Chicago Tribune Writer, Author on Madigan Book Discusses Former Speaker's Indictment
Chicago Tribune reporter Ray Long’s new book is being released at the same time of former Speaker Michael Madigan’s federal indictment.
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Ray Long, the great Chicago Tribune investigative and political reporter is out with a new book on the life and career of former House Speaker Michael Madigan. “The House That Madigan Built” has perfect timing as Madigan was indicted last week by a federal grand jury.
We sat down (over Zoom) with Ray yesterday afternoon to get in depth about the indictment and the book. I hope you can take a few minutes to watch:
A couple of highlights (a TL;DR, as the kids would say):
On how careful Madigan typically is and how he may have slipped up:
“It’s going to be more subtle because Madigan is a more subtle guy than, say, a Blagojevich. This is a guy who, even when he was relaxed was not somebody who would be using outlandish language. He has been very careful over the years and there are phrases that, if you read the indictment very carefully, you’ll find him giving the go-ahead using cryptic language like kill a piece of legislation, or giving permission to kill a piece of legislation that ComEd wanted killed. Then you would pick up on a telephone call that Mike McClain (his confidant and co-defendant) might have called up ComEd and maybe e-mailed ComEd and said “Madigan told me this, he gave us the green light to kill this bill, he also wants some people on the payroll.” They may not all have been in the same conversation, but there are pieces that prosecutors believe they have been able to thread together that show there were crimes committed.”
When Madigan knew his hold on power was over in January of 2021:
“I think he was trying right up until maybe a day or two before the end, then he really realized the 19 holdouts were not going to break. He had to give others a chance to round up the 60 votes. I’m not so sure that he still didn’t hold out that others could not get the 60 votes needed. But that group [the 19] stayed together. It would not give in and it took a while for him to be convinced of that, but eventually he did and he let others see if they could round up the votes and he even gave Chris Welch some advice on how to do it by going to secure his entire Black Caucus, secure the downstate votes, secure the Latino votes, and then Chris Welch was able to put together the votes and Madigan got out of the way. If you look at the pictures from that time period while he was down there, he just looked deflated and that he had lost the verve that was in his step. And he knew that he was now on his way out.”
Will Madigan have an impact on Democrats in 2022?
“Well, they’ll try to run from it, but they are gonna be hard pressed to say they didn’t know this guy named Mike Madigan and the Republicans will do everything they can to hang Madigan’s woes around the necks of their Democratic opponents like an albatross to weigh them down.”
