Paul Simon of Illinois: Teen Newspaper Crusader Turned Bow Tie Senator

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Paul Simon, the Illinois senator, was born in 1928 in Eugene, Oregon, to Martin and Ruth Simon, Lutheran missionaries who had served in China. His brother Arthur later founded Bread for the World. After attending several colleges without graduating, the 19 year old borrowed $3,600 from a Lions Club in 1948, bought the defunct Troy Call in Troy, Illinois, renamed it the Troy Tribune, and became the youngest editor and publisher in the country. His exposés of gambling, prostitution and official corruption drew the attention of Governor Adlai Stevenson II and led to testimony before the Kefauver Committee. He built a chain of 14 weekly papers, then enlisted in 1951 and served in Army counterintelligence in West Germany.

Elected to the Illinois House after his discharge, Simon adopted his bow tie after a newspaper wrote that the man with the bow tie did well. As lieutenant governor from 1968 he served alongside Republican Governor Richard Ogilvie, the only split executive ticket in state history, and the two passed Illinois's first income tax. He lost the 1972 governor's primary to Dan Walker after accepting Richard J. Daley's backing, then won a U.S. House seat in 1974, unseated Senator Charles Percy in 1984, and led in Iowa in late 1987 before losing the 1988 caucuses to Dick Gephardt. He wrote more than 20 books and died in December 2003 at 75 after heart surgery.

• He served with Abner Mikva in a reform bloc the press called the Kosher Nostra.
• He married fellow legislator Jeanne Hurley in 1960, the first marriage between two sitting Illinois lawmakers, and their daughter Sheila became lieutenant governor.
• He co-wrote a balanced budget amendment with Orrin Hatch and voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996.
• UN commander Romeo Dallaire credited him for pressing the U.S. to act during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
• Days before his death he endorsed Howard Dean by phone from his hospital bed, and his last book was Our Culture of Pandering.