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Today’s must-read: How Madigan’s reign as speaker ended and Welch’s emerged

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* Ray Long’s Tribune story on how House Speaker Michael Madigan was forced to step aside runs over some familiar ground. But there are some interesting points that haven’t yet been made public. For instance, Rep. Maurice West (D-Rockford) was the only member of the Black Caucus who refused to vote for Madigan’s reelection and Long writes about the efforts to convince him to change his mind…

“Oh, man. It was brutal. It was brutal,” said Rep. Maurice West II, the only Black lawmaker to join the opposition group, a move made before the coalition was big enough to take away Madigan’s gavel. […]

The Black Caucus held a forum with both Madigan and Kifowit. Madigan secured 21 of 22 members, with West still holding out. Madigan moved fast.

“He called me immediately and said, ‘Mr. West, now that the rest of the Black Caucus is on board with me, does this give you cover to come back to the fold?’ ” West recalled. West declined, and he still remembered the speaker’s nonresponse.

“The silence was so loud on the other end of the phone,” West said.

* After Madigan “suspended” his reelection campaign, he reached out to Reps. Jay Hoffman and Chris Welch to inform them of his decision. Madigan advised Welch to focus first on the Black Caucus, then the Latino Caucus and then whites…

[Welch] quickly sought support from fellow members of the Black Caucus, but they questioned whether Madigan, who no one was ready to count out yet, was just trying to “smoke out traitors.”

“The Black Caucus was having none of it,” Welch said. “None of them believed it was real.”

When the BC finally came around, Welch moved on to the LC…

Welch then needed the Latino Caucus’ backing. He bolted out to find Rep. Lisa Hernandez, the Cicero Democrat and Madigan ally who headed the caucus and is now head of the state Democratic Party. Like the initial skepticism of some of the Black Caucus members, Welch recalled, Hernandez too wasn’t convinced Madigan’s suspension was legitimate. But a day later the Latino Caucus too backed Welch, soon bringing the race down to he and Hoffman, as Kifowit and Williams dropped out.

Hernandez became Welch’s point person on the remap and then, with Welch’s backing, became the state party chair.

Anyway, go read the rest.

posted by Rich Miller
Sunday, Jan 8, 23 @ 1:37 pm

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