In my 61 years, I have worked in the US House and the US Senate, built and grown businesses, I've created a charitable foundation for early childhood development, chaired a human rights agency, started a small business tech incubator, and built a museum. But there's no job, no job that I've had that I've been more honored to hold than being your governor.
In eight years as a leader of this state, through the good times and the bad, there hasn't been a day when I woke up and wished that I was doing something different. Along the way of running the state, I seem to have picked up a few habits. You can call them good or bad habits. But for example, I now regularly make the mistake of reading the comments by the online trolls. I know I shouldn't do it. Although I care about them a lot less than I used to.
I once had my speech get a little bit wet during my first campaign and got stuck because I couldn't get the pages unstuck. And so now every time I have a speech, I crumple it up so that I can move the pages around on the podium. When I get nervous in the middle of a speech, I pick the kindest face in the crowd and then I deliver the entire speech only to that person. Probably very uncomfortable for that person. And when I'm having a political argument with someone and I'm not winning, I figured out that if I offer them a shot of Malört, it can make a whole big lot of difference.
But the best habit, the very best habit that I've picked up over the last few years is that I take a long walk every single day. When I'm in Springfield, I walk around Washington Park. When I'm in Chicago, I walk along the lakefront often or the Bloomingdale Trail. When I'm in Decatur, I walk around the state fairgrounds there. Beautiful. I walk when it's warm and I walk when it's cold. I'm an early riser. You can ask my staff. They get texts from me at 4:30 in the morning. They don't like that at all. But I'm out there every day when the sun starts peeking over the horizon and Illinois is just waking up. Walking forces me to literally touch grass.
And what's great is that on my walks when people see me, they just say, "Hey, JB," not "hello, governor." And these are mostly total strangers, but I love that they just call me by my first name. That's who I am. Sometimes it's a running club asking to take a selfie with me. Sometimes it's a new parent pushing a stroller, aching for some adult conversation. Yeah, with nearly anyone, even if it's the governor. Sometimes it's someone with a complaint. Sometimes it's someone with a compliment. But inevitably what happens is that I'll hear someone say my name and I'll look around and find them and I'll see a fellow Illinoisan who's just starting their day too and they'll briefly chat with me like a neighbor because that's what I am.
When I started taking these daily walks, it was originally just for my physical health. And frankly, it seemed like it would be a lot of drudgery. But in short order, I found that my walks are the very best thing that I've ever done for my mental health to center me for the work ahead. That's important because somehow over this last decade of American politics, we seem to have lost the chord that once kept society together: the expectation that even if we disagree, we owe each other some kindness and compassion. Computer screens seem to have become a weapon of cruelty. And the only cure, for me anyway, is finding time to talk to people in person, face to face.
Chatting with people on my walks is a reminder that politics isn't what drives most people. That the sun rises every morning and with it rise people who don't care what party you come from and they don't care what country you come from or what religion you believe in. They just want someone to make their life a little bit easier. And when I meet those people, when I shake their hands and I listen to their stories and I look them in the eye when they laugh or they cry or they yell, it makes me want to make their lives a whole lot better. That desire has helped me develop another very important habit: I don't sugarcoat the truth.
During the darkest days of the COVID pandemic, I learned that the best thing that I could do during my daily press conferences was just tell people what was happening, good and bad. And I found that no matter how difficult the truth is to hear, it's so much better than being lied to. And right now in this country, we are being lied to every single day.
So here's the truth, plain and simple. Our state is under siege. Not by protesters, not by immigrants, not by the deep state, not by the press, not by Canada or Mexico or Greenland, not by Antifa or by Jewish space lasers or pride parades. No. No. Our state is under siege by a petty, corrupt man in Washington. A man who ran for president because he wanted to live in a palace and get rich or get richer. Our state is under siege by the skilled sycophants who surround that president and use his base desires as cover for their own destructive agendas. Our state is under siege by the many, many Republicans who are either too infatuated or too frightened to fight Donald Trump for the people they serve. And I mean Republicans like Darren Bailey.
You can be a lot of things and still be an effective governor, but one thing you cannot be is a coward. And right now, Darren Bailey and the Republican party are deathly afraid of reality. Gas prices are high. Why? Because Donald Trump took us to war in Iran and Venezuela. Meat and fruit and beer and cars cost more today than they ever have. Why? Because Trump insisted on imposing tariffs and going into trade wars. Farms are going under and businesses tied to those farms are laying off workers because President Trump started a trade war that had no greater purpose than a few cable news hits.
The state of Illinois is facing its most difficult budget decisions in a decade because President Trump has to—well, he went and cut SNAP benefits and money to local hospitals and FEMA reimbursements for storm damage. Disaster money taken away by Donald Trump. Darren Bailey would have you believe that you can be governor of this great state without confronting any damage that Donald Trump has done to our economy or our democracy. He's running a campaign that treats Trump like Voldemort, someone whose name he will not speak. But let me tell you another truth: this president is trying to break this country.
Through Republican and Democratic administrations over so many years, through war and famine and flood and plague, we have well existed with a common moral framework that says that we try in the best and most equitable way possible to lift each other up. He's trying to destroy that. An ideology that rejects that compact is poisonous and it's dangerous and it comes with terrifying real world consequences. I have to worry about whether people can eat lettuce or blueberries off a grocery shelf because Trump is doing away with food inspections. I have to track measles outbreaks because the president put a madman in charge of vaccine recommendations. I have to monitor the movements of ICE agents because he handed guns to people who couldn't pass a background check, frankly, to work in an animal shelter. I have to find money that we don't have to fight problems that didn't exist before Donald Trump.
It's the reality of being a governor in America today. I'm not the only one. The question you need to ask yourself is, do you want someone in this job who has the courage to confront reality? Or do you want someone in this job who thinks that dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth together? Being governor is about confronting the truth and then getting to work. Our families, our Illinois families, deserve better paying jobs and higher wages. Health care for all. The best public education in the entire nation. And they deserve a governor who, no matter the reality they must work with, is going to find a way to make things better.
When I first ran for governor, Illinois was a national punchline. No kidding. Our credit rating was heading toward bankruptcy. We had billions in unpaid bills. Our human services had been hollowed out. Our roads and our bridges and our airports were crumbling. And Springfield was paralyzed by a man who hated unions and wanted to destroy government. So I rolled up my sleeves and I got to work. And you know what? We've balanced the budget every year. And as of three days ago, we had gotten 10 credit upgrades. As of today, we have an 11th credit upgrade. And we saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in interest payments.
As a result, we've put more money in the pockets of working families by raising the minimum wage to a living wage, guaranteeing universal paid leave for our workers, and lowering taxes for families with kids. That's how you do it. We have smaller class sizes in Illinois and hired more teachers. And Illinois schools are now ranked fifth best in the nation. I've invested in police and mental health care and substance use treatment, which has led to lower crime rates and better public safety. And I've attracted new companies and jobs to Illinois, making us number two in the nation for corporate expansions.
Now, I know and you know, we have a lot more work to do and Christian Mitchell and I have a bold vision to confront a world where change is accelerating. We need elected officials who can stand up to the enriched and the entrenched. Stand up to the wealthy and the well-connected who are not owned by the special interests. We need to be willing to reimagine the old social contract because it's broken. It's broken. We cannot tell children anymore that as long as you go to work and work hard, learn a skill, and find a job, well, then you'll be able to pay off your debt and afford a house and buy a car and go on vacation every once in a while. We can't.
Hoping that corporate tycoons and tech billionaires will find their better angels and help mend the society that they broke is not a strategy. It's an empty slogan. We must reenter the conversation on the everyday Americans who get up every morning and try their best to make do with what they have, who are holding it together with duct tape and string, and who are asking their leaders to honestly confront one fundamental question: Is life really just about getting up, going to work, and grinding it out until you die? Or do we owe each other something better, something more? I believe as governor, I owe you something more. And your governor should believe that. And I am willing to fight like hell to get it.
I'm willing to wield the truth like a weapon. And I'm willing to confront people in my own party who are too feckless to fight. And I'm willing to confront the people in the Republican party who are too cruel to lead. And look, I'm going to keep getting up every morning and taking my walks. And I'm going to keep loving this job and the people of this great state. And I'm going to keep fighting for kindness, for compassion, for courage, and for truth, for you and for your families, and for your friends, and for our future. So, I have just one question for you, Illinois Democrats: are you ready for the fight? No, really, are you ready for the fight? Thank you, St. Clair County. Let's get out there and fight like hell for another four years.
