The Madigan Rule Episode 3: Politics over policy

 

[VIDEO] I forgot to post episode three of this limited series podcast from the Better Gov't Association with regards to former Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives Michael J. Madigan.

"The Madigan Rule" explores how Speaker Madigan was able to get his start in politics and his longevity as one of this state's more powerful politicians. Here's a transcript of episode three.

Aside from giving up the speakership to Emanuel Chris Welch earlier this year and giving up his house seat after being re-elected by 10,000 votes, Madigan also gave up the chairmanship of the state's Democratic party. Although for now he does remain a Chicago Democratic Ward Committeeman and had enough weighted votes to engineer the election of a successor to his seat in the 22nd state house district.

One thing that we see in this episode is that he will fight for his incumbents and if a member of his caucus loses he's willing to bring the new members of his caucus in. We can consider the story of state Rep. Will Guzzardi. One sign of this is he was less concerned with his own set ideology than maintaining his hold on political power.

It's noted that he controlled the legislative process. As we saw in earlier episodes he learned to manipulate the clock, used the clock to kill legislation, and even used the clock to push something through his chamber such as building the stadium we now know as Guaranteed Rate Field. In that case, they were able to reset the clock to say legislation for the White Sox future how was passed before midnight back in 1988.

Another subject that comes up in this edition was his relationship with former Gov. Bruce Rauner. In 2014 Rauner was the first Republican elected governor of this state since George Ryan in 1998. For most of his single term as Illinois Governor he locked horns with Speaker Madigan to the point where he claimed he was frozen out of accomplishing anything.

The man Rauner defeated was Pat Quinn and he also had difficulty dealing with Speaker Madigan and they were both Democrats. This would be mentioned Quinn decades before he assumed the governorship of Illinois succeeded in cutting membership of the Illinois House of Representatives by a third with the cutback amendment. It was passed by voters in 1980 and went into effect in 1982 where house members would be elected in single member districts as opposed to multimember districts before 1982.

This enabled Madigan to maintain his hold on power for many years as political pundits claimed. And the irony is that Madigan actually opposed this back then, and after being speaker for just about 40 years he merely adapted.

Until the next episode.