A Just Cause Read online

  The removal of the governor was a decision the Speaker did not take lightly. Madigan has a sense of history, and colleagues say that he has an almost religious respect for the legislative process.18 Despite calls from both parties for an impeachment investigation during the year leading to the arrest, Madigan remained cautious. He knew that impeachment and removal from office would be an unprecedented action by the Illinois legislature. Never before in the state had the sovereign will of the people, as expressed through the ballot, been nullified—an executive office holder had never been removed by the legislative branch.

  In December 2008 the legislature was completing the two-year cycle of general assemblies. The Ninety-Fifth General Assembly would end when the legislature adjourned in January, and the Ninety-Sixth would be sworn in. In November John Cullerton, a senator from Chicago’s North Side, had been elected by the majority Democrat caucus to be the new senate president. Cullerton, a veteran legislator who came to the Illinois house in 1979, had served in the senate since 1992. Achieving the position of senate president had become the personal goal of the former public defender from Cook County. When he moved to the senate after an unsuccessful run for Congress, he set his sights on the senate presidency. Surprisingly, Emil Jones, the senate president since 2003, chose to leave the senate, and John Cullerton had his chance. Several senators vied for the spot. Jones worked against Cullerton, but Cullerton prevailed. After the November election, the Democrats again held a firm majority in the senate and elected Cullerton their candidate for senate president, a move tantamount to being elected by the full senate.

  Cullerton was having breakfast in downtown Chicago when he heard of the arrest. He talked by phone with the Speaker. Emil Jones was still senate president, but Madigan did not want to talk to Jones; he dealt with Cullerton instead.19 Both Cullerton and Madigan agreed that Blagojevich had to be removed quickly. The idea of Blagojevich remaining as governor while he went on trial, an event that could have been years away, was totally unacceptable. Cullerton understood Madigan’s three options: the governor could resign, temporarily give up the office, or be impeached. On the morning of the arrest, planning an exact schedule of events leading to removal was impossible, but the two men agreed that an impeachment investigation would begin in six days. If Blagojevich could be persuaded to resign or step aside, the legislature could avoid taking action and the state could avoid the trauma of impeachment and a senate trial. The last thing John Cullerton had on his mind as he sat down for breakfast that morning was commencing a trial to remove the governor as his first legislative act as senate president.20

  The arrest of Rod Blagojevich occurred against a backdrop of partisan and personal hostilities that had played out in Illinois state government during the preceding sixteen years. In 1993 the Republicans had gained control of the senate, and James “Pate” Philip, from the solidly Republican DuPage County, was elected senate president. A veteran legislator, Philip had first been elected to the Illinois house in 1967 and moved to the senate in 1975. Philip was well liked, known to most as a regular guy, and accessible to rank-and-file senators from both parties. A former marine who in his early days sported a crew cut, he was unpretentious but could be rough and short with those who disagreed with him. He was staunchly conservative by the standards of the 1960s and 1970s and a rock-solid supporter of the business community. Upon becoming senate president, he had the audacity to offer committee chairmanships to two Democrats. Newly elected senate minority leader Emil Jones interpreted the move as an attempt to undermine his authority. The two Democrat senators declined the chairmanships, but the games had begun.

  Emil Jones, in contrast, was a product of Chicago politics. He came to his position in a fashion well known among the city’s legislators. Jones grew up in Morgan Park, a neighborhood on Chicago’s far South Side. He worked as a newspaper carrier and then held a series of public jobs, first at the US Postal Service and then as a sanitary engineer for the city’s South District Water Filtration Plant. He paid his dues, as did many public job holders in the 1960s and 1970s, doing political work in Chicago’s Thirty-Fourth Ward. His work for the ward organization and his loyalty and political skills caught the attention of the Thirty-Fourth Ward committeeman and alderman, Wilson Frost, who appointed him ward executive secretary. In 1972 Frost picked Jones to be the candidate for state representative. Jones won and served in the house for ten years before moving to the senate in 1983. After an intraparty struggle, he was elected by the Democrats to be minority leader in 1993.

  When Pate Philip became senate president, the Democrats had controlled the Illinois senate for eighteen years. Philip set out to change the way the senate operated and to consolidate control by adopting new rules and procedures that diminished the minority party’s role in policy-making. The clash between Philip and Jones was immediate. The men knew each other from a decade of serving together in the senate, and there was a mutual dislike. Philip dismissed Jones and rarely consulted him on policy matters. During one yearly budget meeting, negotiations that occur at the end of each legislative session and are attended by the four legislative leaders and the governor, Philip suggested to Madigan that the senate Democratic leader be excluded, but Madigan insisted that Jones be included.21 Jones was resentful and felt that Philip did not give him the proper respect. Mindful of his self-image, Jones informed his staff to call him Leader Jones.

  The mutual dislike between Philip and Jones was manifest in all their dealings. Both men had prosaic personalities but diverged in their backgrounds and political views. They both approached politics as a personal enterprise to be manipulated and managed. They each shared a high concern for their individual self-esteem, and they both treated the political craft as a complex interaction guided by the constant influences of paranoia, struggle, and intrigue. Both men approached political leadership as a military battle. Jones often said that his personal heroes were Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, and Machiavelli, author of The Prince. He would listen to a books-on-tape version of The Prince while driving from Chicago to legislative sessions in Springfield and often quoted passages from the book. Both Philip and Jones were directed by their own moral compasses. Their histories and their deeply rooted, distinct cultures proved to be barriers to understanding each other. Given their similar personalities but their differences in cultures and experiences, tension was predictable.

  For ten years under two Republican governors, the Democrats remained the senate minority party. In 2003, when Rod Blagojevich was sworn in as governor, the Democrats gained the majority in the senate and Emil Jones attained the office he had long sought, that of senate president. In addition to his perceived mistreatment by Philip, Jones chafed at the authority and influence of House Speaker Michael Madigan. With the election of Rod Blagojevich and his own ascent to senate president, Jones felt that there were now three important—and most significantly, equal—Democrats in Springfield. An alliance with Blagojevich was a way, Jones believed, to check the power of Madigan.22 With Pate Philip now retired, Jones directed his built-up animosities toward Madigan and the newly elected senate minority leader, Frank Watson.

  Watson could not have been more different from Jones or Philip. A pharmacist from downstate Greenville, he was rooted in small-town America. His family had owned Watson’s Drug Store for generations, a symbol of permanency on the Greenville town square. Before holding public office, Watson had been involved in local civic organizations. Soft-spoken, he was popular among members of both parties. Initially, Jones was cordial to Watson and would call him on session days and offer the courtesy of going over the legislative calendar. By the spring of 2004, however, budget contentions had forced legislative alliances, and Jones and Blagojevich were allied against Watson and Madigan. Having Watson allied with his old nemesis, Madigan, irritated Jones. According to Watson, one particular incident that vexed Jones occurred during a budget meeting of the four legislative leaders and the governor. Blagojevich opened the meeting by asking the Speaker, “Wel
l, what do we do now?” Jones apparently became upset that the question had not been asked of him. The relationship between Jones and Watson rapidly deteriorated. Watson made an effort to cooperate: “I told Jones I was not Pate that I wanted to work together,” he recalled, “but it did no good.” He characterized Jones as “a very vindictive man.” When Watson suffered a stroke in the fall of 2008, the Speaker called several times to offer support and encouragement, but Jones never called him.23

  After 2004 the relationships between the governor and the members of the legislature also declined. Blagojevich shunned Springfield and most legislators. He refused to live in the governor’s mansion, preferring to commute by state plane from Chicago to Springfield. On session days the governor was frequently absent. When the legislature was not in session, he seldom went to Springfield. He became disengaged from the legislative process and had little interest in policy details or even policy subjects. He was “a big-picture guy,” Frank Watson recalled. Blagojevich seemed to have no interest in governance. Watson became exasperated when the governor walked out of meetings several times. After one particular meeting, when the waiting press asked what they had been discussing, the frustrated Watson replied that the governor had discussed whether the Chicago Cubs or the St. Louis Cardinals had the best third baseman in past decades. But on occasion, Watson said, Blagojevich could be an “engaging guy.” He would have “heart-to-heart talks” with the senate Republican leader concerning personal matters: Blagojevich’s disagreements with his father-in-law, Chicago alderman Dick Mell, or matters involving the governor’s wife, Patty. The governor’s staff, surprisingly, informed Watson that Blagojevich was just trying to win him over in an attempt to get him to support Jones and oppose Madigan. Although Watson was aware of the governor’s motives, he found the governor’s behavior intriguing and, he admitted, “somewhat captivating.”24

  The Speaker tolerated Blagojevich as a Democratic member of the house and as a congressman, but the relationship was never amicable. Outside of being the son-in-law of a powerful Chicago alderman, Blagojevich, as the saying in Springfield goes, brought nothing to the table. He took little interest in legislation, his attention span was short, and he had no time for the details of governance. His relationship with the Speaker had steadily deteriorated since he had taken the office of governor. The two men could not have been more different. Blagojevich was a master at political gamesmanship, a tinseled circus ringmaster, driven by his ambitions and the desire for personal gain. He was obsessed with his appearance and spent an extravagant amount on expensive clothing. To him, politics was personal combat and public office merely a stepping-stone to the next higher office. “He was beyond egotistical,” Clayton Harris recalled; “he was egocentric.”25 He traveled with a large entourage and a state police escort, and he governed by crisis, confrontation, and threats.26 Some legislators who had worked with Blagojevich described him as bizarre; others characterized him as reckless and mean.27

  Blagojevich alienated Michael Madigan, who, by contrast, was private, reserved, and thoughtful. He possessed a sense of history and, colleagues report, a respect for the legislative process. Madigan was unpretentious in both mannerisms and style. He lived modestly, preferred a small circle of confidants, and seldom mingled with legislators and lobbyists. He frequented a few familiar restaurants, ate restrictively, and traveled without an entourage or an escort. Michael Madigan could appear remote, and for many, he remains an enigma. But Madigan personified the leadership and trench values honed in the Chicago wards during the 1950s and 1960s. His leadership style was reminiscent of that of a ward committeeman. The ward committeeman was a powerful position in the city’s Democratic machine, and to preserve political power, he remained inaccessible and skeptical. One had to keep the barons at bay. A strong work ethic, pragmatism, modesty, and loyalty were attributes ascribed to the culture of second-generation ethnics who populated Chicago’s working-class neighborhoods at midcentury. Madigan’s personal ethics and style paralleled those values.

  Chapter 2

  Cause for Impeachment

  On the morning of December 9 David Ellis, chief counsel to the Speaker of the Illinois house of representatives, was at his Springfield home with his children when he received a call from his sister-in-law in Iowa. “Turn on the TV,” she told him. “What channel?” he asked. “Any channel,” she replied. Ellis saw the reports of the arrest of Rod Blagojevich and called the house Democrats’ chief of staff, Tim Mapes, and later spoke with the house Speaker. They discussed their options, and for the rest of the day a flurry of calls were made among house and senate Democratic leaders and their staffs. The arrest of Rod Blagojevich was an embarrassment to Illinois Democrats; they had tolerated his misconduct, but after the arrest everyone agreed that Blagojevich had to leave office. Ellis and his staff had been accumulating evidence of malfeasance by the governor for months. But the question remained whether he would resign. Madigan told Ellis that they were going to give Blagojevich six days to resign before starting a house impeachment investigation. Ellis asked Madigan if he should get ready for an impeachment investigation, and Madigan replied in a restrained tone, “That’s a good idea.” Madigan’s instruction began what seemed like a stream of unending days and nights for the meticulous attorney, who authored fiction novels in his spare time. He had six days to develop causality and prepare evidence for impeaching the governor.1

  There was little doubt once the investigation proceedings began that Rod Blagojevich would be impeached. The governor had few friends among house Democrats, and though the house Republican leader Tom Cross, from west suburban Plainfield, had a personal relationship with Blagojevich, the Republicans would hardly support the governor. The Illinois Constitution states the need “to determine the existence of cause for impeachment.”2 Solid charges were required for the senate to remove Blagojevich from office. Legislators also weighed the possible repercussions of ousting a governor who remained popular in some sections of the state and excelled at public relations. Partisan politics complicated the situation. The governor was a Democrat, Speaker Madigan was chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party, and attempting to display party unity, both Madigan and Jones had served as official co-chairmen of Blagojevich’s reelection campaign two years earlier.

  But the governor’s mismanagement and the corrupt practices of his advisors and staff members during his first term had become well known. Several aides and associates had been indicted and some convicted. A steady torrent of negative newspaper coverage in the weeks prior to the arrest, including the Chicago Tribune’s demand for an impeachment investigation, had created a major embarrassment for the Democrats. Now, with the arrest, it became clear: Blagojevich had to leave office.

  The house Republicans recognized a political advantage and immediately reacted to the Blagojevich arrest. House Republican leader Tom Cross was playing golf with a group of lobbyists at the exclusive Isleworth Country Club, near Orlando, Florida, when he was informed of the arrest. “We were getting ready to tee off when everyone’s phone began to go off,” one lobbyist recalled. The Republicans wasted no time and filed a resolution that same day calling for the formation of a special investigative committee to determine if there was cause to impeach the governor. The resolution was modeled after the impeachment resolution used to hold hearings on Supreme Court justice James D. Heiple in 1997. It was filed with the clerk of the house and became House Resolution (HR) 1644, with Tom Cross listed as the chief sponsor. HR 1644, a political statement by the house Republicans, called for equal representation of both parties and proposed a committee of ten members, five Democrats and five Republicans. The Speaker and the minority leader would each appoint one member to serve as co-chairperson, and both parties would have equal control of the committee proceedings. But the house was firmly under the control of Michael Madigan, and few, if any, expected the Democratic Speaker to give equal control of impeaching a Democratic governor to the Republicans.

  On December 15, six days a
fter the governor’s arrest, Madigan filed his own resolution calling for the formation of a special investigative committee, HR 1650. This Democratic version proposed a twenty-one-member committee made up of twelve Democrats and nine Republicans to investigate allegations of “misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance and other misconduct of Governor Rod Blagojevich.” The resolution stated that the purpose of the investigation was “to determine the existence of cause for impeachment.” The Speaker would appoint one individual as chairperson. The Republicans would appoint one person to serve as minority spokesman. Accepting the inevitable, as Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the House, Minority Leader Cross joined as a co-sponsor of HR 1650.

  Both resolutions were sent to the Rules Committee on December 15. The Rules Committee, by majority vote, can assign a legislative initiative to a substantive committee for review or can advance the initiative directly to the full house. On that same day the Rules Committee quickly passed and sent HR 1650 to the full house. The vote was four in favor and zero against. HR 1644, the Republican version, never was presented for a vote and remained in the Rules Committee.3