Pat Quinn, 60, can be so unassuming that he watched the inauguration of President Obama in Washington crunched down on his knees so that people behind him could get a better view. When prone to boasting, which is not very often, it can be about miserly stuff, such as staying in budget hotels and eating discount meals.His idea of a political stunt is walking more than 150 miles from the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan to raise awareness of health-care needs. And with a hairline more John Lithgow than Elvis Presley, he doesn't even look the Blagojevich part.
"What you see is what you get," said one of Quinn's longtime allies, state Rep. John Fritchey, a Democrat. "He is an apolitical creature in a political world."