A MADIGAN FAMILY FEUD?: “DON'T EVER TAKE SIDES WITH ANYONE AGAINST THE FAMILY AGAIN. EVER.”

6/20/13

Michael Sneed reported in yesterday’s (Wednesday, 6/19’s, page 4) Chicago Sun-Times that there is some “tension between House Speaker Michael Madigan and his daughter, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, over the state’s pension crisis.”  Lisa Madigan will need union support in her presumed run for governor and the unions, or at least the public employee unions, don’t like Mike Madigan’s proposed solution to Illinois’ existential unfunded pension liability problem.  See my 5/2/13 post,  MIKE MADIGAN’S PENSION REFORM PLAN:  “THE BEST THAT (WE) CAN HOPE FOR IS TO DIE IN (OUR) SLEEP.” for more background on the Mike Madigan plan.

Ms. Sneed may be making more of this than really exists.  Yes, Lisa Madigan needs union support in her run for governor.   But where else are the public employee unions going to go?   Both Governor Pat Quinn and Bill Daley have endorsed Mike Madigan’s pension reform plan.   As of now, Lisa Madigan is the ONLY Democratic candidate, or presumed Democratic candidate, who has NOT endorsed her father’s pension plan.   Yes, it’s difficult for anyone to distinguish Lisa from Mike Madigan, given that the Speaker has made his daughter’s career (See one of yesterday’s posts, MIKE AND LISA MADIGAN:   WHAT’S A DAD TO DO?), but the facts remain:  Pat Quinn has endorsed the Madigan plan.  Some even say that the Governor is pursuing a strategy of courting private sector unions through his generous, at least for the times, public works programs while writing off the public sector unions as lost due to his efforts to address the public pension problem.  Bill Daley has endorsed the Madigan plan.   Lisa Madigan has not endorsed the Madigan plan.

This supposed Madigan family feud may be a case of a head fake on the part of the Madigans, one of those situations in which a Potemkin feud is concocted in order to distance, in the public’s eye, two politicians who are normally figuratively conjoined at the hip.  Unlike some much-hyped arguments of the present and past that appear to be or were genuine, this intramural Madigan tussle may be a situation in which the supposed disagreement is indeed a complete work of fiction (See yesterday’s other post MIKE MADIGAN, JOHN CULLERTON, AND PENSIONS:   SOMETIMES A CIGAR IS JUST A CIGAR?), meant to allow Lisa to cultivate the public unions who have nowhere else to go.

This would not be the first time political operations have planted stories in the newspaper, and especially in Ms. Sneed’s column; I highly recommend Golden: How Rod Blagojevich Talked Himself Out of the Governor’s Office and Into Prison by Jeff Coen and John Chase for examples of Ms. Sneed’s column being used in this manner.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.