ve come to think of as politicians.”
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