He was elected chairman of the American Federation of Musicians Local 19. Career In 1959, Cellini ran for his first public office as police magistrate of Springfield but lost his bid for election. Cellini went on to lose another election for circuit clerk of Sangamon County, Illinois, but eventually won a seat on the Sangamon County Board of Supervisors in 1961. In 1963, he was elected to serve on the Springfield City Council as Commissioner of Public Works. At 28, he was the youngest man ever elected to the Springfield City Council and the youngest to head its public works department. He was re-elected in 1967 having no opposition. In 1969, Governor Richard B. Ogilvie appointed William Cellini to be the Director of Public Works and Buildings for Illinois. In 1971, he was appointed Illinois' first Secretary of Transportation and directed several thousand employees while administering an annual budget of over a billion dollar dollars in public works programs. In April 1972, the Illinois State Senate unanimously confirmed Cellini as the first secretary of the newly created Illinois Department of Transportation, putting him in charge of 10,000 employees and a budget of more than $1.5 billion. The election of Democrat Dan Walker as Governor the following year ended Cellini's career in state government. Beginning in 1974, Cellini embarked on a long and successful career in the private sector. With his business partner Larry Haddad, he co-founded the New Frontier Companies, a full service real estate development firm, and in addition, Cellini became executive director of the Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association. Cellini remained politically active in the private sector serving as Treasurer of the Sangamon County Republican Central Committee in Springfield. In the mid-1970s, he was appointed by the President of the United States to serve on the National Highway Safety Advisory Committee and in 1976 at the age of 41, Cellini was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri where from the floor of the convention hall he seconded the nomination of Gerald R. Ford for President by giving a brief speech he wrote on the back of a campaign sign. In 1977, Cellini and Haddad formed New Frontier Management Corporation, a company that has overseen the management, rent-up and asset management of over 17,000 housing units throughout the United States. In 1985, New Frontier Management opened the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel, in Springfield, Illinois. In