1. Cornelius Francis Hartigan was born on May 4,1938 and is an American politician, lawyer, and judge who served as the 38th Attorney General of Illinois and the 40th Lieutenant Governor of Illinois.
23 Facts About Neil Hartigan
1. 2.
Neil Hartigan was elected Lieutenant Governor of Illinois in 1972 alongside Dan Walker.
3.
Neil Hartigan went on to be elected attorney general in 1982 and was reelected in 1986.
4.
Neil Hartigan was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Illinois in 1990, but he narrowly lost the race to Republican Jim Edgar.
5.
In 2002, Neil Hartigan was elected to the Illinois Appellate Court and retired in 2004.
6.
Neil Hartigan was later appointed to the Illinois Court of Claims and served from 2013 until 2019.
7.
Neil Hartigan's father, David, served in the city treasurer's office, and his paternal uncle, Matthew, was a longtime municipal judge on the city's South Side.
8.
The younger Neil Hartigan attended Loyola Academy and graduated from Georgetown University in 1959.
9.
In 1968, Neil Hartigan was elected the Democratic Committeeman for Chicago's 49th ward, the same ward his father had represented.
10.
In 1971, then-lieutenant governor Paul Simon recruited Neil Hartigan to be his running mate in the 1972 gubernatorial election.
11.
Neil Hartigan won the lieutenant governor nomination, but Simon lost the gubernatorial nomination in an upset to political outsider Dan Walker.
12.
At the time of his inauguration, Neil Hartigan was the youngest person ever elected lieutenant governor of any state.
13.
Late in his term, Neil Hartigan became chairman of the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors.
14.
Neil Hartigan won renomination as lieutenant governor, but Governor Walker lost the primary to Secretary of State Michael Howlett.
15.
The Democratic team of Howlett and Neil Hartigan went on to lose handily in the general election.
16.
Neil Hartigan returned to elected office as Attorney General of Illinois in 1983, having defeated the Republican incumbent in the 1982 election.
17.
However, when Adlai Stevenson III entered the Democratic primary, Neil Hartigan dropped out and ran successfully for re-election as attorney general, winning by a large margin.
18.
Neil Hartigan ran for governor in the 1990 election, winning the Democratic nomination unopposed.
19.
Neil Hartigan narrowly lost the general election to Secretary of State Jim Edgar by about 80,000 votes out of the over 3.2 million cast.
20.
Neil Hartigan worked for a Chicago law firm and served as chairman of World Trade Center Illinois.
21.
In 1997, Neil Hartigan was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the board of directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation.
22.
In 2002, Neil Hartigan won election to the Illinois Appellate Court from the First District, which covers Cook County.
23.
Neil Hartigan served as a judge on the court from May 2,2013, until retiring on March 21,2019.