Jim Edgar, a two-term Republican governor of Illinois during the 1990s who was praised for his moderation and bipartisanship, died on Sunday in Springfield, Ill. He was 79.
His death, in a hospital, from pancreatic cancer, was announced by his family.
Mr. Edgar’s style of leadership, sober-minded and understated, has become a rarity among Republican governors. He forged budgets with Democrats, supported abortion rights and increased spending for schools even as a large inherited deficit forced him to cut spending elsewhere.
In retirement, he was a rare Republican public official who openly criticized President Trump. “We’ve had chaos for four years we didn’t need to have,” he told The Peoria Journal Star in 2020. “I mean, there’s always going to be some turmoil, but he stirs it up. He bullies.” He added, “A president should be trying to bring people together.”
Mr. Edgar shocked many in Illinois politics when, toward the end of his second term, in 1997, he announced that he would not seek a third term or run for the U.S. Senate. Republicans widely considered him a likely winner in a contest against the embattled Senate incumbent, Carol Moseley Braun, a Democrat who had served one-term as the first African American woman elected to that chamber. The year before, he had reportedly been a strong contender to become Bob Dole’s presidential running mate. (Mr. Dole picked the former congressman and housing secretary Jack Kemp.)
The Republican Party’s confidence in Mr. Edgar was buoyed by the polls, which showed he was popular with more than 60 percent of Illinois voters. But he insisted on bowing out of politics, for good. He had just turned 51.
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The post Jim Edgar, 79, Popular and Moderate Republican Governor of Illinois, Dies appeared first on New York Times.
