William R. Haine

Infobox_State_Senator


imagesize = 150px
name=William R. Haine


state_senate=Illinois
state=Illinois
district=56th
term=2002 -
preceded=
succeeded=Incumbent
date of birth=birth date and age|1944|08|08
place of birth=Alton, Illinois
date of death=
place of death=
spouse=Anna Haine
profession=Attorney
religion=Roman Catholic
party=Democratic|

William R. Haine is a Democratic Senator representing Illinois’s 56th District. A graduate of St. Louis University, where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree (1967) and Juris Doctorate (1974), the Alton, Illinois native also served as a member of the Madison County Board (1978 - 1988) and of the Metro-East Transit District Board of Trustees (1981-88). An army veteran of the Vietnam War (1967-69), Haine was Madison County State’s Attorney from 1988 until 2002, when he was appointed to the Illinois Senate upon the early retirement of his predecessor. He is now serving his third term in the Senate.

Important Figures in Family History

Haine's great grandfather, James Andrew Hoare, was the son of Cornish immigrants to Wisconsin. He was wounded fighting in the Civil War on the side of the Union. On his return to Wisconsin, he was elected county clerk, became a successful farmer and founded an interracial school in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. Haine’s paternal family was strongly Methodist and involved with Freemasonry.

Haine’s maternal grandfather was James Moran, an Irishman who immigrated to Boston at sixteen and joined the U.S. Army. Moran served twelve years, rising to the rank of non-commissioned officer, before moving to Alton, Illinois with his brother in order to learn the craft of glass blowing. He was an early union organizer and became a delegate to the Glass Bottle Blowers of America in the early 1900s. A hot-tempered man who could not abide injustice, Moran hid a black glass-blowing assistant in his apartment in East St. Louis, Illinois for three days during the race riots of 1917. He protected the man until order was restored and he could leave safely.

Background and Early Education

William was born on August 8, 1944 in Alton, Illinois to Mary Alice Moran and James Delos Hoare. James Hoare converted to Catholicism when he married the Irish-Catholic Mary Alice. In 1959 the family name was changed to “Haine”. Prior to the change, the four Hoare sons – Jim, John, Bill and Tom – often came to blows with other boys over their phonetically unfortunate surname. William Haine was first encouraged to take up a career in politics and “make history” by Sister Geraldine, an Ursuline nun at St. Patrick’s Grade School in Alton. After graduating from Marquette Catholic High School in 1963, he earned his B.A. from St. Louis University in History in 1967. In both high school and college, he became involved in local and state politics, including the races of Alton Mayor Clyde H. Wiseman, State Senator Paul Simon and U.S. Senator Paul H. Douglas.

Military Service and Law School

After college, Haine enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve in Vietnam. He was awarded the Bronze Star for Meritorious Service in Combat Operations after his tour as an enlisted army soldier in the First Cavalry Division (Air Mobile) from 1968-69. But his tour of duty did not discourage his political activity, and from Vietnam he filed as a candidate for Alderman of the City of Alton, losing by only a narrow vote despite being unable to campaign.

After his tour overseas, Haine attended St. Louis University Law School, where he served with distinction on the Board of Editors of the St. Louis Law Review and earned his J.D. in 1974. Two professors who mentored him there, Rev. Joseph Aloysius McCallin, S.J., and Dr. George D. Wendell, also encouraged him to pursue a career in politics. Under the tutelage of such reform-minded but devout Catholic professors as Richard Jefferson Childress, Vincent Immel, Oval Phipps and John Dunsford, Haine developed a love for the law and for the art of politics based upon a "Catholic" philosophy of law and government.

Catholic Faith

During his law school years, Haine met Anna Schickel, an undergraduate French major at St. Louis University; they were married on August 7, 1971 in the Grailville Oratory in Loveland, Ohio (designed by her father, the artist William Schickel). Haine refers to his wedding as the defining moment of his Catholic faith. In the Shickel family, he found a vibrant community "filled with the art, music, and love that have suffused the Catholic faith for 2000 years"—an ethos personified in many ways by the charismatic African-American composer and priest Clarence Rivers, who officiated at Bill and Anna's wedding and was a close friend of her parents'.

Early Career

After law school, Haine worked as an assistant public defender and maintained a small general practice on the side. He later partnered with trial attorney Randall Bono, and it was during their years together that Haine was elected a Madison County Board member and then State’s Attorney. Though Haine left the partnership after his election to State’s Attorney in 1988, Bono sustained a brilliant career in private law, and the two remain close friends. Both during and after their partnership, Bono provided pivotal support for Haine’s political ventures.

Already a member of the Madison County Board since 1978, Haine first ran for the office of State’s Attorney in 1980. In the Democratic primary he faced former Assistant State’s Attorney Dick Allen and incumbent State's Attorney Nick Byron. Though he lost the primary by 313 votes in a county of 260,000, Haine had established a Democratic base with the industrial north end of the county. Republican Don W. Weber, a former Assistant State's Attorney, won the general election in the Reagan landslide of 1980.

With newfound political clout from the close primary race, Haine became a leader on the County Board and chaired the newly created Metro-East Transit District. He appointed a dynamic director, Jerry Kane, and together they helped mold the new transit system into a model for districts across the United States, with improvements to bus service, the establishment of door-to-door services for the elderly and the handicapped, and an initially controversial ¼-cent sales tax to support these changes. The area-wide public exposure helped make his 1988 run for State’s Attorney a success.

tate’s Attorney

In 1988, Haine became State’s Attorney for Madison County, Illinois, assuming leadership of an office in great disarray. Under his predecessor Dick Allen (who had defeated Don Weber in 1984), the office had lost the trust of the local police, the judiciary, child-protection agencies, women’s advocates, and the public at large. Haine’s first 18 months witnessed many losses but also some major victories in court. He handled reversals well and eventually formed a cohort of high-powered prosecutors who regained a sterling reputation for the State’s Attorney’s office. When he left the post 14 years later, Haine was widely recognized as a fair and stalwart chief prosecutor. It came as no great surprise when the area’s most popular Democratic politician (Haine led the Democratic ticket in vote totals for his region in 2000) was chosen to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Senator Evelyn Bowles in late 2002.

tate Senator

With several months in office as an appointed Senator, when Haine won re-election in 2002, he outranked other senators first elected in the same year. His resulting seniority, coupled with the support of the late Democratic majority leader, Vince DeMuzio, won him excellent committee assignments. This gave Haine the opportunity to develop a reputation for competence and diligence by sponsoring many bills of varying complexity and scope on a range of issues. His legislative record has established him as a pro-life, pro-gun and pro-labor legislator with an independent and practical, rather than ideological, streak.

Important Legislation

Among Haine’s most controversial bills was the Medical Malpractice Litigation Reform Act, which was supported by hospitals, doctors and nurses but strongly opposed by trial lawyers, including many of his friends in Madison and St. Clair Counties.

More recently, Haine designed and sponsored a bill to enhance flood protection along the Mississippi River in his district. Now signed into law, the bill created a new tax district that can issue sales taxes to fund the renovation of local levees—a novel alternative to waiting for slow and often inadequate state or federal funding that also enhances his district’s autonomy in taking responsibility for its own flood protection. The bill was supported by the Majority and Minority leaders, Democrat Emil Jones and Republican Frank Watson.

Haine’s independence and his willingness to cross party lines have enabled a particularly successful Senatorial career. A recent study ranks him among the six most productive legislators in Illinois as measured by the number of sponsored bills signed into law over the past five years.

Haine and Obama

Haine served in the Illinois Senate with Barack Obama for several years, most intensively on two committees: the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Committee on Local Government (of which Haine was Chairman). He developed respect and affection for the presidential candidate, despite profound differences on issues like abortion. Before Haine arrived in the Senate, Obama voted “present” on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which recognizes the rights of babies who survive failed abortions. Two years ago, after Obama had left the State Senate, Haine successfully sponsored a similar bill, guiding it through the Democratic majority in both houses and across the desk of pro-choice Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Haine was an early supporter of Obama within the Democratic primary for U.S. Senator in 2004. Among a field of uniformly pro-choice Democratic candidates, Haine supported Obama, whom he considered a competent and hard-working legislator willing to find acceptable compromises in most cases. Here again Haine stood in opposition to the local Democratic Party, whose leaders had supported a rival candidate before Obama’s catapult onto the national stage with his 2004 DNC speech. Obama has often publicly thanked Haine for this early and steadfast support in the Democratic Primary, and the two remain friends. Though Haine has suffered some backlash from the pro-life community for this stance, he has maintained a 100% rating from National Right to Life and continues to fight for the rights of the unborn at every opportunity. Haine’s relationship with Obama bespeaks an ability to work with ideological adversaries wherever common ground can be found.

Throughout his career, Senator Haine has been guided by the maxim that politics is the art of the possible, not a work to achieve perfection.

Family Life

Haine and his wife enjoy listening to classical music, reading, and visiting with their seven children and 16 grandchildren around the country. They continue to reside in Alton, around the corner from his boyhood home.

External links

* [http://ilga.gov/senate/Senator.asp?MemberID=1064 Illinois General Assembly - Senator William R. Haine (D) 56th District] official IL Senate website
** [http://ilga.gov/senate/SenatorBills.asp?MemberID=1064 Bills] [http://ilga.gov/senate/SenCommittees.asp?MemberID=1064 Committees]
* [http://votesmart.org/bio.php?can_id=MIL29968 Project Vote Smart - Senator William R. 'Bill' Haine (IL)] profile
*"Follow the Money" - William R. (Bill) Haine
** [http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance/candidate.phtml?si=200614&c=419748 2006] [http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance/candidate.phtml?si=200414&c=395884 2004] [http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance/candidate.phtml?si=200214&c=18805 2002] campaign contributions
* [http://www.senatedem.ilga.gov/page_display.asp?pid=16 Illinois State Senate Democrats - Senator William R. Haine] profile