Patrick Joseph Quinn (born December 16, 1948) is an American politician who served as the 41st governor of Illinois from 2009 to 2015. A Democrat, Quinn began his career as a political activist, founding the Coalition for Political Honesty, which organized citizen-initiated referendums advocating political reform. He later served as a commissioner on the Cook County Board of Tax Appeals from 1982 to 1986, Illinois Treasurer from 1991 to 1995, and the 45th lieutenant governor of Illinois from 2003 to 2009.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Quinn is a graduate of Georgetown University and Northwestern University School of Law. He began his political career working as a campaign organizer and then aide to Illinois Governor Dan Walker before launching a series of citizen-led petition drives, including the 1976 Political Honesty Initiative and the 1980 Cutback Amendment, which reduced the size of the Illinois House of Representatives from 177 to 118. The amendment marked the first and only time Illinois voters used the initiative process to enact a constitutional amendment or law.
After the passage of the Cutback Amendment, Quinn continued to organize petition drives and was elected as a Commissioner on the Cook County Board of Appeals in 1982; he later served as revenue director in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. He was elected Treasurer of Illinois in 1990 and subsequently ran unsuccessful campaigns for secretary of state in 1994, United States senator in 1996, and Lieutenant Governor in 1998.
In 2002, Quinn won the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Illinois and was elected alongside gubernatorial candidate Rod Blagojevich in the general election. Both Quinn and Blagojevich were reelected in 2006. Quinn assumed the governorship on January 29, 2009, after Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office on corruption charges.
Quinn won a full term in the 2010 gubernatorial election, winning by a margin of less than 1% against Republican state senator Bill Brady in an upset. While in office, Quinn worked to provide voters the power to recall the governor, passed a $31 billion capital construction plan, passed ethics reforms, legalized civil unions and same-sex marriage, expanded state coverage under the Affordable Care Act, instituted the Put Illinois to Work program, initiated the Illinois Secure Choice retirement savings program, and abolished the death penalty. He lost re-election in 2014 to the Republican nominee, Bruce Rauner. He later ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination for attorney general of Illinois in 2018.
Early life and education Quinn was born December 16, 1948, in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, the son of Patrick Joseph "P. J." Quinn and the former Eileen Prindiville. P. J. Quinn and his wife Eileen both grew up in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.
Quinn's father enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the outbreak of World War II, serving in the Pacific Theater aboard several ships including the USS Bon Homme Richard. He served for three years, one month, and 15 days. In a commendation letter from his commanding officer, Quinn was described as "one of the finest men with whom I have ever worked. Extremely capable in his work, he was at all times cheerful, earnest, cooperative, frank, and honest." After World War II, Quinn graduated from DePaul University thanks to the G.I. Bill. He worked for the Catholic Cemeteries of Chicago for 40 years.Michael Barone and Chuck McCutcheon, The Almanac of American Politics: 2012 (2011) p. 512.
Eileen Prindiville was born before American women had the right to vote under the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920 and graduated from the Academy of Our Lady in 1935. Eileen worked for decades as an assistant to the principal of the Hinsdale Public Middle School. P. J. and Eileen Quinn raised three sons in a single-family home in Hinsdale, Illinois, thanks to a mortgage secured by the Veterans Administration.
Quinn attended St. Isaac Jogues for elementary school in Hinsdale before attending Fenwick High School in Oak Park. Quinn was the cross-country team captain and sports editor of the school newspaper. Quinn then on to graduate from Georgetown University in 1971 with a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (BSFS) degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he was a student of Professor Jan Karski and sports editor for The Hoya.
From 1967 through 1971, Quinn was captain of the Bad Motor Scooters, a traveling basketball team that competed successfully in summer basketball tournaments at Hilliard Homes, Stateway Gardens, 66th and Kimbark on Chicago’s South Side, and Martin Luther King Boys Club on the West Side, where he played against Chicago Bulls legend Bob “Butterbean” Love. Quinn remains a dedicated sports fan, including the Chicago White Sox, Chicago Bears, Chicago Blackhawks, and the Chicago Bulls. He is the only Illinois governor known to have dunked a basketball.
After serving in state government and spearheading three major statewide initiative petition drives, Quinn earned a Juris Doctor degree from Northwestern University School of Law in 1980.
Quinn is the eldest of three boys. Tom Quinn has been an attorney since 1979 and his proudest moment in the courtroom was winning a legal settlement in a major case that targeted housing discrimination in the south suburbs of Chicago. John Quinn served as an American history teacher at Fenwick from 1980 to 2022 and served as head basketball coach for more than 30 years. He is in the Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame. P. J., Eileen, Tom, and John always played energetic roles in Pat's petition and referendum drives and political campaigns.
Quinn later married Julie Hancock in 1982 before divorcing in 1986, and later married Monica Walker in 2025.
Family history and heritage
Quinn's relatives hailed from County Mayo in Ireland, where the term boycott was invented following a mass tenant farmer movement against a cruel, unpopular land agent, Charles Boycott. Quinn's grandparents left Ireland in the early 1900s to emigrate to the United States. His paternal grandfather, also named Patrick Quinn, had a stint as a copper miner in Butte, Montana, then came to Chicago's South Side. In 1915, he opened "Quinn's Groceries, Meats & Vegetables" in Chicago. His motto was "Quinn for Quality, Quantity and Service". Quinn's father, P. J. Quinn, worked in the family store and graduated from De La Salle Institute in 1932.
Early activism Before running for public office, Quinn worked as an organizer for Dan Walker in the 1972 Illinois gubernatorial primary election, working statewide on college campuses (1972 being the first election in which 18-year-olds could vote) before organizing the Metro East and southwestern Illinois in the general election. From January 1973 to July 1975, Quinn served as an ombudsman and assistant to the governor for labor and worker safety.
From July 1975 to December 1982, Quinn served as the secretary-treasurer of the Coalition for Political Honesty, a volunteer initiative petition and referendum organization. From October 1975 to 1976, the Coalition collected signatures and advocated for the Political Honesty Initiative, which called for referendums on three reforms: ending political double dipping, conflict-of-interest voting by Illinois legislators, and the practice of advance pay, wherein legislators could collect their entire annual salary on their first day in office. Radio host Wally Phillips of WGN-AM was among the Political Honesty Initiative petition signers and one of its greatest supporters. Petitions containing 635,128 signatures (an all-time record) were filed with the Illinois Secretary of State at the State Capitol on April 30, 1976, leading the General Assembly to quickly pass a bill in May 1976, ending the 100-year-old advance pay practice once and for all by requiring legislators to be paid monthly after doing their work. The referendum did not appear on the 1976 ballot following the case of Coalition for Political Honesty v. State Board of Elections, which hinged on whether the word "and" in the 1970 Illinois constitution was "conjunctive" or "disjunctive."
In 1976, as a result of Quinn's efforts to end the practice of advance pay, Quinn received a "standing boo-vation" from members of the Illinois General Assembly, led by State Representative Mike Madigan who said that didn’t deserve to be called a fellow Irishman.
In 1977, Quinn led a statewide petition drive for open primaries in Illinois, and in 1978, a statewide petition drive for a property tax freeze. On December 16, 1978, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Quinn led a campaign where 40,000 Illinois taxpayers sent tea bags to the office of Governor James R. Thompson to protest a lame-duck 40% pay raise for legislators and state officials. Thompson had supported the pay raises, which were later roundly criticized by President Jimmy Carter, United States Senators Adlai Stevenson III and Charles H. Percy, and others. Thompson angrily defended his actions, saying that the governor is not "a nine-to-five clerk," calling it "a different job," but ultimately the tea bag movement prevailed.
Beginning in 1979, Quinn and the Coalition for Political Honesty began an initiative petition drive for what became known as the Cutback Amendment, a constitutional amendment to reduce the size of the Illinois House of Representatives from 177 to 118 members and abolish cumulative voting, requiring House members to run in single-member districts. The proposal was supported by the League of Women Voters. After the petition drive began, the Illinois General Assembly passed legislation to make it more difficult to pass initiative petitions. After submitting 477,112 signatures, the Illinois State Board of Elections struck the question from the ballot, citing the new law, resulting in a lawsuit, Coalition for Political Honesty v. State Board of Elections (II) (1980), the Illinois Supreme Court case found that the petition restrictions were unconstitutional and on the voters' initiative power placed the question on the 1980 ballot.
Illinois voters approved the Cutback Amendment by a 68.7 percent margin (2,112,224 to 962,325) on November 4, 1980. It marked the first and only time in state history that Illinois voters had used initiative petition and binding referendum to enact a constitutional amendment or law. The Associated Press ranked the Cutback Amendment movement as the state's top story of the year.
In 1981 and 1982, Quinn led an initiative petition drive to amend the 1970 Illinois Constitution with the "Illinois Initiative". This amendment was intended to increase the power of petition and binding referendums in the political process. The petition drive collected a sufficient number of signatures, but the Illinois Appellate Court ruled in Lousin v. State Board of Elections (1982) that it could not appear on the ballot.
In 1982, Quinn and the Coalition placed a question on the Chicago ballot calling for a Citizens Utility Board to protect consumers. In 1983, 110 towns in Illinois placed the CUB question on their ballots. On September 20, 1983, Gov. James Thompson signed the Citizens Utility Board (CUB) law (Public Act 83-945) to provide “effective and democratic representation of utility consumers before the Illinois Commerce Commission, the General Assembly, the courts and other public bodies, and by providing consumer education on utility services prices and methods of energy conservation.”
In July 1984, the first CUB membership inserts were included in 3.5 million phone bills. Some 30,000 consumers quickly sent back $5 to join the new group. The next month, 2.3 million gas customers received the CUB insert along with 5 million electric customers in September 1984. Within six months, CUB had grown to 100,000 dues-paying members from all 102 counties in Illinois.