The House That Madigan Built

The Record Run of Illinois' Velvet Hammer

Ray Long

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780252053481
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Michael Madigan rose from the Chicago machine to hold unprecedented power as Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. In his thirty-six years wielding the gavel, Madigan outlasted governors, passed or blocked legislation at will, and outmaneuvered virtually every attempt to limit his reach.

Veteran reporter Ray Long draws on four decades of observing state government to provide the definitive political analysis of Michael Madigan. Secretive, intimidating, shrewd, power-hungry--Madigan mesmerized his admirers and often left his opponents too beaten down to oppose him. Long vividly recreates the battles that defined the Madigan era, from stunning James Thompson with a lightning-strike tax increase, to pressing for a pension overhaul that ultimately failed in the courts, to steering the House toward the Rod Blagojevich impeachment. Long also shines a light on the machinery that kept the Speaker in power. Head of a patronage army, Madigan ruthlessly used his influence and fundraising prowess to reward loyalists and aid his daughter's electoral fortunes. At the same time, he reshaped bills to guarantee he and his Democratic troops shared in the partisan spoils of his legislative victories. Yet Madigan's position as the state's seemingly invulnerable power broker could not survive scandals among his close associates and the widespread belief that his time as Speaker had finally reached its end.

Unsparing and authoritative, The House That Madigan Built is the page-turning account of one the most powerful politicians in Illinois history.

part i the legend

1 remap victory

“I think, Mr. Speaker, that you have committed an unforgivable act of human disrespect.”

—House Minority Leader Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, to House Speaker George Ryan, R-Kankakee, June 23, 1981

To Michael J. Madigan, there are few political figures who stand as tall as Richard J. Daley, the last of the nation’s all-controlling big-city Democratic bosses. There likewise were few, if any, legislative issues more important to Madigan than redistricting, the brutally partisan process of redrawing the legislative boundary lines every ten years. Redistricting provided Madigan with a path to power, a road map for taking over state government and becoming the state’s most influential politician. Many moments during Madigan’s long career placed him at a political crossroads, but few would be more symbolic than June 23, 1981. He was minority leader, potentially destined to be nothing more. Daley had been dead less than five years, and the future success of Madigan and his Democratic allies was not guaranteed. On that sweltering summer day, though, Madigan’s past and his future met head-on. Nobody could predict that Madigan’s future would be propelled as much by luck as by skill.

Richard J. Daley’s memory would be feted with the unveiling of a statue at a Capitol ceremony. Though Daley once held office as a state senator in Springfield, his statue served as a paean to the way he exercised his clout as mayor of Chicago and leader of Cook County’s Democratic Party. Yet for all he meant to Madigan, Daley also represented the past. A crucial redistricting fight unfolding in the House that same afternoon represented Madigan’s future—one that was as uncertain as the lines that would be drawn on legislative maps.

Inside the ornate House chamber, where giant paintings of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas warily watched the debates below, Republican Speaker George Ryan ruled with gruff gusto. In control of the flow of legislation, Ryan made a move that would resonate with Madigan like little else could. Instead of halting House floor debate between noon and 3:00 p.m. that day so that all who wished could attend the unveiling of the Daley statue, Ryan held a debate over two redistricting bills—one dictating the boundary lines for the Illinois members of the U.S. House and one for the Illinois House and Senate. Together, these were two of the most politically sensitive pieces of legislation that year and part of a tumultuous period in Illinois history. This was not just an ordinary, tense redistricting. This one would end with more widespread political pain than usual, and this day stood to go a long way toward determining which party would suffer most.

The reason the stakes would be so high in this particular redistricting battle was because the House would eliminate 59 of 177 seats, reducing the size of the “Big House” to 118 seats for the 1982 election. The downsizing would be accompanied by the end of Illinois’ unique, cumulative voting system, which allowed three representatives to be elected from each House district—with a maximum of two from the majority party and one from the minority party. In Chicago, of course, there would be two Democrats and one Republican in most districts. Chicago Democrats, as one would expect, had a few ringers among the Republican lawmakers. Republican areas of the state elected their own suspect Democrats as well. That system was done away with when a maverick named Pat Quinn pushed through the cutback amendment in 1980. The citizen initiative he championed called for reducing the House by a third and electing one representative per district rather than three. Quinn, who would serve as governor thirty years later, capitalized on the public’s anger over lawmakers passing an eight-thousand-dollar annual pay hike—from twenty thousand to twenty-eight thousand dollars—in the 1978 lame-duck fall veto session. Voters ratified the cutback in 1980, setting up the redistricting fight in the House in 1981.

Four decades later, it is still debated in political circles whether reducing the size of the House was good or bad for Illinois. Those who yearn for the former system say it forced more bipartisanship because each district included a minority representative. Few predicted how the change would consolidate power among the four legislative leaders. But fewer still could predict the change would mean the Democratic minority leader would become the longest-serving leader of any state legislature in the country. In fact, most lawmakers don’t think beyond the next election, but all knew this two-year session under Ryan would be the last Big House. They realized their political lives could be cut short based on which legislative map was adopted. Nerves were frayed.

The ambitious Madigan needed to rally his Democratic troops. Ryan’s Republican-majority map for the Illinois House and Senate would come up for a vote, and Madigan needed to block it. The Ryan map proposed new district boundaries that would favor Republican majorities. No doubt Daley would have understood that Madigan had a job to do.

To appreciate the high degree of tension, consider the chaos that had erupted on the House floor only days before. On voice votes, Ryan slammed both the congressional and state legislative maps through the preliminary stage known as “second reading,” a time when amendments are considered, and advanced them to passage stage. Democrats demanded roll call votes and didn’t get them. They wanted to be recognized to speak and they weren’t. But what triggered full-scale bedlam is that Ryan’s leadership team, with GOP Representative Art Telcser of Chicago wielding the gavel, didn’t give Democrats the chance to fight for amendments they wanted. Democrats pounded fists and screamed that Ryan and his Republican lieutenants abused the power of the gavel. Agitated Democrats stormed the speaker’s podium, yelling their way into a story that made national news. A raging Democratic Representative John Matijevich of North Chicago shouted at a security guard seeking to remove him: “I’m elected here. Don’t tell me to leave. You leave before I do.”¹ Republican Representative Dwight Friedrich of Centralia attempted to block TV coverage of the bedlam. He and Representative Joseph Ebbesen of DeKalb dashed up to the House balcony as fellow Republicans on the floor yelled at WCIA-TV cameraman Mike Gawel to stop filming the House fracas from his post in the gallery. The lawmakers contended he did not have permission to film—a quirky rule that required camera operators to seek an okay from the person wielding the gavel before filming. The Associated Press reported, “Friedrich was seen moving and pushing the camera and at one point, Gawel fell over. Gawel then took the camera and left the chamber. WCIA’s reporter Lindsay Gedge later said the camera was not running when Friedrich confronted Gawel.” Friedrich, of course, said he did not try to toss the cameraman, saying, “Your eyes must be bad.”² Sun-Times reporter Charles N. Wheeler III, then the president of the statehouse press corps, recalled Friedrich threatened to throw the cameraman over the railing. “It was wild,” said Wheeler, who hustled out to Friedrich’s desk on the House floor to calm him down.³

Reporters are banned from the actual House floor, but Wheeler rushed out to Friedrich’s desk with a pack of young journalism interns in tow ready to report on the exchange. G. Robert Hillman, the Sun-Times’ bureau chief, spotted Wheeler and Friedrich, dashed up between the two of them, and began rolling his shoulders against Wheeler as he called out, “Charlie! Charlie!” The mild-mannered Wheeler was only explaining calmly and firmly to Friedrich—whom Wheeler knew from covering the 1970 constitutional convention, at which Friedrich was a delegate—that pushing the TV crew out of its perch in the House balcony was way out of bounds. After several manic minutes, Ryan eventually made his way from his seat on the House floor, climbed onto the podium, banged the gavel, and, speaking in his deep baritone, called for order in the chamber and for the news crew to return. “Just calm down and sit down,” Ryan told the House. “When you get to order, I’ll talk to you. Now, sit down. When you bring yourselves under control, we’ll talk.”⁴

Madigan broke for a private Democratic caucus. But he returned to see armed guards from the secretary of state standing next to the speaker’s podium. Ryan agreed to move them, but Republicans didn’t back away from the legislative maneuver. A top Democrat, Representative Jim McPike of Alton, would later tell colleagues on the House floor that the Washington Post ran the headline “Armed Police Calm Legislators in Illinois House.” He then read the story describing the political melee and compared the denial of rights for Illinois Democrats to unconstitutional actions in foreign countries.⁵ Madigan called Ryan’s moves to advance his Republican redistricting legislation “reminiscent of tactics used by the Nazis in Germany and by dictatorial regimes all over the world.” Madigan said Ryan should resign, a suggestion the Republican leader of the House did not embrace.⁶

Madigan wouldn’t let it drop the next day, charging that the Republican chicanery “makes us all look like a pack of idiots.” The minority leader vowed to get back at Republicans for supporting “acts of tyranny.” Warning of his own prolific “legislative abilities and capabilities,” Madigan pointedly reminded his political foes that he knew the ins and outs of the House rules. “I know this process, I know when I can win. I know when I can lose,” Madigan said.⁷

Specifically lashing out at Ryan, Telcser, and Governor James R. Thompson, Madigan delivered the sternest of warnings:

I know this system[,] and there will be a day of reckoning for every person in a power position who decides to abuse their position of power and to trample over the rights of any Member of this House. So, you can sit here comfortably today but just remember, your time is coming. Just wait and wait, and it will arrive and you will regret what you’ve done because we are all here as individuals and as human beings. And as a human being we have rights. We have a right to address a Bill. We have a right to a record vote. And by God, when you fail to look upon others as human beings, you’re making a mistake and you will regret it.⁸

When Madigan and Ryan finally squared off on June 23 to vote on the passage stage of the state and federal redistricting bills, the bitterness in the chamber was palpable. First up was Ryan’s proposal to reshape the district lines for Illinois’ delegation in the U.S. House. Illinois had to shrink the size of the congressional delegation from twenty-four to twenty-two because population in other states had grown faster. The Ryan plan would shift the partisan breakdown from fourteen Republicans and ten Democrats by reducing the number of Democrats to eight. The GOP map forced matchups between such incumbent Chicago Democrats as U.S. Representatives Frank Annunzio and Dan Rostenkowski—more than a decade before the once-mighty U.S. House Ways and Means chairman went to prison for corruption. Fully playing out his role as the top Democrat in the House, Madigan condemned the GOP’s cartography. “It is a purely and highly partisan bill drafted by the Republican staff for the Republican Party in the House of Representatives,” Madigan said. “It maximizes the election of Republican members to the United States Congress without due consideration for Democratic constituencies located throughout the state.… It will, in effect, dilute the representation given to Democratic voters throughout this state and, in a sense, will disenfranchise those Democratic voters who are living throughout the state of Illinois.”⁹

The proposal also drew opposition from a line-up of future luminaries in the General Assembly: Democratic Representatives Barbara Flynn Currie, who later would become the first woman to serve as House majority leader; Emil Jones, a future Senate president; and John Cullerton, a future Senate president—all of Chicago—and Mike McClain of Quincy, a future powerhouse lobbyist. The fear of establishment Democrats—both Black and white—was that the Republican map would shift the balance of power from the state’s congressional delegation, which already favored Republicans, and create an even further tilt to the ideological right. Similar arguments came from a Republican, Susan Catania of Chicago, a white liberal House lawmaker with an overwhelmingly Black constituency. She decried the Ryan congressional map for weakening the city’s Democratic power structure in Congress. “I don’t think it will help my city, which I love very deeply, to take away the representation of the party that has worked a little harder for my city,” said Catania, one of five Republicans voting against the Ryan map.¹⁰

Ryan held a slim 91–86 Republican majority, but many lawmakers were ready to play footsie with the other party if the right deal came their way. To make up for losing votes from Catania and other Republicans, Ryan reached out to Black Democrats.¹¹ He promised to keep three Black congressional seats, a move that drew support from the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH and votes from such Chicago lawmakers as Representative Art Turner, who one day would join Speaker Madigan’s leadership team, and Representative Carol Moseley Braun, a future U.S. senator. Representative Emil Jones, though, argued that Blacks voting for the Ryan map were being “hoodwinked” and were shortsighted because the proposal would cut Democratic representation in Washington overall. In the end, Ryan’s fragile coalition on the congressional map received eighty-nine votes, the bare minimum majority needed to pass in the Big House.¹²

Hoping for a second win, Ryan moved immediately to vote on his Republican-leaning map for the Illinois House and Senate. Ryan argued that his map gave Chicago 31 seats, downstate 44 seats, and suburban Cook and its five collar counties the final 43 seats. He said 15 seats were majority Black, and three favored Hispanics. He called the map fair. But Madigan immediately pounced. He said the Ryan map would give Republicans 63 safe seats—districts with boundaries drawn so favorably that GOP lawmakers virtually could not lose them in future elections—even when national turnout swung overwhelmingly in favor of Democrats. Sixty-three seats would be three more than a majority of 60 in the new 118-seat House. “It’s a partisan, political effo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: The Long Reign
• Part I: The Legend
• Part II: Power Plays and Political Flops
• Part III: A Career Political Leader
• Part IV: Cracks in the System
• Part V: The Fall
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index