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Not Consecrated. Republican Representative Reed F. Cutler hung a sneering label on the gentleman governor: "Sir Galahad." And many of the old pols in his own party were willing to echo the sneer. Senate Democrats elected Boss Bill Connors, from Chicago's notorious 42nd
Ward, as minority leader. Somehow, gradually, the young amateur won the surly respect of the old pro; before long, Connors was going down the line for almost everything the governor proposed. With his jowls joggling, Connors would run up & down the Senate floor, seizing Democrats by the lapel and growling: "Now vote for this. The little fellow over in the mansion wants you to."
The 1949 session voted for only a few things the little fellow wanted. But the 1951 session, although this time both houses were controlled by the Republicans, voted for a good many more.
The keys to Stevenson's success have been neither gold nor silver, but steelier and less flashy—patient persistence, hard work, diplomacy, good public relations and able assistance. The 1949 legislature turned down his proposed gasoline-tax increase. For two years he preached its benefits to the citizens of Illinois, then resubmitted it in 1951.* This time the legislators deadlocked on how the money should be divided among the state, counties, cities and townships. Stevenson called the leaders to the executive mansion and by 2 a.m. had worked out a compromise. On this issue, as on every other, he had studied exhaustively and, as Jack Arvey put it, had become "an expert on every damned detail."
Governor Stevenson travels his state twice as much as his unlamented predecessor, but no faster. He still uses the same plane (a twin-engined Beechcraft). In the 36½ months he has been in office, he has traveled, within the state, an estimated 40,000 miles. But he does most of his work in the faded, 95-year-old governor's mansion, as magniloquent and dated as an 1845 oration, at the edge of downtown Springfield. (Since the divorce, the handsome, eleven-room frame house on Stevenson's 70-acre farm at Libertyville has been rented. Its present tenant: Marshall Field Jr., editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, and an old friend.) In the 28-room, brick-and-stone governor's mansion, Stevenson sleeps in a second-floor bedroom; on the walls hang portraits of great-grandfather and grandmother Fell and grandfather Stevenson. (The governor's ex-wife once remarked: "There must be some Japanese in the Stevensons; they worship their ancestors so.") Stevenson works at a long desk in a basement office.
Shoes Without Spikes. Stevenson gets up about 7, is at his desk shortly after 9, and usually has lunch there on a tray. Before dinner, he likes a bourbon "cold toddy" (on the rocks, with a little sugar and water). After dinner, he often returns to his desk for several hours. The executive mansion is adequately staffed with servants, but none of them sleeps there. The only residents are Stevenson and one of his executive assistants, William McCormick Blair, wealthy Republican and cousin of the Chicago Tribune's Bertie McCormick. On the nights when Bill Blair goes to a movie, it is up to the governor to lock up and turn out the lights—which he does, before climbing to the lonely grandeur of his bedroom.