The Chicago machine way that is now at the center of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s corruption trial has been embraced as “civic lore” for generations of city and state politicians, but it threatens to torch the legacy of one of its most storied practitioners.
So says longtime Democratic political consultant David Axelrod.
The famed CNN analyst and chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, like others, has been following the lead-up to Madigan’s historic racketeering, bribery and conspiracy trial that got underway this week.
Jury selection began this week and is moving at a snail’s pace. Three men and five women have been chosen over two days to serve on the 12-member panel. But U.S. District Judge John Blakey still needs to find four more jurors and six alternates. He’s acknowledged his plan to have opening statements on Tuesday is off the table.
Axelrod isn’t sure how the jury, once chosen, will decide the case.
But after watching Chicago politics for nearly a half century, Axelrod says there is a long precedent for the kind of behavior for which the ex-speaker is accused: doling out jobs or contracts to political supporters or trading favors with businesses that need something at City Hall or the statehouse.
“In the context of Chicago, there was a time when this was considered normal practice,” Axelrod said in an interview with WBEZ. “So among the old-timers, it’s like, ‘Wait a second. This is a crime? I didn’t realize this was a crime.’”
Axelrod first encountered Madigan while a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune during the 1970s. That’s when the Southwest Side Democrat was consolidating power in Springfield, before grabbing control of the House speaker’s gavel in 1983 and not letting go for nearly 40 years.
With Madigan’s unmatched longevity, Axelrod said the ex-speaker embodied the definition of raw political power, and it’s now striking to see Madigan humbled and sitting in a federal courtroom, no longer in control of his own destiny.
“It’s hard to compute that this guy, who was for … more than a generation a Colossus astride the politics of government of Illinois, is now this diminished figure standing before the bar of justice,” Axelrod said.
Madigan’s sometimes blunt political force left its mark on the state’s law books, a string of Illinois governors and even Obama. The former two-term president and longtime speaker were not close politically.
Axelrod recalled when Obama, during his first year in the White House, was in Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin. When Axelrod asked Obama how the meeting went, the then-president related how he’d sensed seeing a familiar political face in Putin.
“He said, ‘It was fine. It was just like talking to Mike Madigan,’” Axelrod said. “He said the guy was all business, same cold blue eyes, same trolling habits.’”
Several years later, Axelrod said he was approached and asked about the validity of that story by former Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago.
“I said, ‘Yes, it’s true,’” Axelrod said. “Cullerton laughed and said, ‘Madigan loves that story.’”
Madigan’s unrivaled power put him at the epicenter of every major action the Legislature took over all or parts of five decades.
Madigan signed off on the abolition of the state’s death penalty, the legalization of same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana, tighter gun-control laws, the expansion of abortion rights and the construction of two major Chicago sports stadiums.
But his power was put to the test during the acrimonious run of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Axelrod said the first face-to-face encounter between the then-speaker and Rauner after the 2016 gubernatorial election and shortly before Rauner took office was vintage Madigan.
During a breakfast meeting with the then-governor-elect, Madigan reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrew a sheet of paper and handed it to Rauner. On it were the names of all the governors Madigan had outlasted in Springfield.
“The message was very clear,” Axelrod said. “Governors can come and go, but Madigan endures. And he did for a very long time.”
But Madigan may have met his match against federal prosecutors in Chicago.
Axelrod said he hasn’t completely familiarized himself with the evidence now amassed against Madigan.
But he said the set of allegations that Madigan embedded political supporters in well-paying and largely do-nothing positions with state utilities isn’t a new revelation in politics.
“He certainly isn’t the first and, sadly, he probably won’t be the last powerful political figure in this state who is accused of monetizing his position for his own personal benefit. That’s been part of the civic lore forever.”
Axelrod said the ex-speaker appears to have miscalculated by failing to recognize that the old way of doing business was no longer in legal favor — that prosecutors were becoming more rigorous.
“He was operating under an old set of rules, and the rules got more exacting. And he didn’t make the adjustments,” Axelrod said.
Madigan’s trial is expected to last 11 weeks.
Having been the longest-tenured statehouse speaker in American history won’t be how Madigan will be most remembered if he is convicted, Axelrod said.
“It’s in the first sentence of his obituary,” Axelrod
“You can’t deny the sort of sweeping power that he leveraged over government and politics in the state of Illinois for four decades. I mean, you can’t take that away from him,” he continued. “But the way it ended will be the coda on his career.”
Dave McKinney covers Illinois government and politics for WBEZ and was the long-time Springfield bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Sun-Times federal courts reporter Jon Seidel contributed to this report.