Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn visits Spring Valley

SPRING VALLEY — When the governor’s your dinner guest, the dining room tends to get crowded. Very crowded.
That’s what a crowd of more than 300 people experienced Monday night when Gov. Pat Quinn visited Spring Valley to speak at the annual John Mitchell dinner at Verucchi’s Ristorante.
The dinner was hosted by Bureau County Democrats.
As guests piled into two dining rooms at the Spring Valley restaurant Monday, event organizers and local politicians squeezed and elbowed through the masses to orchestrate the governor’s scheduled appearance.
Amid buzzing excitement, Quinn brought down-to-earth sensibility, speaking to guests for 10 minutes on topics ranging from military and veteran support to public work projects in Illinois, all while riding a promise to bring state government closer to citizens.
Then, the governor sat down and ate fried chicken and pasta.
“I live in the governor’s mansion; there’s a lot of dust there after six years, but we’ve dusted it off,” Quinn told guests during his speech, taking a clear jab at one former Illinois governor’s lack of accessibility in office.
Quinn’s talking points keyed on legislation supporting state ethics reform and the 50-year-old Monetary Award Program (MAP), which supplies tuition aid for college students. Some of that legislation, he said, will be tested in the upcoming veto session.
The governor also talked about bringing continued road, bridge and school construction to the far reaches of the state.
“I want to be the governor that’s the strongest voice ever for downstate Illinois,” Quinn said, highlighting plans to bring high speed rail to the region.
“We’re going to have a train going from Chicago to the Quad Cities ... Chicago to Rockford, many other places. I want to make the Midwest the center of high speed rail,” he said.
At a press conference prior to the dinner, the BCR asked Quinn what he’d say to working men and women currently affected by job loss in the Bureau County area.
“The key to prosperity in the 21st century is a green way of thinking and a green way of acting,” Quinn answered. 
Quinn said he expects high-wage, “green-collar” manufacturing jobs to be created continually as wind and solar power infrastructure spring up in Illinois. For instance, Quinn said, the demand for locally-manufactured wind turbine gears already has spurred more than 300 new jobs in Illinois.
“These particular jobs, by definition, stay in your own backyard; they don’t get exported to other places,” Quinn said.
Quinn also pointed to projects like Princeton’s fiber optic network, which he said offer the promise of sustainable technology for local companies needing improved high speed Internet connection.   
Sources at the event said Monday’s crowd was the largest the John Mitchell dinner has drawn in several years.
“It’s a rare opportunity to see and hear a sitting governor,” state Rep. Frank Mautino (D-Spring Valley) told the BCR this week. 
And while Mautino said the last time an Illinois governor visited Spring Valley was in 1974, when then-governor Dan Walker appeared in the city, Monday wasn’t Quinn’s first visit to the Illinois Valley.
Quinn spoke at the John Mitchell dinner at Spring Valley Boat Club two years ago — back when he was lieutenant governor. 
“(Quinn’s) always had that willingness where if you ask him to come somewhere, he would. That’s missing from a lot of the Illinois political types,” Mautino said.
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