Column: Former state Sen. Link reflects on career, ‘mistake’

Former state Sen. Terry Link is feeling just fine these days. The Democratic Party he forged controls Lake County elected offices, and he’s put his legal ailments in the rearview mirror.

Once a leader in the Illinois legislature, Link fell out of favor with his fellow Democrats and many of the officeholders he helped get elected after pleading guilty in September of 2020 to failing to report income on his taxes. He knowingly used more than $73,000 from his campaign treasury for personal use, federal prosecutors maintained.

The guilty plea was a shock for those who over the years supported, with votes and campaign donations, a guy who grew up in North Chicago and rose to leadership in the state Senate. A plea agreement with the feds kept him out of prison.

That and helping the government’s corruption case against former state Rep. Luis Arroyo, D-Chicago, including acting as an undercover agent for federal prosecutors. In March of 2024, Link was sentenced to three years’ probation for the tax evasion charge and ordered to repay the federal government and Illinois.

“That small part of my life is long over,” the Indian Creek resident, 79, said last week in an exclusive interview. “I made a mistake. I was an easy target. I should have done things differently.”

He said loaning money, taken from his Friends of Terry Link campaign fund, to help an ailing acquaintance — who died before repaying the loans — led to his political downfall. He resigned his Senate seat and chair of the county Democratic Party after he was charged in the tax case.

Some Democrats don’t treat him as a pariah, he noted. One of them is President Barack Obama, Link’s former seatmate when both were in the state Senate. Per Link, Obama and other state legislators were frequent participants in poker games held at Link’s abode when the legislature was in session.

Link was one of the select few to be invited to the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. He reconnected with old friends and fellow Dems at the June 18 proceedings.

“We spent six years in the minority in the Senate,” Link said of his connection to the former president. Both were elected freshmen state senators in 1996, before Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois in 2004 and president in 2008.

Link was elected county Democratic chair by precinct committeemen in 1992 after toiling for party regulars under the tutelage of then Lake County Clerk Grace Mary Stern of Highland Park, one of the first Democrats to be elected countywide. He then joined the staff of Secretary of State Alan Dixon, who later would represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate.

Link entered the Senate in 1997, a fresh face with plans to help the citizens of the 30th Senate District. Despite no longer being in office, he has a retired Illinois Senate license plate — just a capital “L” — on his mid-size Chevrolet SUV.

Link ended up spending 24 years in the state Senate and 28 years as Lake County Democratic chair. Few doubt Link’s political savvy and acumen as he built the county party from nearly scratch, scouring for candidates to challenge Republicans. In his early years as party chair, many of his hand-picked hopefuls went down to defeat.

A few of those were elected, usually defeating entrenched incumbent GOPsters, and joined the opposition once in office. But steadily more of those he pestered to run for office were getting elected.

Today, Democrats hold a supermajority on the County Board and control all countywide offices. It is Republicans who are beating the bushes looking for qualified candidates to run for office.

“There’s no doubt (President Donald) Trump has helped Democrats,” in Lake County, he said. He predicted Democrats will capture the U.S. House in next month’s mid-term elections, and the GOP may even lose control of the U.S. Senate.

While Link was becoming the longest-serving Democratic state senator from Lake County and the only one elevated to a leadership post in the upper chamber, he wasn’t successful in the 2013 Waukegan mayoral party primary. He finished last in a three-way contest behind then-City Clerk Wayne Motley and now Mayor Sam Cunningham, who was a 1st Ward alderman back then.

During his legislative stint, Sen. Link introduced or supported a number of measures which continue to affect Illinoisans today. “I accomplished a lot,” he said modestly. “I helped a lot of people.”

Among those achievements was championing Illinois as a smoke-free state in public places; widening statewide gambling, including a casino for Waukegan; procuring state funds for the Historic Genesee Theatre in downtown Waukegan; early voting; sub-circuits for Lake County judicial candidates; working to dissolve township road districts with less than 15 miles of maintained highways; protection of wetlands across Illinois; and supporting tax credits for businesses to hire military veterans.

Those are deeds of which most lawmakers would be proud. That’s a large part of Link’s legacy, he believes, and not the legal “small part” of his life.

Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor, and editor. [email protected]. X @sellenews

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