The historical significance of last week’s votes to elect a new Senate president and a new Senate Republican leader is
difficult to overstate.
For starters, replacing both chamber leaders at once is an extreme Springfield
rarity. According to Kent Redfield, one of the state’s leading political scientists, the last time this happened was 34 years ago.
Also, Sen. Christine Radogno (R-Lemont) became the first woman in all of
Illinois history to lead a legislative party caucus.
The historical novelties, however, pale in comparison to the historical
imperatives.
The state’s political process has just plain stopped functioning. Illinois’ unemployment rate is soaring, yet no job-creating capital construction bill can
be passed. The state’s budget deficit is eye-popping, yet nobody is seriously talking to each other
about a real solution. Hundreds of important bills have died because of a fight
over administrative rules. Gridlock is too kind a word. It’s as though the government has developed a terminal case of toxic shock
syndrome.
As you probably know by now, the Senate Democrats unanimously selected Sen. John
Cullerton as the new Senate president last week.
Cullerton vowed to do his best to end the gridlock. He has a long personal and
political relationship with House Speaker Michael Madigan and he lives just two
blocks away from Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
His campaign for the presidency was a work of art. For instance, he raised
almost $1 million between early September and early November, which impressed
just about everybody.
But it was his persistence, patience, evenhandedness and hard work which seemed
to pay off the most. There were no threats of retribution from Cullerton, even
when things got nasty.
Last Wednesday, one of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s most favored black Chicago activists held a press conference with a few
Champaign-area ministers to pressure Sen. Michael Frerichs (D-Champaign) to
vote for Sen. James Clayborne for Senate president. But the specter of a
Chicago-based Blagojevich ally traveling to Champaign to urge a local
legislator to vote for an East St. Louis senator who was privately backed by
the horribly unpopular governor didn’t go over too well at the Statehouse.
“If that’s how Clayborne is campaigning for Senate president, how would he govern?” several Senate Democrats wondered.
Sen. James Clayborne’s people claimed that all four had pledged to back Clayborne and had broken
their word. That’s not how the four Democrats saw it, and tempers flared in the hours leading up
to the president vote. Several Democrats demanded some sort of retribution
against Clayborne, including withdrawing Cullerton’s offer of Senate majority leader. But Cullerton calmed the waters and made the
offer anyway. Clayborne accepted.
The calm under pressure, the disavowal of the political retribution of the
recent past and the willingness to bring opponents into the circle are all
extremely positive signs. Cullerton said last week that his first priority is
to unstick the capital construction bill and then move on to education funding.
Both of those issues have taken a back seat to the politics of vindictiveness
that have plagued the Statehouse for years.
Rich Miller publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and
thecapitolfaxblog.com.
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2008.
