James Robert Edgar (July 22, 1946 – September 14, 2025) was an American politician who served as the 38th governor of Illinois from 1991 to 1999. A moderate Republican, he previously served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1977 to 1979 and as the 35th secretary of state of Illinois from 1981 to 1991.
Edgar was born in Vinita, Oklahoma, and raised in Charleston, a city in Central Illinois. Beginning his political career as a legislative aide, he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1976 and reelected in 1978. In 1979, while still in his second term, Edgar was appointed the director of legislative affairs for Governor Jim Thompson.
Following Secretary of State Alan J. Dixon's election to the U.S. Senate in 1980, Thompson appointed Edgar to serve the remainder of Dixon's term. Edgar would go on to win a full term in 1982 and was reelected by a significant margin in 1986 in a race complicated by a LaRouchian candidate on the Democratic ticket.
Edgar ran successfully for Governor of Illinois in the 1990 election, narrowly defeating incumbent Attorney General Neil Hartigan. During the Republican Revolution of '94, he won reelection in a historic landslide over the Democratic state comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch—winning 101 of the state's 102 counties, including Cook County. He declined to run for a third term in 1998 and subsequently retired from public office.
James Robert Edgar was born on July 22, 1946, in Vinita, Oklahoma, to Cecil and Betty Edgar. Cecil, a small-businessman from Charleston, Illinois, died in an automobile accident in 1953, leaving Jim and his two older brothers to be raised by their mother.
To support her children, Betty Edgar worked as a clerk at Eastern Illinois University, where Edgar would later attend. While at Eastern, Edgar served as student body president. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in history in 1968.
Edgar developed an interest in politics at a young age. Though his parents were both Democrats, Edgar became a Republican while in elementary school after following the 1952 campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
A young Rockefeller Republican, Edgar briefly volunteered for the presidential campaign of Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton in the 1964 Republican primaries and supported New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1968.
Work in the Illinois General Assembly
Following his graduation from college, Edgar served as a legislative intern and then personal assistant to Illinois Senate Republican leader W. Russell Arrington, despite his mother's wish for him to attend law school. Edgar would later regard the moderate Arrington as his role model.
Following his time with Arrington, Edgar would also work briefly under Illinois House Speaker W. Robert Blair.
Illinois House of Representatives
In 1974, Edgar ran unsuccessfully in the Republican nomination for state representative from the 53rd district, coming in third place. After the campaign, Edgar worked as an insurance and cosmetics salesperson before briefly serving the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver.
He ran for the same seat again two years later in 1976 and won. He was re-elected in 1978.
While in the House, Edgar served on the Appropriations II, Human Resources, and Revenue committees as well as the Illinois Commission on Intergovernmental Cooperation. Due to his moderate policy positions, Edgar was often considered a swing vote, especially on the Human Resources committee.
In April 1979, shortly after winning re-election, Edgar resigned his state House seat to accept an appointment from Governor Jim Thompson to be the governor's legislative liaison. Though reluctant at first, Edgar accepted Thompson's offer with an unwritten promise that it would lead to Edgar getting a spot on a statewide ticket later on.
In January 1981, Governor Thompson announced Edgar's appointment as Illinois Secretary of State to fill the vacancy left by incumbent Secretary of State Alan Dixon following his 1980 election to the U.S. Senate. He won re-election twice in 1982 and 1986 with his 1986 re-election against the Illinois Solidarity Party nominee Jane N. Spirgel and the Lyndon LaRouche-backed Democratic nominee Janice A. Hart being the largest statewide margin of victory in Illinois history until the election of Barack Obama to the U.S. Senate in 2004.
During his first term as Secretary of State, Edgar diverged from past practices in the office by keeping many of the Democratic employees hired by his predecessor. He would later comment on his decision by saying "to me, the best politics is good government" and that in his view, as long as the employees did their jobs, he had no interest in firing them regardless of political affiliation.On policy, Edgar's partial term and first full term were largely defined by his work to toughen Illinois' drunk driving penalties. This included strengthening breathalyzer requirements for individuals pulled over for possibly driving under the influence and reforming the state's legal view of driver's licenses to be a "privilege, not a right," thereby allowing licenses to be administratively suspended pending a court date for potentially driving drunk as opposed to the prior system where drivers retained their licenses until their court date. Edgar also voiced support for a national 21-year-old legal drinking age and was appointed to U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Presidential Commission on Drunk Driving in 1982.