Greg Baise Called Me Last Night

The called ID said, “UNKNOWN CALLER,” but Greg told me his name and that he was President of the Illinois Manufacturers Association.

He wanted to talk to me about electric “rate relief for consumers who need it the most.”

Guess that’s not our household, but, hey, I was willing to listen.

Greg said that some legislators were calling for a rate freeze and that might result in a lawsuit with no one getting any rate relief and might even lead to electric companies’getting into financial trouble.

Oh, he was more elegant than that. I just couldn’t take notes fast enough.

In any event, he wanted me to tell my legislator that I wanted real rate relief and urged me to press 1 to do so (and 2, if I didn’t want to do so).

He wouldn’t answer my questions. I waited but there was not response.

So I hung up.

I’m trying to remember the first time I met Greg.

Was it at the Kane County Fair when Jim Thompson first saw my Thompson/Skinner buttons—the first Thompson buttons ever made, I think. Was he the guy walking Jim’s new dog?

Thompson looked askance at the button. I figured he thought I was trading on his name. Of course, I was running for my third term. I explained that he might be better known in the Chicago area, but I was better known in Boone County.

He certainly was the one in the governor’s office that summer day I held a press conference touting the Non-Game Wildlife Check-Off bill that I had passed during the session.

I had heard an Indian interviewed on WLS one Sunday afternoon. He was raising golden eagles using artificial insemination. I got in touch with him at his home in the Metro-East area and asked if he would be willing to hold a couple of press conferences with me.

I figured that his project would be one that might receive state funding from the money on the income tax check-off.

We drove from opposite sides of the state, meeting at the State Capitol on the second floor in northeast corner, where the bronze stature of an eagle then stood.

I pontificated about we in Illinois being able to have real eagles, at which point, his handler raised his arm and the female eagle spread her wings, or bronze eagles like the statutes behind us.

It was a slow day, so the eagle made the front page of the State Journal-Register in a separately posed picture on the front steps of the Capitol, but, after the press conference, one of the reporters, being in a playful mood, suggested showing the eagle to Governor Thompson, who was working in his office.

We walked into the office and asked the receptionist if the Governor would like to see the eagle.

Out came Greg to find out what was going on.

He delivered the message to Thompson.

Thompson’s Revenue Director Jim Zagel was adamantly opposed to the bill. I knew that.

So it was highly unlikely that the Governor would be willing to be part of a publicity stunt to bring pressure on him to sign the bill.

All of a sudden, I saw the Indian’s mother, who had accompanied him and the eagle, scurrying to the women’s room across the hall between the eagle statute and the Treasurer’s Office.

And, then, splat.

The eagle pooped on the floor.

The mother was there almost as the poop hit the floor trying to clean up the mess.

Boy, did she have a great sense of timing.

“The eagle sure knows who his friends are,” one irreverent reporter observed as Greg came out of the Governor’s office to tell us that the Governor did not want to see the eagle.

All of us were laughing uncontrollably by then, of course.

Afterwards a two-car convoy headed to Chicago for Tribune Plaza to hold another press conference.

The funniest thing about that one was a little black girl asking an older sister as the eagle tried to soar on the river wind current,

"Is that a turkey?"

Oh, as expected, Thompson vetoed my bill, but Virginia McDonald got him to sign it the next year.