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If you take the Amtrak from Chicago to Springfield, you run smack into time as you enter Illinois’s capital city. The train crawls along bricked roads and Springfield’s history-soaked downtown, the Capitol itself just blocks from the tracks. That journey in time and space is also taken by Ray Long in The House That Madigan Built: The Record Run of Illinois’ Velvet Hammer. The book profiles Michael Madigan’s thirty-six-year tenure as Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives between 1983 and 2021. It also charts Illinois politics in the movement from Richard J. Daley’s mid-century Chicago to Madigan’s own control over ward, city, and state decision-making deep into the twenty-first century. Chronicling that movement, Long allows a complex Madigan to emerge—threat and protector, patron and (in the words of Philip Rock, past President of the State Senate) Sphinx.
Long’s account of Madigan’s legacy is a study of the practical application of power. This work examines Madigan’s anxieties around the regular redistricting battles. It charts the relationships that girded Madigan’s political base in Chicago, and the “persuasion [and] conversation” (as Madigan himself terms the “business” of politics) that maintained that base. The book also recounts the potential abuses implicit within that base’s power: insiders’ capacity to game the system, the concentration of power itself, and the bullying and harassment that led to wider investigations. A trusted journalist who has covered Springfield since 1981, Long unwinds that story—Madigan’s power and its ultimate failure to insulate the Speaker from the abuses around him.
Long and I discussed the book as biography, history, and account of reporters’ chase of the “Madigan story.”
Garin Cycholl
Madigan’s accrual and concentration of power marks the central narrative in the book. As someone who writes about Illinois and Chicago politics, how do you understand that sense of “power” in comparison to how it was built and transacted by Mayor Richard J. Daley?
Ray Long
Mayor Richard J. Daley held a tight grip on his city, his party, the City Council, and state and federal lawmakers from Chicago. As such his influence carried great weight in city, state and, at times, national politics. Before Madigan became speaker, he was Daley’s point person in Springfield. He acted as Chicago’s protector in Springfield. Madigan turned the House speakership into a powerhouse position, holding sway over state legislation and politics and using both to enhance his own strength. Both enhanced their power by exercising control over many levers of government. Madigan took Daley’s playbook and expanded on it.
Garin Cycholl
Is Madigan one of the last “old time pols” from Daley’s world or quite a different kind of creature?
Ray Long
As I say in the book, Madigan performed as well as one would expect the greatest disciple of Mayor Richard J. Daley, the first Mayor Daley. Madigan and Daley are cut from a similar cloth, and Madigan would look at a funeral card with a picture of the mayor and his wife while making big decisions, wondering how the mayor would have handled them. They both knew helping people was good politics. Madigan was and is big on constituent service. They both knew that people who get jobs with the help of a politician can turn into helpful foot soldiers come the next election. But where Daley had a freer hand to use patronage as a way to reward people for helping Democrats politically, Madigan needed to work around [Michael] Shakman and [Cynthia] Rutan anti-patronage court orders in local and state government. Now Madigan faces scrutiny in the ComEd scandal. The company admitted that it gave some of the speaker’s political allies little-work jobs and contracts in hopes of getting the speaker’s help with the utility’s legislative agenda.
Garin Cycholl
At one point, you note, “Madigan often prefers to speak little and clarify less.” What is the most misunderstood aspect of Madigan’s drive and his anticipated legacy that you wanted to detail in the book?
Ray Long
Over the years, Madigan went from a politician who was generally accessible to reporters to one who often was less available, sometimes going weeks or months without a public utterance. Part of that change was his reaction to the heavy scrutiny in the 2002 campaign of his daughter, Senator Lisa Madigan, as she ran for Illinois Attorney General. But he had already started to try to limit the amount of time he would spend talking to reporters each day. He still would talk to reporters over the years, but it was much more limited in the latter part of his tenure. There was a myth among some news folks that Madigan never talked to anybody. He didn’t talk all of the time, sometimes walking by reporters shouting questions when he didn’t want to answer them, sometimes handing off questions to his spokesman if he didn’t want to deal with tougher issues. But when he did talk, it was not always easy to get a clear answer. He stayed on message, sometimes intentionally keeping it vague. At other times, when he wanted to be, he was very precise. He often kept people guessing as to what he was thinking. That’s one reason I started the introduction with the question that loomed over every issue: What does the speaker think?
Garin Cycholl
Did surprising aspects of Madigan emerge for you within the writing itself?
Ray Long
One of the toughest parts of doing this book was deciding what to leave out. There is so much material that could be included from his 50-year career. It was not surprising how much material there was, but it was surprising how hard it was to leave out issues that could be chapters or books all by themselves. Since word of this book got out, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the number of people who have come up to me who have information that would make a second book a valuable endeavor.
Garin Cycholl
How did you conceive of the book’s organization, which moves in and out of a chronological history?
Ray Long
I initially wanted to put the book in chronological order, but political and governmental issues unfold over many years. My fear was that I would be going in and out of topics all over the book and make it harder to absorb the importance of each issue, such as pensions or taxes or reapportionment.
Part of my hope is that the book would be one that students of journalism and political science could use to understand how Madigan and other Illinois politicians handled difficult issues. To help readers understand, I often let the story of how Madigan dealt with people or events, such as the impeachment of Governor Rod Blagojevich, serve as the vehicle for explaining the topic, the moment and the disputes. I could explain complex subjects and complicated relationships, such as that of Madigan and Blagojevich, two starkly different politicians, better when a chapter is focused rather than spread throughout the book.
In the end, I tried to keep a loose chronology, but the book’s organization, through the use of categories, crystallized as I discussed it with Daniel Nasset, the editor in chief of the University of Illinois Press. By grouping the chapters under categories, the book gives people a better picture of Madigan’s all-encompassing influence, his strengths and, ultimately, the flaws that ended his career. I saw connective tissue between the chapters within each category. For example, the book starts with a category called “The Legend”—chapters that described his successes on the all-important redistricting process, his dramatic White Sox stadium victory, and the tax increase he unveiled and passed in six hours under a secret plan code-named Operation Cobra. Later, we group together Power Plays and Political Flops, ranging from Blagojevich’s impeachment to pension failures, and move through sections about his career as a political leader, with chapters about patronage, money and his daughter, Lisa, the Attorney General—and on through the Turning Point and The Fall. You can tell me how well you thought it worked. When I was done, I thought it worked well.
Garin Cycholl
As you were writing, did it become more or less focused on Madigan’s biography itself?
Ray Long
I was not as interested in writing a classic biography as I was in telling how his public and political life dominated Springfield and state policy over a record-breaking run. He used old-school techniques to create a vaunted political machine and examined every piece of legislation to see if he could tweak it in ways to help him maintain power. But his style and personality obviously played a role in explaining who he is.
Garin Cycholl
Lisa Madigan moves in and out of the narrative at various points in the book. In retrospect, how do you understand her presence as an influence in how Madigan’s legacy will be recollected?
Ray Long
Lisa Madigan was a bright lawmaker and politician who rose swiftly in government and politics because of the strength of her father, but she showed she had her own abilities once she won office. She was popular, she had good political instincts, she had a bright future, and she may still, but it will be harder for her to make a comeback given how her father was dethroned and humiliated when he left the political stage. She lived under her father’s shadow no matter how hard she tried to get away from it. While Speaker Madigan’s political prowess undoubtedly helped fuel her meteoric rise, his overwhelming presence may well have stunted her growth. She said eventually she would not run for governor while her father was speaker—a nod to the question of whether a Governor Madigan and a Speaker Madigan would put too much power in the hands of one family.
Garin Cycholl
Given your perspective, do you see power as having become more or less centered in Springfield, particularly in the red/blue shifts that have come to define the state’s politics within and following the Trump Presidency?
Ray Long
This is a difficult question because no one political leader has filled the power vacuum created when Madigan exited the stage. Political power in Illinois now is more diffuse. It’s a point that some people celebrate. Yet others yearn for something closer to the era of smoke-filled rooms, a time when a Richard J. Daley played an enormous role in shaping a party’s ticket and direction. Still others saw Madigan as the singular figure who could be irreplaceable. Governor J.B. Pritzker is trying to exercise a stronger role with Madigan no longer serving as speaker and chairman of the state Democratic Party, but the stage is crowded with Speaker Chris Welch, Senate President Don Harmon and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. They also are all relative newcomers to their positions, making it harder to have the reach that Madigan had during his half-century as a legislator. The role of pandemic politics and the influence of Trumpism have sharpened and exacerbated divisions in political parties, causing new fissures in the age-old splits between the city, the suburbs and Downstate.
Garin Cycholl
In that regard, has the road between Chicago and Springfield grown shorter or longer?
Ray Long
Since Madigan became a legislative leader in 1981 and speaker in 1983, the number of rural Democratic seats have dwindled. That was largely due to conservative Democratic areas, especially in deep Southern Illinois, shifting to more conservative Republican attitudes and, more recently, into Trumpism. But Republicans have gained slowly over the years to overtake large swaths of territory in previously Democratic areas in smaller cities, such as Centralia or Canton or Macomb, leaving Democrats outside of Chicago heavily concentrated in Metro East across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, the Quad Cities, Peoria, Rockford and in small pockets of liberalism, such as the Downstate district heavily influenced by the faculty and students of the University of Illinois. This happened as Democrats pushed their way deeper into the Republican suburbs and made inroads there while losing seats downstate. The Downstate Democrats benefit from being in the majority and, because they mostly are linked to small metropolitan areas, have similar interests at times that mesh with city attitudes. They mostly have the freedom to vote the way they want on downstate issues, which tend to be more conservative, such as pro-gun hunting rights vs. gun-control city views. The Democrats have made so many inroads due to redistricting that they should be able to put together coalitions as long as they maintain control of the two chambers—something that they tried to ensure as they redrew the district lines for the new map that goes in place in 2022.
Garin Cycholl
One of the strongest parts of the book emerges in the challenges of reporting on these core political conflicts and shifts, as well as how larger cultural issues have been redefining aspects of Madigan’s work. How have those conflicts, shifts, and issues impacted your own work as a reporter?
Ray Long
As I say in the book, the turning point for Madigan was when he got caught up in sexual harassment scandals that involved misbehaving aides. Times had changed, and the speaker had not adapted to the cultural shifts, had not put in place proper human resources personnel to deal with such problems. He took responsibility and tried to overhaul how people are treated in Springfield, but it took women willing to tell their stories and reporters willing to listen to and write their stories before change happened.
Garin Cycholl
What are the greatest difficulties or tensions in reporting and writing on a daily basis about these figures in power?
Ray Long
Covering a high-octane beat, whether it is the Illinois Capitol or Chicago City Hall—and I’ve covered both—means reporters must be unafraid to write hard-hitting stories about politicians that they see every day. A reporter must not back down from that old-fashioned but still important eternal pursuit of the truth—whether or not the politician is unhappy or angry at a reporter for writing hard-hitting, truthful stories. Politicians tend to be less helpful to reporters who write tough stories about them, but fairness and accuracy go a long way toward keeping at least enough access to succeed in breaking important stories.
A beat reporter is always on the lookout for what’s happening each day and juggling in stories that need a deeper dive. The most important role of a reporter is to get the story right. Often the best stories are not easy to get, and often they may be on deadline and must be done quickly. The best reporters will try to explain why things happen. That’s not always easy on a daily deadline, but people need to know why and how things happen–not just who, what, when and where. Ferreting out the ever-elusive why and how can be challenging when politicians are reluctant to explain, but it must be done to inform people of the real story.
Garin Cycholl
Has your sense of focus as a journalist changed throughout your time covering Madigan’s approach as Speaker?
Ray Long
Experience brings more perspective, more sources and more drive to tell the stories that a reporter—in his or her heart—knows must be told. The knowledge a reporter picks up over the years is invaluable in helping the public understand what is going on in government.
Garin Cycholl
Are there parts of your work or schedule that still excite you in that regard?
Ray Long
I still get excited about putting together a story that nobody else can get—be it a daily deadline story or an investigation that takes days, weeks or even a year. Putting a story on page one, as a former reporter Loren Wassell once said—is still a buzz. It may be a diminishing buzz if you’ve done it routinely, but it is still a buzz to break news that is meaningful to people.
Garin Cycholl
Is there a place in Springfield where you’d still like to celebrate the breaking of a big story?
Ray Long
There’s nothing better than being in the Capitol Press Room and having your colleagues and competitors congratulate you for a big scoop. And even if they don’t say anything, you know you’ve made a mark when you have other reporters chasing your story. The statehouse, where ideas from across the state emerge and collide in a world of hard-ball politics every day, is still “The Greatest Beat on Planet Earth.”
NONFICTION
The House That Madigan Built
By Ray Long
University of Illinois Press
Published March 22, 2022
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