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 sent them and to help them.” Her political career began with that attitude. Lisa Colpoys, one of Madigan’s law school classmates at Loyola University, recalls helping out on Madigan’s 1998 state senate campaign, during which Colpoys swears Madigan knocked on every door in her district.
“And while she did it, she also collected clothes for the homeless. She kind of multitasked,” Colpoys says. “That is one small example that sort of demonstrates her passion for serving the people.”
Most people assume that she was inspired by her famous and powerful father, and she has fond memories dating back to age 10, when her mother married Mike Madigan, of spending the last three weeks of each June hanging out on the floor of the Illinois House of Representatives with him (he legally adopted Lisa when she was in her 20s). “There are some memories just crystal clear in my head,” she says. “I remember watching them debate whether or not to pass the Equal Rights Amendment [in 1982], and they didn’t pass it! And I remember sitting there as a young girl thinking huh? Why not?” These experiences, she says, “intrigued me,” but didn’t exactly inspire her to pursue a career in politics. That seed was instead planted in the mid-1980s while she was an undergrad at Georgetown University, where she had a retail job at Hats in the Belfry and an internship with the late U.S. Senator Paul Simon — the journalist-turned-lawmaker whom she calls “my favorite example of a public servant.”
“When I went to work for him, I was interested in government, but I didn’t necessarily believe that working inside government was the way to accomplish change and help people,” she says. But his office was staffed with young people, whose enthusiasm was infectious.
“Everybody who worked for him had this genuine belief that they could change the world. It wasn’t just a belief that they could; they also thought that they had this obligation to try. There was just this overwhelming optimism,” she says. “Talk about getting bit by the bug!” So it was Simon and his wife, Jean, who encouraged Madigan to run for office — not her dad. In fact, her father initially nixed her notion of running for state senate, sending her on a round of lunch meetings with prominent friends whom he pre-programmed, she feels sure, to try to dissuade her. She persisted, and her father became her most ardent supporter.
Being a member of what some pols call the “brat pack” has been both a boon and a curse for Madigan. Her father’s clout and campaign finances have paved her path, but she has had to climb uphill to overcome the automatic skepticism of colleagues who assume her name is her only asset.
Linda Hawker, the recently-retired secretary of the state senate, recalls watching the younger Madigan earn her place in the chamber through hard work, diligent study and a proper attitude toward her fellow senators. “I think she had a very, very clear understanding of her need to pay her dues, so she was very respectful of her colleagues,” Hawker says. “She went the first full year speaking very sparingly, probably only on legislation she sponsored.
“She also had a clear understanding that she had something to learn from every member,” Hawker says. “A lot of people think their constituency is back home, which is true, but to be successful, you have to have connections with the other legislators.”
That process of proving herself started all over again when Madigan ran for the post of attorney general in 2002. Just 35 at the time, her professional resume showed four years of private practice at the Chicago firm of Schnoff and Weaver, with no first-chair appearances, and zero experience as a prosecutor. Trib columnist Zorn twice published a popular joke that compared her to the gossamer TV character Ally McBeal. Nevertheless, with her dad’s help, Madigan eked out a victory with 50.4 percent of the vote. Dan Carter, a former Itasca cop who went to law school just so he could put the bad guys away, was senior assistant AG with 14 years of service and not looking forward to having a wee slip of a girl with no prosecutorial experience ride in on her daddy’s coattails to become his new boss. “Were the people in the criminal division concerned about that issue? Yeah,” Carter says. But she earned his respect, even though he was axed in the recent round of layoffs due to budget cuts in the AG’s office.
“She may have gotten there with some help, but she’s doing a good job because that’s her,” says Carter, who is now a felony prosecutor for Kane County. “She was very much hands-on, she cared about what was going on, she knew a lot about the cases we did, and when you got a good result you’d get an e-mail from her. I have nothing but good things to say about her, and that’s from someone who didn’t like having to leave the job.” The guiding principles of the office: “Work hard and do the right thing,” Carter says. “And the cases we had to dismiss — that was the right thing to do, too.” Madigan earned the respect of the defense bar when she declined to re-prosecute Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock, two men who had been framed for a 1985 double-homicide in Paris, Ill. Her office is now handling a stack of 25 homicide cases involving Jon Burge, the retired Chicago Police lieutenant whose squad sometimes used torture to coerce confessions.
So far, six of the men previously convicted of murder have been freed, and five of the cases have been resolved by lower courts. Madigan has been criticized by the Cook County Board for moving too slowly on the others, but her deputy chief of staff, Cara Smith, says six cases are stalled waiting for the plaintiffs to file amended post-conviction petitions. Five other men appear headed for new evidentiary hearings. “Some of these cases where there are allegations of coerced confessions, we’re starting from scratch with 25-year-old files and piecing together what has occurred,” Smith says. “Internally, there’s an incredible amount of discussion and deliberation about what’s the right thing to do, based on the facts of each case, continued on page 12
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