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Madigan case showcases pitfalls of Illinois political culture​on February 16, 2025 at 11:00 am

MAK Gojar

Former House Speaker Michael Madigan’s epic corruption conviction last week drew more than the usual level of outrage from public officials long accustomed to watching one of their own go down on criminal charges, but Gov. JB Pritzker issued a statement that came with a curious point.

“This week has been a vital reminder that we must maintain our vigilance in cleaning up government and always put the people we serve first,” Illinois’ Democratic chief executive declared hours after the landmark verdict.

Governor J.B. Pritzker and then-Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan talk after the Illinois House voted on a bill raising statewide minimum wage during session at the State Capitol in Springfield on Feb. 14, 2019. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)
Gov. JB Pritzker and House Speaker Michael  Madigan talk after the Illinois House voted on a bill raising statewide minimum wage during session in Springfield on Feb. 14, 2019. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)

That is, of course, an appropriate remark, particularly for a governor with national ambitions. The verdict against Madigan, once the leader of the state’s Democratic Party and the holder of a national record 36 years as speaker, could be viewed in many quarters as a vigilant effort to clean up government.

But the more than four-month trial that ended Wednesday once again shined a light on how policing Illinois politicians often falls upon federal prosecutors.

“The citizens of Illinois have a right to honest, clean government,” acting U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual told reporters after the trial wrapped at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. “They have a right to have the decisions of their elected officials made based on what is good for the public, what is in the common good. They have a right to trust and expect that in public officials.  Michael Madigan breached and violated that trust over and over again.”

Springfield has never been viewed as a hotbed of civic reform, and Pritzker’s fellow Democrats who control supermajorities in the House and Senate have done little to change that image.  Reform proposals offered by both Democrats and Republicans often are shunted aside, including during the height of the Madigan scandal.

But Pasqual’s comments underscored findings in last year’s Tribune series “Culture of Corruption,” which documented Illinois’ weak anti-corruption laws as well as the legal loopholes and escape hatches that tempt public officials to see how far they can push the boundaries. The series also highlighted how Illinois statutes provide a degree of protection to politicians.

To prosecute their case, the feds brought charges against Madigan after extensive wiretapping and cooperation from two undercover moles, former 25th Ward Ald. Danny Solis and Fidel Marquez, a ComEd executive who pleaded guilty in the probe. It’s the latest example of federal laws allowing more aggressive investigations than Illinois statutes.

In fact, Illinois lawmakers — long leery of being secretly recorded — have prohibited state and local law enforcement from wiretapping the phones of politicians suspected of corruption, as federal investigators are allowed to do.

In the Madigan case, federal prosecutors used more than 150 recordings.

A denial rejected

In a surprise move, Madigan took the witness stand, looked into jurors’ eyes, and outright denied any wrongdoing — or even any intention of wrongdoing.

It is plausible, given that Madigan spent a career immersed in Springfield’s messy dealmaking, that he genuinely did not believe he did anything wrong — which may in itself provide a glimpse into what has long been acceptable behavior in Illinois politics.

But the jury of 12 ordinary citizens didn’t buy it.

The four defendants in the ComEd bribery scheme are, from left, consultant Jay Doherty, lobbyist and former ComEd executive John Hooker, retired lobbyist Michael McClain and former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore.
Chicago Tribune photos

The four defendants in the ComEd bribery scheme are consultant Jay Doherty, from left, lobbyist and former ComEd executive John Hooker, retired lobbyist Michael McClain and former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore.

They voted to convict Madigan of a far-reaching scheme to stuff his pals into ghost jobs at ComEd while the utility was wooing him to pass legislation that helped the company’s bottom line. They also convicted him in a plot to install Solis, the government mole, into a highly paid state board post as the two searched to bring business to Madigan’s already successful law firm.

In one fell swoop, that verdict rejected decades of Madigan and his loyalists polishing the image of the once-mighty speaker as a politician above reproach, a statesman who never crossed the line, a lawyer with a personal code of conduct that kept him on the straight and narrow.

Sharon Fairley, a former federal prosecutor, saw the Madigan case as part of a “systemic problem” in Illinois, noting how the ex-speaker’s trial followed that of former 14th Ward Ald. Edward Burke, who spent a record 54 years on the City Council and now is in prison for his own shakedown scheme.

“Look at the two of those together, and what it shows is an incredible amount of hubris in the way that these two individuals were acting,” Fairley said. “What stands out about both of them … is they were both able to entrench themselves to such a degree that they had such power they felt they were invincible.”

Like Burke, the Madigan trial offered a referendum of sorts on the old ways of the Democratic political machine, where patronage jobs ensured loyalty and precinct captains marshaled votes for well-established powerbrokers.

In Madigan’s case, it wasn’t a clean sweep for prosecutors. The eight-woman, four-man jury convicted Madigan on 10 of 23 counts, but also acquitted the 82-year-old on charges that included allegations he squeezed ComEd to put former McPier chief Juan Ochoa on the utility’s board. Jurors also acquitted Madigan on attempted extortion allegations involving Solis and a development in the West Loop.

Meanwhile, the panel deadlocked on allegations that Madigan strong-armed AT&T Illinois to give former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, a Chicago Democrat once on Madigan’s House leadership team, a do-nothing job as the company pushed its legislative agenda through Springfield. They also deadlocked on a series of charges that Madigan worked behind the scenes to get state property in Chinatown transferred to the city so that his law firm could get property tax business from a developer.

Madigan’s longtime confidant and co-defendant, Michael McClain, a former ComEd contract lobbyist and Quincy lawmaker, had even more reason to smile. He walked out of the courthouse holding his right thumb up after the jury deadlocked on all six counts against him.

A screenshot from an undercover video where Michael Madigan meets with Danny Solis at Madigan's office on Nov. 23, 2018. (U.S. Attorney's Office)
A screenshot from an undercover video in which Michael Madigan meets with Danny Solis at Madigan’s office on Nov. 23, 2018. (U.S. Attorney’s Office)

McClain was convicted in 2023 in a bribery-related case with ComEd’s former chief executive officer and two other lobbyists, but those convictions and the $200 million fine the utility paid were not disclosed to jurors in the just-completed case. The ComEd Four defendants are seeking to get those convictions tossed out.

What the trial showed

Despite the mixed-bag verdict in the Madigan case, the trial laid bare the often-secretive inner workings of Madigan’s vaunted political operation and provided a master class on how he was able to build and maintain so much power for so long.

One wiretapped call played in the “ComEd Four” trial, which ended up being particularly useful in deliberations at the Madigan trial, provided a perfect illustration of how things were done.

McClain and John Hooker, a longtime ComEd lobbyist, were recorded in a 2018 phone call reminiscing about the time they first suggested to Madigan that his political pals could be paid as subcontractors to a third party, another ComEd contract lobbyist, a move that allegedly cloaked from the public how the utility funneled payments to them.

“I think he thought I might have been crazy when I suggested that,” Hooker said. “That’s not something that he’d readily think to do.”

That was not enough for the Madigan jury to convict McClain, but one juror who spoke to the Tribune after the verdict Wednesday said it was pretty clear proof that Madigan was clued in on the arrangement.

“That line references Madigan’s knowing,” said Juror 2, a west suburban woman who declined to be identified by name. “We listened to that recording a lot of times.”

The Sphinx

A Southwest Sider all of his life, Madigan certainly came with a style all his own. He was an unusual politician in a big-shouldered city once known for cigar chomping, back slapping and talking big. His strategic mind and highly articulate phrasing, when he carefully offered up his thoughts, stood in sharp contrast to the legions of political hacks whose ragged “deez, demz and doze” would make Mayor Richard J. Daley’s legendary malapropisms sound Churchillian.

House Speaker Mike Madigan heads a house committee on Jan. 7, 2007, regarding the rate hike asked by ComEd. Rep. (Jose More/Chicago Tribune)
House Speaker Mike Madigan heads a committee hearing on Jan. 7, 2007, regarding a rate hike sought by ComEd.  (Jose More/Chicago Tribune)

Madigan preferred controlled mannerisms over his more boisterous contemporary elected officials who lost federal criminal cases.

During serious budget talks or summits with governors or other legislative leaders, Madigan was often viewed as the adult in the room, especially in his latter years as speaker.  He opened his mouth when he was sure he had something to say. His words, though often sparse and cryptic, usually mattered more than those of his counterparts, fueling a political mystique of infallibility.

In Springfield, Madigan became known early on as “The Velvet Hammer” because he could gently and persistently beat down his opponents before they even knew he’d nailed them.

But he also earned another nickname: the “Sphinx,” a description used at least as far back as 2009, when former Senate President Phil Rock, an Oak Park Democrat, made it official during an oral history project.

“He sits and listens and looks and never changes expression; you don’t know where he’s coming from,” Rock said.

Even the FBI found Madigan played his cards extremely close. That became evident in the federal trial of Madigan’s former chief of staff Tim Mapes, who is now in prison for lying to a grand jury during the federal probe of his former boss.

“Mr. Madigan ran his organization, as close as I can compare it to, almost the head of a mafia family,” former Special Agent Brendan O’Leary testified, prompting vehement objections from Mapes’ attorneys. O’Leary also noted Madigan rarely communicated with emails or texts, and didn’t own a cellphone.

“The ability for us to hear about what happened generally came down to the people on the inside being honest, and that is what we relied on,” the agent testified.

Madigan’s reticence to talking over the phone came across in his trial, where the vast majority of the secret recordings gathered by investigators involved McClain calling others as a self-described surrogate of the speaker.

Lobbyist Michael McClain gives a thumbs up while leaving Dirksen Courthouse after Michael Madigan was convicted of bribery conspiracy in a landmark trial on Feb. 12, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
Lobbyist Michael McClain gives a thumbs up while leaving Dirksen Courthouse at the conclusion of his and Michael Madigan’s bribery conspiracy trial on Feb. 12, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)

“This is no longer me talking,” McClain said on one now-infamous recording, where he relayed a message to then-state Rep. Lou Lang, a longtime ranking Democrat from Skokie,  that Madigan wanted him to resign. “I’m an agent, somebody that cares deeply about ya, who thinks that you really oughta move on.”

Of the relatively rare times Madigan was caught on tape, he was far more cautious than McClain, often answering his friend’s lengthy breakdowns with a simple “Mmmhmm.”

Madigan certainly was more careful than the erratic Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was caught on tape talking blatantly about a number of illegal schemes, including an attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat, vacated by Barack Obama, to the highest bidder.

The speaker’s words on the federal recordings also paled in comparison to the bombastic Burke, who famously talked about landing “the tuna” and told Solis that developers could “go (expletive) themselves because “the cash register has not rung yet.”

Ironically, though, Blagojevich’s penchant for running his mouth may have been what saved him in the end. In 2020, after a monthslong media blitz incorrectly labeling Blagojevich’s prosecution politically motivated, Republican President Donald Trump commuted the Democratic ex-governor’s 14-year sentence, springing him from prison five years early.

Last week, Trump, who knows Blagojevich from his turn on “Celebrity Apprentice,” doubled down, giving Blagojevich, who was also convicted of shaking down the owners of a children’s hospital and a racetrack for campaign donations, a full pardon.

  • Ex-Ald. Edward Burke leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after he was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $2 million for his corruption conviction on June 24, 2024. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)

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Ex-Ald. Edward Burke leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after he was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $2 million for his corruption conviction on June 24, 2024. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)

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It’s an avenue now being explored by the currently imprisoned Burke, who has petitioned for clemency from Trump after years spent winning tax breaks as a lawyer representing the president’s Chicago skyscraper.

The culture

During protracted legal arguments in the Madigan case last month, U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey posed a hypothetical.

What if, Blakey said, there was a defendant “so entrenched in the old patronage system” that he didn’t know it was illegal to sell a vote?

In order for prosecutors to prove a defendant acted “corruptly,” Blakey said, they have to show he knew he was partaking in a bribe — but they don’t have to prove he knew that bribe was against the law.

Madigan ultimately never claimed any ignorance of the law. But the local political culture is so hard-wired that, to an alert observer, Blakey’s hypothetical didn’t seem outlandish. In fact, it was a question clearly relevant considering Illinois’ political history.

Madigan was first elected to the House in 1970, only weeks before $750,000 in cash was found in the Springfield hotel room of the late Democratic Secretary of State Paul Powell. Part of the stash was discovered in a cash-stuffed shoebox, one of the most enduring images of Illinois’ sordid political history.

During his next half-century in Springfield, Madigan saw four governors go to prison along with busloads of legislative colleagues, judges, Chicago aldermen and assorted rogues who held public office around the state.

Springfield is not as wide open as it was when Madigan first arrived. But good-government groups frequently called Madigan an impediment to making the kind of changes that could have encouraged higher ethical standards in Springfield.

Yet Madigan’s attorneys, in closing arguments, urged jurors to avoid cynicism about politicians and politics. And when the ex-speaker himself took the witness stand, he tried to explain how he never crossed the line between legal and illegal — let alone right and wrong — in a setting where nuance is crucial and clout is almighty.

Madigan sold himself in his testimony as a nonconfrontational consensus builder, not the ruthless boss portrayed by prosecutors. He also believed in listening to people, understanding where they come from, and helping them when they asked.

Did people ask for help finding a job? his attorney asked at one point.

“Yes,” Madigan responded. “When people asked me for help, if possible, I tried to help them.”

Madigan also attempted to blame any misdeeds on McClain and Solis, whose unseemly mix of city business, campaign contributions, bribery, sex, prostitutes, Viagra and a briefcase full of cash in a Shanghai hotel prompted the jury foreman to consider the former alderman “garbage.”

Solis worked with federal authorities to record Madigan as well as Burke. Solis’ extraordinary deal with prosecutors puts him on track to avoid conviction for any of his various misdeeds and keep his six-figure public pension.

“We all have regrets in life,” Madigan told jurors. “One of my regrets is that I ever had any time spent with Danny Solis.”

Life in politics

Madigan likely has more than one regret, of course. It would be too simple to say he did not change with the times. He adapted where he saw a need, adjusting the old-school patronage system to the 21st century when the old ways fell out of favor.

  • Chicago Tribune

    Committeeman Michael Madigan, circa 1970.

Chicago Tribune
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Committeeman Michael Madigan, circa 1970.

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In the 1960s, when Madigan first became the Democratic committeeman of the 13th Ward, working for the party came hand in hand with getting a government job. Mayor Richard J. Daley was king, and patronage provided jobs for the political foot soldiers.

Jurors saw video of Madigan in 2009 explaining how old-school patronage worked, how Madigan taught precinct workers to be salesmen for the party, to be agents for Daley, pushing for votes and passing out sample ballots like they were selling encyclopedias.

“They wanted a job in the patronage system,” Madigan told interviewers for the Richard J. Daley Oral History Collection at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Yes, we can put you in a job. But you’re going to work for the Democratic Party.”

A critical recording played at trial caught McClain explaining how, in the 21st century, Madigan developed an alternate patronage system in the private sector. The controversial hidden subcontracts with ComEd were simply an outgrowth of the “old-fashioned patronage system,” McClain explained to company brass.

“We can’t really do meter readers … we don’t have ’em anymore. … There’s no one from the 23rd Ward who’s a lineman,” McClain said.

Prosecutors maintained ComEd spent $1.3 million on secretly concealed subcontracts from 2011 through 2019 for a number of Madigan allies, including former 13th Ward Ald. Frank Olivo, who used to be Madigan’s next door neighbor and whose kids called the speaker “Uncle Mike.”

Also on that list was former Ald. Mike Zalewski, who represented the 23rd Ward long run by Madigan ally and former Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Lipinski; 13th Ward precinct captains Ray Nice and Ed Moody, who once served as a Cook County commissioner and later recorder of deeds; and Acevedo, the former state representative and key member of the House Latino caucus.

What jurors did not hear was that ComEd paid a $200 million fine and AT&T Illinois paid a $23 million fine in deferred prosecution agreements. The government agreed to drop bribery charges against the utilities for their cooperation.

In his decades-long career, Madigan survived a variety of state and federal investigations unscathed, enhancing his image as untouchable.

But when McClain got indicted in November 2020 in the ComEd Four case along with company executives and lobbyists, Madigan issued one of his strongest statements:

“If there was credible evidence that I had engaged in criminal misconduct, which I most certainly did not, I would be charged with a crime,” he wrote.

He would be indicted in March 2022, sending the already damaged reputation he’d carefully crafted over a long career into a freefall.

Despite the overly cozy relationship between Madigan and McClain that became clear as their cases played out in court briefs for years and then again in their trial, the Illinois General Assembly showed few signs last year that it was prepared to endorse better ways to monitor lobbyists.

Democratic Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias attempted to require lobbyists to report their compensation, allow his office to examine lobbyist reports and enforce regulations. But even that, an idea borrowed from other states, the federal government and even the city of Chicago, failed to get traction, another example of lawmakers and friendly lobbyists showing little appetite for changing how Springfield does business.

The jury’s deadlock on McClain’s charges may give rise to another round of excuses to do nothing.

Former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after jurors found him guilty on 10 counts in his racketeering case on Feb. 12, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after jurors found him guilty on 10 counts in his racketeering case on Feb. 12, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

The question now is whether the Madigan verdict will make any difference to Springfield politicians as reform proposals emerge or whether the governor and a majority of lawmakers will see no need to address what has long been acceptable behavior.

While Pritzker issued a statement calling for maintaining “our vigilance in cleaning up government,” Illinoisans will see if Springfield will take action or shrug.

Fairley, currently a professor from practice at the University of Chicago Law School, said that now is the moment to take a stand.

“It’s really time for everybody to say, ‘This is just not right,’ ” Fairley said. “We don’t want the state to be known in this way as the poster child for corruption.”

rlong@chicagotribune.com

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com

Former House Speaker Michael Madigan’s epic corruption conviction last week drew more than the usual level of outrage from public officials long accustomed to watching one of their own go down on criminal charges, but Gov. JB Pritzker issued a statement that came with a curious point.   

  • Former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse with daughter Nicole after jurors found him guilty on 10 counts in his racketeering case, Feb. 12, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

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Former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse with daughter Nicole after jurors found him guilty on 10 counts in his racketeering case, Feb. 12, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

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By Ray Long | rlong@chicagotribune.com | Chicago Tribune, Jason Meisner | jmeisner@chicagotribune.com | Chicago Tribune and Megan Crepeau | Chicago Tribune
PUBLISHED: February 16, 2025 at 5:00 AM CST

Former House Speaker Michael Madigan’s epic corruption conviction last week drew more than the usual level of outrage from public officials long accustomed to watching one of their own go down on criminal charges, but Gov. JB Pritzker issued a statement that came with a curious point.

“This week has been a vital reminder that we must maintain our vigilance in cleaning up government and always put the people we serve first,” Illinois’ Democratic chief executive declared hours after the landmark verdict.

Gov. JB Pritzker and House Speaker Michael  Madigan talk after the Illinois House voted on a bill raising statewide minimum wage during session in Springfield on Feb. 14, 2019. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)

That is, of course, an appropriate remark, particularly for a governor with national ambitions. The verdict against Madigan, once the leader of the state’s Democratic Party and the holder of a national record 36 years as speaker, could be viewed in many quarters as a vigilant effort to clean up government.

But the more than four-month trial that ended Wednesday once again shined a light on how policing Illinois politicians often falls upon federal prosecutors.

“The citizens of Illinois have a right to honest, clean government,” acting U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual told reporters after the trial wrapped at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. “They have a right to have the decisions of their elected officials made based on what is good for the public, what is in the common good. They have a right to trust and expect that in public officials.  Michael Madigan breached and violated that trust over and over again.”

Springfield has never been viewed as a hotbed of civic reform, and Pritzker’s fellow Democrats who control supermajorities in the House and Senate have done little to change that image.  Reform proposals offered by both Democrats and Republicans often are shunted aside, including during the height of the Madigan scandal.

But Pasqual’s comments underscored findings in last year’s Tribune series “Culture of Corruption,” which documented Illinois’ weak anti-corruption laws as well as the legal loopholes and escape hatches that tempt public officials to see how far they can push the boundaries. The series also highlighted how Illinois statutes provide a degree of protection to politicians.

To prosecute their case, the feds brought charges against Madigan after extensive wiretapping and cooperation from two undercover moles, former 25th Ward Ald. Danny Solis and Fidel Marquez, a ComEd executive who pleaded guilty in the probe. It’s the latest example of federal laws allowing more aggressive investigations than Illinois statutes.

In fact, Illinois lawmakers — long leery of being secretly recorded — have prohibited state and local law enforcement from wiretapping the phones of politicians suspected of corruption, as federal investigators are allowed to do.

In the Madigan case, federal prosecutors used more than 150 recordings.

A denial rejected

In a surprise move, Madigan took the witness stand, looked into jurors’ eyes, and outright denied any wrongdoing — or even any intention of wrongdoing.

It is plausible, given that Madigan spent a career immersed in Springfield’s messy dealmaking, that he genuinely did not believe he did anything wrong — which may in itself provide a glimpse into what has long been acceptable behavior in Illinois politics.

But the jury of 12 ordinary citizens didn’t buy it.

Chicago Tribune photos

The four defendants in the ComEd bribery scheme are consultant Jay Doherty, from left, lobbyist and former ComEd executive John Hooker, retired lobbyist Michael McClain and former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore.

They voted to convict Madigan of a far-reaching scheme to stuff his pals into ghost jobs at ComEd while the utility was wooing him to pass legislation that helped the company’s bottom line. They also convicted him in a plot to install Solis, the government mole, into a highly paid state board post as the two searched to bring business to Madigan’s already successful law firm.

In one fell swoop, that verdict rejected decades of Madigan and his loyalists polishing the image of the once-mighty speaker as a politician above reproach, a statesman who never crossed the line, a lawyer with a personal code of conduct that kept him on the straight and narrow.

Sharon Fairley, a former federal prosecutor, saw the Madigan case as part of a “systemic problem” in Illinois, noting how the ex-speaker’s trial followed that of former 14th Ward Ald. Edward Burke, who spent a record 54 years on the City Council and now is in prison for his own shakedown scheme.

“Look at the two of those together, and what it shows is an incredible amount of hubris in the way that these two individuals were acting,” Fairley said. “What stands out about both of them … is they were both able to entrench themselves to such a degree that they had such power they felt they were invincible.”

Like Burke, the Madigan trial offered a referendum of sorts on the old ways of the Democratic political machine, where patronage jobs ensured loyalty and precinct captains marshaled votes for well-established powerbrokers.

In Madigan’s case, it wasn’t a clean sweep for prosecutors. The eight-woman, four-man jury convicted Madigan on 10 of 23 counts, but also acquitted the 82-year-old on charges that included allegations he squeezed ComEd to put former McPier chief Juan Ochoa on the utility’s board. Jurors also acquitted Madigan on attempted extortion allegations involving Solis and a development in the West Loop.

Meanwhile, the panel deadlocked on allegations that Madigan strong-armed AT&T Illinois to give former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, a Chicago Democrat once on Madigan’s House leadership team, a do-nothing job as the company pushed its legislative agenda through Springfield. They also deadlocked on a series of charges that Madigan worked behind the scenes to get state property in Chinatown transferred to the city so that his law firm could get property tax business from a developer.

Madigan’s longtime confidant and co-defendant, Michael McClain, a former ComEd contract lobbyist and Quincy lawmaker, had even more reason to smile. He walked out of the courthouse holding his right thumb up after the jury deadlocked on all six counts against him.

A screenshot from an undercover video in which Michael Madigan meets with Danny Solis at Madigan’s office on Nov. 23, 2018. (U.S. Attorney’s Office)

McClain was convicted in 2023 in a bribery-related case with ComEd’s former chief executive officer and two other lobbyists, but those convictions and the $200 million fine the utility paid were not disclosed to jurors in the just-completed case. The ComEd Four defendants are seeking to get those convictions tossed out.

What the trial showed

Despite the mixed-bag verdict in the Madigan case, the trial laid bare the often-secretive inner workings of Madigan’s vaunted political operation and provided a master class on how he was able to build and maintain so much power for so long.

One wiretapped call played in the “ComEd Four” trial, which ended up being particularly useful in deliberations at the Madigan trial, provided a perfect illustration of how things were done.

McClain and John Hooker, a longtime ComEd lobbyist, were recorded in a 2018 phone call reminiscing about the time they first suggested to Madigan that his political pals could be paid as subcontractors to a third party, another ComEd contract lobbyist, a move that allegedly cloaked from the public how the utility funneled payments to them.

“I think he thought I might have been crazy when I suggested that,” Hooker said. “That’s not something that he’d readily think to do.”

That was not enough for the Madigan jury to convict McClain, but one juror who spoke to the Tribune after the verdict Wednesday said it was pretty clear proof that Madigan was clued in on the arrangement.

“That line references Madigan’s knowing,” said Juror 2, a west suburban woman who declined to be identified by name. “We listened to that recording a lot of times.”

The Sphinx

A Southwest Sider all of his life, Madigan certainly came with a style all his own. He was an unusual politician in a big-shouldered city once known for cigar chomping, back slapping and talking big. His strategic mind and highly articulate phrasing, when he carefully offered up his thoughts, stood in sharp contrast to the legions of political hacks whose ragged “deez, demz and doze” would make Mayor Richard J. Daley’s legendary malapropisms sound Churchillian.

House Speaker Mike Madigan heads a committee hearing on Jan. 7, 2007, regarding a rate hike sought by ComEd.  (Jose More/Chicago Tribune)

Madigan preferred controlled mannerisms over his more boisterous contemporary elected officials who lost federal criminal cases.

During serious budget talks or summits with governors or other legislative leaders, Madigan was often viewed as the adult in the room, especially in his latter years as speaker.  He opened his mouth when he was sure he had something to say. His words, though often sparse and cryptic, usually mattered more than those of his counterparts, fueling a political mystique of infallibility.

In Springfield, Madigan became known early on as “The Velvet Hammer” because he could gently and persistently beat down his opponents before they even knew he’d nailed them.

But he also earned another nickname: the “Sphinx,” a description used at least as far back as 2009, when former Senate President Phil Rock, an Oak Park Democrat, made it official during an oral history project.

“He sits and listens and looks and never changes expression; you don’t know where he’s coming from,” Rock said.

Even the FBI found Madigan played his cards extremely close. That became evident in the federal trial of Madigan’s former chief of staff Tim Mapes, who is now in prison for lying to a grand jury during the federal probe of his former boss.

“Mr. Madigan ran his organization, as close as I can compare it to, almost the head of a mafia family,” former Special Agent Brendan O’Leary testified, prompting vehement objections from Mapes’ attorneys. O’Leary also noted Madigan rarely communicated with emails or texts, and didn’t own a cellphone.

“The ability for us to hear about what happened generally came down to the people on the inside being honest, and that is what we relied on,” the agent testified.

Madigan’s reticence to talking over the phone came across in his trial, where the vast majority of the secret recordings gathered by investigators involved McClain calling others as a self-described surrogate of the speaker.

Lobbyist Michael McClain gives a thumbs up while leaving Dirksen Courthouse at the conclusion of his and Michael Madigan’s bribery conspiracy trial on Feb. 12, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)

“This is no longer me talking,” McClain said on one now-infamous recording, where he relayed a message to then-state Rep. Lou Lang, a longtime ranking Democrat from Skokie,  that Madigan wanted him to resign. “I’m an agent, somebody that cares deeply about ya, who thinks that you really oughta move on.”

Of the relatively rare times Madigan was caught on tape, he was far more cautious than McClain, often answering his friend’s lengthy breakdowns with a simple “Mmmhmm.”

Madigan certainly was more careful than the erratic Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was caught on tape talking blatantly about a number of illegal schemes, including an attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat, vacated by Barack Obama, to the highest bidder.

The speaker’s words on the federal recordings also paled in comparison to the bombastic Burke, who famously talked about landing “the tuna” and told Solis that developers could “go (expletive) themselves because “the cash register has not rung yet.”

Ironically, though, Blagojevich’s penchant for running his mouth may have been what saved him in the end. In 2020, after a monthslong media blitz incorrectly labeling Blagojevich’s prosecution politically motivated, Republican President Donald Trump commuted the Democratic ex-governor’s 14-year sentence, springing him from prison five years early.

Last week, Trump, who knows Blagojevich from his turn on “Celebrity Apprentice,” doubled down, giving Blagojevich, who was also convicted of shaking down the owners of a children’s hospital and a racetrack for campaign donations, a full pardon.

  • Ex-Ald. Edward Burke leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after he was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $2 million for his corruption conviction on June 24, 2024. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)

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Ex-Ald. Edward Burke leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after he was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $2 million for his corruption conviction on June 24, 2024. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)

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It’s an avenue now being explored by the currently imprisoned Burke, who has petitioned for clemency from Trump after years spent winning tax breaks as a lawyer representing the president’s Chicago skyscraper.

The culture

During protracted legal arguments in the Madigan case last month, U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey posed a hypothetical.

What if, Blakey said, there was a defendant “so entrenched in the old patronage system” that he didn’t know it was illegal to sell a vote?

In order for prosecutors to prove a defendant acted “corruptly,” Blakey said, they have to show he knew he was partaking in a bribe — but they don’t have to prove he knew that bribe was against the law.

Madigan ultimately never claimed any ignorance of the law. But the local political culture is so hard-wired that, to an alert observer, Blakey’s hypothetical didn’t seem outlandish. In fact, it was a question clearly relevant considering Illinois’ political history.

Madigan was first elected to the House in 1970, only weeks before $750,000 in cash was found in the Springfield hotel room of the late Democratic Secretary of State Paul Powell. Part of the stash was discovered in a cash-stuffed shoebox, one of the most enduring images of Illinois’ sordid political history.

During his next half-century in Springfield, Madigan saw four governors go to prison along with busloads of legislative colleagues, judges, Chicago aldermen and assorted rogues who held public office around the state.

Springfield is not as wide open as it was when Madigan first arrived. But good-government groups frequently called Madigan an impediment to making the kind of changes that could have encouraged higher ethical standards in Springfield.

Yet Madigan’s attorneys, in closing arguments, urged jurors to avoid cynicism about politicians and politics. And when the ex-speaker himself took the witness stand, he tried to explain how he never crossed the line between legal and illegal — let alone right and wrong — in a setting where nuance is crucial and clout is almighty.

Madigan sold himself in his testimony as a nonconfrontational consensus builder, not the ruthless boss portrayed by prosecutors. He also believed in listening to people, understanding where they come from, and helping them when they asked.

Did people ask for help finding a job? his attorney asked at one point.

“Yes,” Madigan responded. “When people asked me for help, if possible, I tried to help them.”

Madigan also attempted to blame any misdeeds on McClain and Solis, whose unseemly mix of city business, campaign contributions, bribery, sex, prostitutes, Viagra and a briefcase full of cash in a Shanghai hotel prompted the jury foreman to consider the former alderman “garbage.”

Solis worked with federal authorities to record Madigan as well as Burke. Solis’ extraordinary deal with prosecutors puts him on track to avoid conviction for any of his various misdeeds and keep his six-figure public pension.

“We all have regrets in life,” Madigan told jurors. “One of my regrets is that I ever had any time spent with Danny Solis.”

Life in politics

Madigan likely has more than one regret, of course. It would be too simple to say he did not change with the times. He adapted where he saw a need, adjusting the old-school patronage system to the 21st century when the old ways fell out of favor.

  • Chicago Tribune

    Committeeman Michael Madigan, circa 1970.

Chicago Tribune
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Committeeman Michael Madigan, circa 1970.

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In the 1960s, when Madigan first became the Democratic committeeman of the 13th Ward, working for the party came hand in hand with getting a government job. Mayor Richard J. Daley was king, and patronage provided jobs for the political foot soldiers.

Jurors saw video of Madigan in 2009 explaining how old-school patronage worked, how Madigan taught precinct workers to be salesmen for the party, to be agents for Daley, pushing for votes and passing out sample ballots like they were selling encyclopedias.

“They wanted a job in the patronage system,” Madigan told interviewers for the Richard J. Daley Oral History Collection at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Yes, we can put you in a job. But you’re going to work for the Democratic Party.”

A critical recording played at trial caught McClain explaining how, in the 21st century, Madigan developed an alternate patronage system in the private sector. The controversial hidden subcontracts with ComEd were simply an outgrowth of the “old-fashioned patronage system,” McClain explained to company brass.

“We can’t really do meter readers … we don’t have ’em anymore. … There’s no one from the 23rd Ward who’s a lineman,” McClain said.

Prosecutors maintained ComEd spent $1.3 million on secretly concealed subcontracts from 2011 through 2019 for a number of Madigan allies, including former 13th Ward Ald. Frank Olivo, who used to be Madigan’s next door neighbor and whose kids called the speaker “Uncle Mike.”

Also on that list was former Ald. Mike Zalewski, who represented the 23rd Ward long run by Madigan ally and former Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Lipinski; 13th Ward precinct captains Ray Nice and Ed Moody, who once served as a Cook County commissioner and later recorder of deeds; and Acevedo, the former state representative and key member of the House Latino caucus.

What jurors did not hear was that ComEd paid a $200 million fine and AT&T Illinois paid a $23 million fine in deferred prosecution agreements. The government agreed to drop bribery charges against the utilities for their cooperation.

In his decades-long career, Madigan survived a variety of state and federal investigations unscathed, enhancing his image as untouchable.

But when McClain got indicted in November 2020 in the ComEd Four case along with company executives and lobbyists, Madigan issued one of his strongest statements:

“If there was credible evidence that I had engaged in criminal misconduct, which I most certainly did not, I would be charged with a crime,” he wrote.

He would be indicted in March 2022, sending the already damaged reputation he’d carefully crafted over a long career into a freefall.

Despite the overly cozy relationship between Madigan and McClain that became clear as their cases played out in court briefs for years and then again in their trial, the Illinois General Assembly showed few signs last year that it was prepared to endorse better ways to monitor lobbyists.

Democratic Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias attempted to require lobbyists to report their compensation, allow his office to examine lobbyist reports and enforce regulations. But even that, an idea borrowed from other states, the federal government and even the city of Chicago, failed to get traction, another example of lawmakers and friendly lobbyists showing little appetite for changing how Springfield does business.

The jury’s deadlock on McClain’s charges may give rise to another round of excuses to do nothing.

Former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse after jurors found him guilty on 10 counts in his racketeering case on Feb. 12, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

The question now is whether the Madigan verdict will make any difference to Springfield politicians as reform proposals emerge or whether the governor and a majority of lawmakers will see no need to address what has long been acceptable behavior.

While Pritzker issued a statement calling for maintaining “our vigilance in cleaning up government,” Illinoisans will see if Springfield will take action or shrug.

Fairley, currently a professor from practice at the University of Chicago Law School, said that now is the moment to take a stand.

“It’s really time for everybody to say, ‘This is just not right,’ ” Fairley said. “We don’t want the state to be known in this way as the poster child for corruption.”

rlong@chicagotribune.com

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com

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