Former two-term Gov. Jim Edgar diagnosed with pancreatic cancer

Rick Pearson, Chicago Tribune on Feb 24, 2025

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Jim Edgar, who led Illinois government through a period of fiscal austerity with great positive acclaim from voters during his two terms as governor, announced Monday that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Edgar, 78, who served as the state’s chief executive from 1991 to 1999 and currently leads a bipartisan program through the University of Illinois aimed at training the state’s future political leaders, made the announcement in a brief note to past “Edgar Fellows” participants.

He wrote he and his wife, Brenda, “are facing a new, significant challenge.”

“Doctors at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago have determined I have pancreatic cancer that has spread. They and physicians at Mayo Clinic are coordinating on a treatment regimen that I am following initially in Arizona, where we spend the winter, and later in Springfield when we return,” Edgar wrote.

“We do not underestimate this challenge, but we have confidence in the medical team helping us address it,” he wrote.

In an interview, Edgar said he was diagnosed in mid-January following an MRI and biopsy and has so far undergone three chemotherapy treatments.

“I guess I’m still kind of in denial so I can kind of get by each day,” the former governor said, noting doctors at Mayo told him that life-extending treatments have been advancing quickly over the last five years.

“It just came out of the blue. I didn’t have any symptoms or anything. A guy at Mayo told me, ‘Anybody that tells you you’ve got so long to live, don’t believe it. Nobody knows how long you’ve got.’ He said, ‘You’ll hear about an average. Nobody’s average.’ He said, ‘It’s either worse or better,’” Edgar said.

“I told him, ‘Guys, I’m a pessimist. I lost my first election, but I don’t want to die,’” he said, adding that two of his grandchildren have wedding plans this year. “I also said, ‘There’s an old saying in horse racing — if you have 2-year-olds in training, you’ll never commit suicide. Well, I’ve got a lot of 2-year-old and 3-year-old (horses) in training, and I want to watch them race. So you guys figure out something.’”

Edgar was first elected governor in 1990, a sharp contrast to his wheeling-dealing predecessor, the late James R. Thompson, who was the state’s longest-serving governor from 1977 until Edgar took over.

In addition to his strict management of the state budget, which went from his inheriting a $1 billion deficit to ending his tenure with a $1.5 billion surplus, Edgar also enacted caps on local property taxes, set a base level for public grade schools, implemented welfare-to-work changes and launched a nationally recognized initiative to encourage adoptions.

Edgar’s political ideology — fiscal conservativism matched with social moderation — was in line with what had been a successful Illinois Republican formula for decades. After Edgar decided not to run for a third term, he was succeeded by Republican George Ryan, who only served one term amid a corruption scandal. Since then, the GOP’s hard-line move to the right on social issues and the state’s changing demographics has led to only one Republican winning Illinois’ top office since 2002, Bruce Rauner in 2014, and he was a one-term governor.

Edgar has lamented the party’s decline in Illinois and the national party’s embrace of President Donald Trump. Edgar has readily acknowledged he probably could not win a GOP primary in the state now.

Democratic House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, who was a previous “Edgar Fellow,” said the former governor “is a model of a true statesman, and his commitment to integrity and collaborative leadership continues to guide Illinois.”

“Gov. Edgar and his family are in my prayers as they face this new challenge. As he has worked to bring out the best in others, may our prayers and well wishes bring the best to him,” Welch said in a statement.

Paving the way for Edgar’s successful runs for governor were his two terms as Illinois secretary of state. He defeated Democrat Neil Hartigan by nearly 84,000 votes in 1990 to become governor and four years later he won 64% of the vote in defeating the late Dawn Clark Netsch, a former Democratic state senator and comptroller, by more than 900,000 votes and capturing 101 of the state’s 102 counties.

At Rush, a doctor told him, “‘Just take each day a day at a time. He said don’t think too far ahead,’ and that’s probably the best advice I’ve gotten,” Edgar said. “I’ve always been a planner, so that’s a whole new approach. For the most part, my mind is pretty good, because I just try to focus on other things.”

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