Rising star

Why Lisa Madigan leads the political pack

“So how was the inauguration?” If you had asked Lisa Madigan that casual question on Barack Obama’s third day in office, you would’ve been treated to a 15-minute rhapsody on the joys of having a seat on the platform looking out over the podium and onward toward the estimated 1.5 million well-wishers thronging the mall. “It was just this sea of happy humanity, as far as the eye could see,” Madigan says. All of Illinois’ statewide officeholders had platform passes, and Madigan — a former state senator and now Illinois’ Attorney General — joined retiring State Senate President Emil Jones and his successor John Cullerton in marveling over the fact that they were watching their former legislative colleague become the leader of the free world. “We were giddy. We were all like kids,” she says. Madigan viewed the ceremony with a veteran eye, having attended presidential oath-takings twice before. But Obama’s inauguration felt different from those of President Bill Clinton, she says, and not just because the new president was her old seatmate and next-dooroffice neighbor in the state capitol.

“Never ever had I seen so many people out on the mall, and never had I seen and felt the excitement and stood there and said, ‘This is history. We are witness to and participants in history.’ You almost can’t find adequate words to describe the swearing-in,” she says, “but it was unbelievable. Incredible. Phenomenal.”

And next thing you know, Madigan segues neatly into the story of the year she spent in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa as a volunteer teacher at an all-girls school run by Dominican nuns. It’s a story she has told so many times that it has found its way into countless newspaper articles and every Madigan bio, no matter how brief, even though the year was 1988 — 20 years ago. She has no shortage of accomplishments in the intervening seasons: she worked at a big Chicago law firm, won a state senate seat in 1998, bested veteran DuPage County prosecutor Joe Birkett in the contest for attorney general in 2002 and then, in 2006, won re-election with more votes than any other statewide candidate. Along the way, she has amassed a track record of landmark legislation, litigation and advocacy impressive enough to silence naysayers who once claimed that she owed her political career to her father, Speaker of the House Mike Madigan. In 2004, she became the first Illinois AG in the past 25 years to personally and successfully argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and a month later she became the first elected statewide official in Illinois to give birth (she and her husband, freelance cartoonist Pat Byrnes, now have two daughters — Rebecca Grace Madigan Byrnes, age 4, and Lucy Lillian Madigan Byrnes, 10 months). If that weren’t enough, in her spare time, she has perfected her chicken tikka masala.

Yet that year in South Africa still serves as her touchstone, her reference point, the horizon against which she views life — even from the platform of the U.S. Capitol. “I think [Obama’s] election changes everything, around the world,” she says, looping the conversation back to its starting point.

“Politics never came up — ever. It just wasn’t an appropriate subject of discussion. It wasn’t part of how the office operated.

A cynic could speculate that by regularly referencing this noble and exotic service she’s subtly laying the groundwork for her own possible political future, which appears limitless. In May, influential Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn published an urgent “memo” beseeching Madigan to announce her candidacy for governor already.

“Three words: Hat. Ring. Now,” he wrote.

That same month, the New York Times listed Madigan, among several other women (including Alaska Governor Sarah Palin), in a Sunday feature story headlined, “She just might be president someday.” And heck yeah, a year in apartheid-era South Africa would trump Palin’s I-can-see-Russia-from-my-back-porch credentials any day. But people who know Madigan say that she’s wired the opposite — meaning the right — way. Her good works aren’t designed to boost her career; rather, her career is designed to increase her ability to do good.

The term underlings use when they explain Madigan’s motives is the word “cheesy,” as in “I know it sounds cheesy but . . . .” Some call her “hyperethical,” saying she keeps the AG’s office so kosher that even top aides got their first word of her 2006 re-election bid from watching it on the evening news. Employees are expressly forbidden from contributing to her campaign or being solicited by others. The only “ticket” they’re asked to buy is for the office Christmas party, and that features a cash bar (no state funds involved).

“Politics never came up — ever. It just wasn’t an appropriate subject of discussion,” says Gary Feinerman, who served as the AG’s solici

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