Quinn began his political career working as an aide to then-Illinois Governor Dan Walker before launching a series of citizen-led petition drives, most notably the 1980 Cutback Amendment, which reduced the size of the Illinois House of Representatives from 177 to 118.

It marked the first and only time in state history that Illinois voters had used initiative petition and binding referendum to enact a constitutional amendment or law.

After the passage of the Cutback Amendment, Quinn continued to organize petition drives and was elected as a commissioner on the Cook County Board of (Property) Tax Appeals in 1982; he later served as revenue director in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington.

"[3] Quinn secured a full term in office in the 2010 gubernatorial election, defeating Republican State Senator Bill Brady by a margin of less than 1% out of about 3.5 million votes cast.

[4] While in office, Quinn worked to provide voters the power to recall a sitting governor, passed a $31 billion capital construction plan,[5] legalized civil unions and same-sex marriage (prior to the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision by the United States Supreme Court),[6] expanded access to healthcare with the Affordable Care Act, and abolished the death penalty.

Quinn's father, P. J., enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the outbreak of World War II, serving in the Pacific Theater aboard several ships including the USS Bon Homme Richard.

[10][11][12][13] Eileen Prindiville was born before American women had the right to vote under the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920 and graduated from the Academy of Our Lady in 1935.

After serving in state government and spearheading two major petition drives, Quinn earned a Juris Doctor degree from Northwestern University School of Law in 1980, during the fight for the Cutback Amendment.

Tom Quinn has been an attorney since 1979 and his proudest moment in the courtroom was winning a legal settlement in a major case that targeted housing discrimination in the south suburbs of Chicago.

His paternal grandfather, also named Patrick Quinn, had a stint as a copper miner in Butte, Montana, then came to Chicago’s South Side.

[15] From July 1975 to December 1982, Quinn served as the executive director of the Coalition for Political Honesty, a volunteer initiative, petition, and referendum organization.

[1] The question did not appear on the 1976 ballot following the case of Coalition for Political Honesty v. State Board of Elections, which hinged on whether the word "and" in the 1970 Illinois constitution was "conjunctive" or "disjunctive.

After submitting 477,112 signatures, a court struck the question from the ballot, citing the new law, resulting in a lawsuit, Coalition for Political Honesty v. State Board of Elections (II) (1980), the first Illinois Supreme Court case that found that strict scrutiny applied to initiative powers in the Illinois Constitution and which placed the question back on the 1980 ballot.

[19][20][21] It marked the first and only time in state history that Illinois voters had used initiative petition and binding referendum to enact a constitutional amendment or law.

[22] In a three-way primary for two spots, Quinn was able to beat one of the incumbents who had presided over a scandal in which 37 people were convicted for fixing property tax appeal cases.

[33] He also pledged as a candidate to modernize the office and maximize returns on state deposits through use of electronic fund transfers and through expanding linked-deposit programs.

Quinn did not initially accept the count and charged fraud, but several weeks after the election he declined to ask the Illinois Supreme Court for a recount and endorsed Kearns.

In 1998, Quinn protested an increase in state legislators' salaries by urging citizens to send tea bags to the governor, Jim Edgar.

[39] As lieutenant governor, he would later repeat this tactic in 2006, urging consumers to include a tea bag when paying their electricity bills, to protest rate hikes by Commonwealth Edison.

[23] While Lieutenant Governor, according to his official biography, his priorities were consumer advocacy, environmental protection, health care, broadband deployment, and veterans' affairs.

[47] In the general election Quinn's campaign aired television ads produced by Joe Slade White that repeatedly asked the question of his opponent, "Who is this guy?

[52] In the summer of 2013, former White House Chief of Staff and former United States Secretary of Commerce William M. Daley declared a run for governor in the Democratic Primary against Quinn, but later dropped out.

[55] Quinn was challenged in the Democratic Primary by Tio Hardiman, the former director of CeaseFire, but won 72% to 28% and faced Republican businessman Bruce Rauner for the general election.

"[60] The main issue was a fiscal crisis in meeting the state's budget and its long-term debt as the national economic slump continued and Illinois did poorly in terms of creating jobs.

In July 2009, Quinn signed a $29 billion capital bill to provide construction and repair funds for Illinois roads, mass transit, schools, and other public works projects.

During an annual budget address on February 22, 2012 to the Illinois Legislature, Quinn warned that the state's financial system was nearing collapse.

[66][67] The Associated Press reported that Quinn feared Illinois was "on the verge of a financial meltdown because of pension systems eating up every new dollar and health care costs climbing through the roof.

This followed a three-year investigation by the Illinois executive inspector general that uncovered politically motivated hiring at IDOT, which started under Gov.

[85][86] Quinn won generally high praise for his leadership on environmental issues, going back at least as far as when he was lieutenant governor, where he helped develop annual statewide conferences on green building, created a state day to celebrate and defend rivers,[87] and promoted measures such as rain gardens for water conservation.

[2] Quinn was generally regarded as the most well-known candidate in the race,[108] however he narrowly lost the nomination to State Senator Kwame Raoul on March 20, 2018.