Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan
No one embodied what’s wrong with Illinois politics more than Michael Madigan. Political supremacy incarnate, he was unparalleled in his ability to remain on top and unscathed as governors and lawmakers came and went — on occasion, headed to jail.
Through the years, Illinois’ fiscal outlook bottomed out, a pension crisis metastasized, ethics reform languished — and yet Madigan endured.
Now Madigan, retired from lawmaking since early last year, stands indicted. The 79-year-old former House speaker who served in the General Assembly for five decades is accused of turning his state office into a criminal enterprise for his own personal gain. The racketeering charges against him allege a variety of extortion and bribery schemes stretching from 2011 to 2019 that yielded favors and cash for Madigan and his associates.
Madigan vowed to fight the charges. “I adamantly deny these accusations and look back proudly on my time as an elected official, serving the people of Illinois,” he said in a statement released Wednesday. He will have his day in court, beginning with his scheduled arraignment March 9 in U.S. District Court. Joining him will be longtime confidant, Michael McClain, a former state lawmaker and lobbyist who also faces charges in connection with an alleged bribery scheme involving Commonwealth Edison.
In a perfect world, Madigan’s indictment would signal the start of a new era in state politics, where there’s no quarter given to corrupt pols, where the public trust isn’t just a phrase in a campaign pamphlet, but an ideal guiding the service of every state officeholder. But, over the decades, Springfield has been anything but a guarantor of the public trust. If anything Illinois politics has shown itself to be a primer on how to poison the public trust.
Read the rest of the Chicago Tribune editorial here.
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