By Hannah Meisel
& Jerry Nowicki
Capitol News Illinois
news@capitolnewsillinois.com
Jim Edgar, Illinois’ 38th governor who served from 1991 to 1999, died Sunday after disclosing an aggressive cancer diagnosis earlier this year. He was 79.
Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki
Though he’d been out of power for 26 years — more time than the two decades he spent in office as an elected official — the former governor was still active in Illinois political circles until the end of his life, heading a bipartisan program to develop up-and-coming leaders from across Illinois.
In a statement Sunday, Edgar’s family confirmed he’d died “from complications related to treatment for pancreatic cancer,” a diagnosis he’d made public in February.
“We are deeply grateful for the love, support and kindness so many have shown to Jim and our family over these last several months,” the statement said.
Despite his failing health, Edgar still made public appearances in the last months of his life, including in August at his 2025 Edgar Fellows program in Urbana, though the former governor had to make an emergency room trip during the gathering.
A moderate Republican, Edgar became symbolic of a near-extinct breed of GOP politics in the years since he left office. He wasn’t the only elected Republican in Illinois with a pro-choice stance on abortion, but Edgar and his contemporaries were still in the minority at a time when the GOP was still a powerhouse in state politics.
But as hardline Republican politics became ascendent nationally, the GOP’s power in Illinois dwindled, making Edgar somewhat of a political nomad. The former governor became a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, and last year campaigned with other Republicans for then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful bid for the White House.
Edgar’s bipartisan leadership program and disavowing hard-right figures like Trump made the former governor plenty of allies in the Democratic party, including Gov. JB Pritzker, who said Sunday that he considered Edgar a “friend and mentor.”
“His commitment to reaching across the aisle in service of the people of Illinois undeniably made our state better,” Pritzker said. “Now more than ever, we should channel that spirit and resolve to live as Governor Edgar did: with honesty, integrity, and an enduring respect for all.”
The governor said he would direct flags across Illinois to be lowered to half-staff in honor of Edgar’s passing.
Edgar’s death follows that of his immediate successor, former Gov. George Ryan, in May.
Edgar was born in rural northeast Oklahoma but grew up in Charleston, Illinois. He later attended college in his adopted hometown at Eastern Illinois University, where the future governor was elected student body president.
But that wasn’t his first victory at the ballot box; according to his website, Edgar was in first grade when he ran Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign in his elementary school’s mock election, cementing his lifelong status as a Republican, though his parents were Democrats.
After college, Edgar served as an intern and then staffer for Republican legislative leaders before himself getting elected to the Illinois House in 1976 at age 30. In the middle of Edgar’s second term, then-Republican Gov. Jim Thompson tapped the young lawmaker to become his legislative liaison.
Thompson then appointed Edgar as secretary of state in 1981, an office he held for a decade until he was sworn in as governor in 1991.
In a public appearance in Springfield on May 28 at the Illinois State Library, state leaders honored Edgar’s commitment to literacy and to the processes of government.
At the event, Pritzker told the story of his first meeting with Edgar after Pritzker was elected governor in 2018, just months after the state ended a costly two-year budget impasse between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats in the General Assembly.
“He said one really important thing to me,” Pritzker recalled. “He said: You really only have one critical job as governor of the state of Illinois, and that’s pass a budget.”
But Edgar’s most enduring contribution to the state of Illinois, Pritzker said, could be summed up in a well-known Edgar quote: “To me, the best politics is good government.” Pritzker said it was reflected in Edgar’s decision to maintain many of the staff that were hired by his Democratic predecessor when he became secretary of state.
“That view — that honest loyalty to the people of Illinois — is what makes Jim Edgar an icon no matter what party you belong to,” Pritzker said. “He has not only guided his every move in a bipartisan fashion, but he has also kept true to his own moral compass.”
The event at the state library was called to dedicate a reading room in Edgar’s honor. When he was secretary of state, he said one of his favorite parts of the job was being state librarian. But the library at the time was “hid away” in another building on the Capitol Complex.
“Now, I mean, it was terrible,” he said. “I went over there, and I thought, this is not where it should be.”
Edgar’s political leadership ensured the library would be funded in 1985, then dedicated in 1990.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.