Ray Long - The House That Madigan Built: The Record Run of Illinois Velvet Hammer

The cover features Michael Madigan at a table. There is a gavel on the table and a mic in front of him.

the record run of illinois velvet hammer

RAY LONG

Foreword by Charles N. Wheeler III

2022 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Long, Ray, author.

Title: The house that Madigan built : the record run of Illinois Velvet Hammer / Ray Long.

Other titles: Record run of Illinois Velvet Hammer

Description: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: lccn 2021042920 (print) | lccn 2021042921 (ebook) | isbn 9780252044472 (cloth) | isbn 9780252053481 (ebook)

Subjects: lcsh: Madigan, Michael J. | Illinois. General Assembly. House of RepresentativesSpeakersBiography. | LegislatorsIllinoisBiography. | Chicago (Ill.)Politics and government1951- | Chicago (Ill.)Biography.

Classification: lcc f546.4.m28 l66 2022 (print) | lcc f546.4.m28 (ebook) | ddc 973.7092 [B]dc23/eng/20211006

lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021042920

lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021042921

To my parents, Scott and Elizabeth Long, and my sister, Marilyn Mayberry, whose support and love have inspired me from the day I was born.

And a special dedication and thanks to my life partner, Peggy Boyer Long. We fell in love in the Capitol pressroom. A former statehouse reporter and magazine editor, she shared invaluable insights as this book took shape.

Charles N. Wheeler III

charles n. wheeler iii

If Richard J. Daley of Chicago was the American Pharaoh, so titled by the authors of a 2000 biography of Da Mare, his most notable protg, Michael J. Madigan, has been characterized as another notable in the history of ancient Egypt. Mike is like the Sphinx: he sits and listens and looks and never changes expression; you dont quite know where hes coming from, former Illinois Senate President Philip J. Rock told an oral history interviewer in 2009.

Now Madigan, the longest-serving legislative leader in U.S. history, has seen his long reign come to an end, ironically fifty years to the day he first took the oath as a state representative in 1971 and thirty-eight years since he first assumed the Illinois House speakership he had held for all but two years since. Supporters and detractorsand there are many in each groupgenerally agree that few lawmakers can match Madigans work ethic, intense focus, and political acumen. He plays three-dimensional chess while everybody else is playing checkers was a frequent comment, and he was typically long regarded as inscrutable as the famed monument from antiquity.

In the following pages, readers will get an up-close look at some of the highlights and low points of the former speakers long tenure, provided by veteran Chicago Tribune investigative reporter and onetime Springfield bureau chief Ray Long, who has covered Madigan for some forty years. But I go back even further with Madigan, to 1969 and his very first time in public office as a delegate to the Sixth Illinois Constitutional Convention, which I covered as a rookie reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. So from my half-century vantage point, I hope to offer readers a bit of perspective to pave the way for the fascinating vignettes that follow.

A frequent complaint/compliment about Madigan was that he has no policy agenda, nothing that can label him as liberal or conservative, fiscal hawk or reckless spenderjust an obsession with power, with wanting a Democratic-controlled House with him as its speaker. And until January 2021, he was very good at itDemocrats have enjoyed a House majority for thirty-six of thirty-eight straight years, a run made possible in part because Madigan and Co. drew the maps in 1981, 2001, and 2011. He left his Democratic successors in good shape to draw the districts for the 2022 elections. Whats most impressive, though, is that Madigan won House majorities in four out of the five elections held under the 1991 redistricting plan, a Republican gerrymander. True, demographic changes helped thwart the GOP aims, yet Republicans held the Senate for the entire ten-year period.

While Madigan is gone from the top job, he gifted new House Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch of Hillside with a 7345 supermajority. But I submit theres more to the story than just another would-be autocrat, that indeed there are several threads that run throughout Madigans decades in the speakership that help explain his overriding interest in keeping the Illinois House in Democratic hands.

True, he had no public policy agenda that he tried to advance, unlike some other leaders, a point that reporters have chided him on in the past. His response? Being tied to specific positions on individual issues would handicap his flexibility to respond to the challenge of the moment: What is the path forward that would best elect Democratic House candidates? He did not pursue grander ambitionssay, a run for U.S. Senate or for governor; he was not one to indulge in wishful thinking, even before the relentless Republican character assassination of the last two decades. Rocks unsuccessful bid for the partys 1984 U.S. Senate nomination would give one food for thought; despite solid credentials, the Senate president came in fourth, more than 250,000 votes behind winner Paul Simon and trailing two less-qualified candidates, state Comptroller Roland Burris and attorney Alex Seith.

Nor has Madigan sought the chairmanship of the Cook County Democratic Party, the post held by his legendary mentor, Richard the First, from 1953 until his death in 1976. Chicago has fifty wards and Cook County has thirty townships, Madigan explained to a reporter years ago. All have local Democratic organizations, all of which have fund-raising banquets, golf outings, and assorted other events that the chairman might be expected to attend, few of which would appeal to Madigan. But didnt he chair the state Democratic Party for years? Correct, but about the only public event he usually showed up for in that role was Democratic Day at the Illinois State Fair.

So what motivates Madigan? Keeping a Democratic majority has allowed him to succeed in two key areas: protecting the city of Chicago and its institutions from suburban barbarians at its gates, and safeguarding the Illinois General Assemblys constitutional role as a coequal branch of government.

Consider a few examples of his success in defending the structure of his beloved city: Probably most notably, when Harold Washington was elected as Chicagos first Black mayor in 1983, he faced a City Council dominated by powerful opposition aldermen determined to thwart his every initiative, led by Edward Vrdolyak of the Tenth Ward and Edward M. Burke of the Fourteenth. In the ensuing Council Wars, Washington had only twenty-one of the fifty aldermen with him, as the two Eddies and their cohorts dictated the agenda. As part of the plan, the anti-Washington forces legislative allies introduced measures that would strip power from the mayor and shift it to the City Council. But Speaker Madigan slammed the door; the bills never saw the light of day. As he explained to reporters at the time, his Thirteenth Ward alderman, John S. Madrzyk, would vote with the white ethnics in the Chicago City Council, but he would not tolerate bringing Beirut by the Lake to Springfield.