CHICAGO – On a late October day in Springfield nearly five years ago, then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan exited a private caucus meeting and strode up to a group of waiting reporters in one of the state Capitol’s vast marble halls.
It was lawmakers’ first day back in the Statehouse since wrapping up a historically productive spring legislative session in which Democrats – emboldened by major wins during the 2018 midterm election cycle – raised Illinois’ minimum wage, legalized recreational marijuana and enshrined abortion rights into state law, among other priorities.
But in the months that followed, Democrats’ celebrations gave way to a growing anxiety that the feds had trained their microscope on Springfield.
A steady drip of news leaks during the summer of 2019 began to outline a criminal probe with Madigan at its center, though indictments and highly visible FBI raids of other state and local elected Democrats later that summer and fall muddied the emerging picture.
And as General Assembly members settled back into the Capitol for their two-week fall veto session, the powerful speaker was dealing with fallout from the latest action taken by the feds against a prominent new target. Hours earlier, a member of Madigan’s House Democratic leadership team had been hauled into court after his arrest on a charge that he bribed a sitting state senator who happened to be cooperating with the FBI.
In a rare – and brief – availability with reporters in the crowded and noisy hallway off the Statehouse rotunda, the longtime speaker said he would take steps for House members to expel the representative from the body if he did not resign.
But quickly, the questions turned to why Madigan’s name had shown up in subpoenas made public after the spate of recent FBI searches and if he’d been contacted by the feds –which the speaker met with shrugs and a flat “no.” In response to a reporter asking whether he was a target of the investigation, Madigan issued a categorical denial.
“No, I’m not a target of anything,” he said.
Within the year, however, Madigan would be proven wrong as prosecutors filed the first in a series of bombshell charges alleging the longtime speaker had been the beneficiary of a yearslong bribery scheme.
And in those filings, the speaker, who for decades had been referred to as “the Velvet Hammer” for his quiet but forceful approach to political leadership, would be given a new nickname by the feds: Public Official A.
Now, half a decade – and a stunning political fall – later, the formerly powerful speaker will spend the next two months in a Chicago federal courtroom watching as his long-awaited corruption trial unfolds to determine whether he picks up another moniker: convicted felon.
Public Official A
Opening statements in Madigan’s trial are expected to begin Monday afternoon after a grueling two weeks of jury selection finally concludes with the seating of the last two alternate jurors.
During the six-day process, the former speaker took careful notes on each prospective juror on a yellow legal pad and occasionally conferred with his attorneys, displaying the same fastidiousness in the courtroom that garnered him power over his five decades in Springfield.
By the time he was elected speaker in 1983, Madigan had already gained a reputation for the types of shrewd political calculations designed to protect and grow his House Democratic caucus, which, in turn, would keep him in power.
Notwithstanding a two-year interruption of that reign when Republicans briefly won control of the Illinois House in the mid-1990s, Madigan was speaker for 36 years, making him the longest-serving legislative leader in U.S. history.
In the first several months of what would ultimately become his last term as House speaker, Madigan was, in some ways, operating at near-peak political power.
The “Blue Wave” election cycle in 2018 expanded Madigan’s Democratic caucus to its largest number yet and wiped out his biggest political nemesis: Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
As a candidate and then as governor, Rauner had spent the previous five years spending millions of his own dollars painting Madigan as not just the root of Illinois’ fiscal problems but also fundamentally corrupt. The messaging was at least somewhat effective, and Democratic majorities in the General Assembly shrank over the course of two election cycles.
As Rauner dug his heels in proposals to weaken labor unions – one of Madigan’s key constituencies – the new governor’s political fight with the speaker morphed into a legislative stalemate that plunged the state into a two-year budget impasse and ballooned Illinois’ deficit to nearly $17 billion. It only ended when Republicans in the House and Senate defied Rauner and sided with Democrats to pass a budget deal.
When billionaire JB Pritzker was sworn in as governor in early 2019, Madigan finally had an executive he could work with for the first time in more than 15 years. The previous nearly two decades had been marked by enmity with not only Rauner, but also Govs. Pat Quinn and Rod Blagojevich – both Democrats.
Pritzker had kept his distance from Madigan during his campaign, trying to avoid any perception that he was the polarizing speaker’s favored candidate during a crowded primary run. He was, however, initially reticent to criticize Madigan’s handling of sexual harassment allegations in both his political operation and speaker’s office that came to light in 2018 at the height of the #MeToo movement.
But Madigan had weathered the storm by firing the accused and keeping his focus on winning legislative races. And by the following spring, he was back to making significant political maneuvers that allowed for the passage of big-ticket progressive items like legalizing marijuana, as well as rare bipartisan support for a state budget, a $45 billion infrastructure plan and massive gambling expansion.
Though Madigan’s legislative efforts helped to paper over intraparty rifts that had formed the previous year, the rebuilt goodwill wouldn’t last.
The steady drip of news about FBI searches executed on Madigan’s close political allies in mid-2019 would turn into a deluge of news about the feds’ growing criminal investigation, with the speaker at its center.
Those reports were interrupted, at least temporarily, by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 as a commission set up by Madigan to study Illinois’ ethics laws did its work. But the pressure returned at full force in July of that year when then-U.S. Attorney John Lausch called an unusually rare press conference on a Friday afternoon.
In the news conference – and a lengthy charging document – prosecutors revealed that electric utility giant Commonwealth Edison had admitted that over a nine-year period, the company had bribed the speaker, whom the feds referred to as “Public Official A.”
ComEd agreed to pay a $200 million fine and cooperate with the feds’ investigation surrounding Madigan in taking responsibility for giving jobs and lucrative no-work contracts to the speaker’s political allies in exchange for favorable legislation in Springfield.
Political falloutSoon after, some of Madigan’s newest members – especially suburban women who’d been elected during the “Blue Wave” campaign cycle that boosted the House Democratic caucus to its biggest majority ever – began pushing for his ouster.
As the speaker’s brand became toxic within his own party, Republicans and business interests used the political situation to their advantage that fall. Groups opposed to Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature graduated income tax campaign promise spent millions on a campaign to defeat the ballot referendum, suggesting voters couldn’t trust Springfield politicians like Madigan with their tax dollars.
Voters rejected the constitutional amendment, in addition to ousting a sitting Illinois Supreme Court justice for the first time in history after opponents spent big on ads calling him “Madigan’s favorite judge.”
Following the election, the governor and other Democrats laid responsibility for those losses at Madigan’s feet. And just a few weeks later, the speaker’s close friend and political advisor Mike McClain – a longtime lobbyist for ComEd – was indicted for orchestrating the alleged Madigan bribery scheme along with three other former executives and lobbyists for the utility.
Meanwhile, the number of Democratic House members who’d publicly committed to voting against Madigan’s coming bid for a historic 19th term as speaker kept growing.
By the time lawmakers returned to Springfield for their “lame duck” session in early January 2021, the group had reached critical mass, despite Madigan maintaining staunch support from influential blocs like the House’s Black and Latino caucuses, as well as many rank-and-file members.
In a series of tense closed-door meetings in Springfield’s cavernous Bank of Springfield Center, which the House rented out to allow for pandemic-era social distancing, Madigan lost several rounds of votes – ultimately “suspending” his campaign for speaker and allowing the election for a new speaker to play out.
In the following weeks, Madigan would resign from the House seat he’d held for 50 years, followed by stepping down from his longtime role as chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois.
It would be another year until Madigan himself was indicted.Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.