- With little fanfare, Attorney General Lisa Madigan recently confirmed she plans to run for re-election in 2018. If she wins and completes another term, she will finish her 20th year on the job.
Twenty years is a long time. The year Madigan was elected attorney general, the trajectory for Illinois governance bent skyward. Citizens felt more confident in state leadership after a felony-prone governor, George Ryan, departed.
Democrats assumed control of the legislature and governor's office with a new governor, Rod Blagojevich, vowing to reform a government nakedly intertwined with contract steering, bribery, patronage, obstruction, lying and money-grubbing. Nearly 80 defendants, including Ryan himself, were convicted as part of an exhaustive federal probe that put a focus on the Illinois culture of political sleaze.
Illinois voters swept Madigan into office along with dozens of reform-minded lawmakers on promises they would clean house. Ethics topped the list of concerns for voters. Trust. Not budgets or pensions or debt. Madigan, who was then a 36-year-old first-term state senator, spent most of her campaign reassuring voters the attorney general role would not create conflicts of interest with her father, Michael Madigan, now the longest-serving House speaker in the nation.
Well, she certainly lived up to that promise. Not only hasn't she "create[d] any conflicts of interest with her father," she hasn't created a single conflict of interest with the entire Chicago Machine or the Illinois Combine. Not a single corruption investigation has crossed her desk while Illinois continues its death spiral into insolvency, abetted by massive corruption and crooked contracting.
0 Comments