A lesson: How the GOP purged its leader amid corruption probe
In June 2002, then-Illinois Republican Party Chairman Lee Daniels abruptly announced his resignation from that party post as pressure mounted, including from the GOP state attorney general, to remove unwanted “distractions” in an election year. Daniels and his chief of staff had fallen under the radar of federal prosecutors who were investigating whether GOP staff members did campaign work on state time.
“The party deserves to serve its purpose without unwarranted distractions,” Daniels, who as House minority leader was House Speaker Michael Madigan’s counterpart, said in announcing he would step down as party chair. “For that reason, it is best that I refocus my energy and encourage others to refocus theirs.”
Not long after, the House Republican caucus voted 33-18 to install a new House leader, Rep. Tom Cross, after Daniels lost support among his colleagues in that role too. Daniels had not been charged and was only peripherally linked to a time sheet scandal, but the whiff of a federal corruption probe pushed his members to force him out of leadership.
Three years later, Daniels’ chief of staff, Michael Tristano, formally was indicted and later pleaded guilty to a fraud charge as part of a probe into state workers’ diverting taxpayer resources to campaigns. Tristano also was accused of working out a deal with a real estate group to put a Republican candidate on its payroll. In exchange, the real estate group’s project received more than $1 million in state funds, prosecutors said. Other statehouse insiders, including Madigan, then-Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka and Senate President Emil Jones, also had been asked to turn over records as part of a state-resources-to-campaigns scandal.
Shortly after Tristano’s indictment in 2005, Daniels announced he would retire from his remaining position as a state representative. Daniels was not implicated in Tristano’s
indictment, and he was never charged with wrongdoing. But he left anyway. A top GOP party and policy leader in the state who once held three positions of power was gone, pushed out by his own members and a nudge from the previous GOP attorney general, Jim Ryan, who had forwarded corruption allegations to federal investigators.
Under the lens of compare
and contrast, then and now, one takeaway is this state’s breathtaking tolerance for corruption. It has settled into the system of governance and politics as its own permanent institution. It is an expected byproduct of serving in public office, like wind makes waves.
Now it’s happening again with Madigan. He’s at the heart of a wide-ranging bribery probe involving utility giant ComEd. He has been served with subpoenas. At least three of his top aides’ and allies’ homes have been raided, along with other confidants targeted in inquires involving red-light camera bribes, sexual harassment payoffs, property tax clout and nepotism.
And yet, he continues in three positions of power, raising gobs of campaign cash.
Recently, after the feds outlined the ComEd scandal, one of Madigan’s campaign funds showed donations on July 28 from LiUNA Chicago Laborers District Council of $362,500. Chicago Journeymen Plumbers’ Local 130 gave the speaker $25,000. Chicagoland Operators Joint Labor-Management PAC wrote him checks totaling more than $513,000. Others gave, too, including political advisers who apparently still cling to his coattails.
A handful of the House
Democrats’ 74-member caucus and a few senators and others have called for him to step down from at least one position. But Gov. J.B. Pritzker has shifted and squeaked, refusing to take a lead role. Attorney General Kwame Raoul, unlike Jim Ryan facing his own party’s dirty laundry in 2002, has said next to nothing — the state’s top law enforcement officer.
And an election looms with hundreds of candidates running under the Democratic Party banner. Corruption is the institutionalized thief in state government, robbing taxpayers of honest services, which they deserve.
It needs to be confronted and eliminated.