According to Springfield lore, if you surgically slice an apple into eighths for a Spartan lunch at your desk every day; order the same dinner and glass of white wine at the same table in the same restaurant every Springfield evening; determine the fate of every bill proposed in the Illinois House; thwart efforts to make yourself and other elected officials more transparent and conflict-free; and maintain iron-fisted control over the money, manpower and messaging of your members’ reelection campaigns, then you are:
Option A: The detail-obsessed and uber-organized Michael Madigan, the longest-serving House speaker in U.S. history; the state Democratic Party chairman who built a veto-proof Democratic House majority; and the single most powerful Springfield politician for several decades, a distinction maintained, principally, by knowing everything and missing nothing.
Option B: The unfairly vilified and demonized Michael Madigan who had no idea some of his closest lobbyist friends, political allies and corporate cronies executed an elaborate and allegedly illegal yearslong pay-to-play scheme in which giant electric utility Commonwealth Edison funded phony no-work contracts for Madigan teammates in exchange for his support of favorable legislation.
A larger-than-life political icon or a wounded political animal? The answer, at this unique moment, is both.
A federal grand jury recently indicted one of Madigan’s closest lobbyist friends, along with a prominent Chicago public affairs bigwig and two former top ComEd officials, for allegedly perpetrating a pay-to-play scheme.
The Madigan of Option B shoved back, claiming in a statement, “If that attempt ever happened, it was never made known to me. If it had been known to me, it would have been profoundly unwelcome. If there was an attempt to influence me in my official capacity, it failed.
“The truth is that I have never engaged in any inappropriate or criminal conduct. Despite baseless speculation alluding to the contrary, I have always gone to great lengths to ensure my conduct is legal and ethical, and any claim to the contrary is patently false.”
So far Madigan has not been charged with a crime and he may never be. Unless one of his allies drops an incriminating dime in exchange for leniency, he may slide the way former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley did when his top mayoral aides ensnared by the feds in the “Hired Truck” and City Hall personnel scandals fell on their own swords and did not implicate the boss.
Madigan already dodged a bullet from a sexual harassment scandal that took place right under his nose and eventually cashiered his top political and governmental lieutenant, and a trusted campaign operative. Now he’s denying knowledge of a serious corruption scandal that also involves his inner circle.
Maybe his next assertion will be that, despite decades of Springfield power and influence, he didn’t realize Illinois was hemorrhaging businesses, jobs and residents at an alarming and unprecedented rate; amassing $150 billion in unfunded pension and retiree health care obligations, unpaid bills and unbalanced budgets; and failing to embrace long overdue ethics and efficiency reforms.
If he really shouldn’t be blamed or held responsible for the corrupt and craven behavior of his lieutenants because he didn’t know it was going on, perhaps the inscrutable, publicity-and-media averse emperor does indeed have no clothes.
Perhaps some of the Option A characteristics that have been celebrated for years are more fiction than fact — urban legends burnished by tales of sliced apple lunches, quaint dinners and a laser focus on everything that lives, breathes and moves in Springfield.
Illinois voters apparently devalued the myth during this year’s election when they uncharacteristically defeated Madigan-backed House candidates, a key Illinois Supreme Court ally and the graduated income tax amendment he backed.
Voters, and now other top Illinois Democrats — Gov. J.B Pritzker, Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, and a growing list of emboldened Illinois lawmakers — are, like Dorothy’s dog Toto in “The Wizard of Oz,” beginning to pull back the curtain on the legendary Springfield wizard.
They see Madigan as a political weight around their necks, raising the specter of GOP inroads in 2022, when statewide offices Democrats currently hold, including governor and attorney general, will be hotly contested, along with a potentially game-changing Supreme Court vacancy and most legislative seats.
We’re at risk, those Democrats are implying, unless the embattled Madigan gives up the speaker’s post and the Democratic Party chairmanship he is fighting hard to retain.
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Perhaps, harking back to my “Wizard of Oz” trope, Democrats see themselves caught up in the fictional tornado, filmed in stark black and white, lifting their swirling house of imperiled officeholders and eventually, after a harrowing airborne ride, setting down safely in a new, color-enhanced Illinois that foreshadows their bright political future.
Yes, they know all too well, there is a casualty under the house — collateral damage from the tornado. And the fictional victim is not a witch wearing ruby slippers but a political warlock desperately clutching a sliced apple.
The question, on this holiday weekend, is whether art imitates life, or vice versa? Time will tell.
Andy Shaw was an ABC 7 political reporter and former head of the Better Government Association. He is still active in good government reform organizations.
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