MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Michael Madigan made history as the country's longest-serving speaker of the House in a state legislature. Now he's a felon. The Chicago Democrat served nearly 40 years atop Illinois politics. A federal jury in Chicago convicted him of 10 of 23 counts of corruption, and he joins a long line of Illinois politicians brought down by criminal wrongdoing. David McKinney of member station WBEZ has more.
DAVE MCKINNEY, BYLINE: Michael Madigan was nicknamed the Velvet Hammer because of his ability to crush his rivals without ever raising his voice. His enemies loathed him. His supporters dubbed him a political genius. In a mixed verdict, a federal jury convicted him of bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud - the most serious charge, which could carry a 20-year prison term. Here's Chicago's acting U.S. attorney, Morris Pasqual.
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MORRIS PASQUAL: This is a historic conviction, which ranks high in the annals of criminal cases tried in this court.
MCKINNEY: The government took 10 years to build its case against Madigan, relying on nearly 150 FBI recordings secretly made, in part, by a pair of undercover informants. Madigan was found guilty of a scheme aimed at enhancing his political power while steering financial benefits to him and his political allies. For example, the jury found Madigan pressured a utility company to give those allies high-paying, no-work contracts in exchange for his support of legislation worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the company. And the prosecution argued the no-show utility company hires continued their political work for Madigan at no cost to him. In this wiretap played at trial, Madigan laughs about that arrangement with his codefendant, Michael McClain, whom the jury did not convict.
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MICHAEL MCCLAIN: Well, if you remember...
MICHAEL MADIGAN: Some of these guys have made out like bandits, Mike.
MCCLAIN: Oh, my God, for very little work, too.
MADIGAN: Yeah.
MCKINNEY: Madigan and McClain were defendants in this case, but prosecutors' real target arguably was a long-ensconced way of doing city and state business. Nobody mastered it like Madigan, a famously old-school politician who didn't carry a cell phone or communicate by email. He was a protege of Chicago's late mayor, Richard J. Daley, an iconic political boss who controlled as many as 40,000 patronage jobs. Madigan was every bit as powerful. And like Daley, he also put people in jobs if they agreed to work in his Democratic political organization. That, prosecutors say, is how Madigan built and expanded his power over the years. Political analyst David Axelrod first cross paths with Madigan in the 1970s, when Axelrod was a Chicago political reporter.
DAVID AXELROD: It's hard to compute that this guy who was, for more than a generation, a colossus astride the politics and government of Illinois is now this diminished figure standing before the bar of justice.
MCKINNEY: Axelrod says the illustrious political legacy Madigan built for himself now has an irreparable taint.
AXELROD: It's in the first sentence of his obituary. You can't deny the sweeping power that he leveraged over government and politics in the state of Illinois for four decades. You can't take that away from him. But the way it ended will be the coda on his career.
MCKINNEY: Over 36 years as Illinois House speaker, Madigan outlasted six governors, including two who went to federal prison, Republican George Ryan and Democrat Rod Blagojevich, who was pardoned by President Trump this week. Now the 82-year-old Madigan faces prison as well. For NPR News, I'm Dave McKinney in Chicago.
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