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 Federal agents in May raided the home of former Chicago Ald.
Michael Zalewski, according to a new report.
The Better Government Association and WBEZ reported the raid was part of a probe
into “efforts to get work for Zalewski” at Commonwealth Edison, as well as
“interactions” between Zalewski, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan and
Springfield power player Michael McClain.
Authorities also subpoenaed records from ComEd related to their Statehouse
lobbying activity, according to BGA and WBEZ.
McClain, a longtime ComEd lobbyist and former House lawmaker called the
“insider’s insider,” retired from lobbying in 2016. He originally planned to
retire in 2015, but efforts to extend subsidies to two nuclear power plants in
Illinois owned by Exelon, ComEd’s parent company, kept him in Springfield.
“[W]e had the Exelon bill come up, and my friend Mike Madigan was facing some
tough times, and so [the retirement] kind of got put on hold,” McClain told the
Quincy Herald-Whig.
McClain helped pass the Exelon deal, which raised rates on ComEd customers by
between 25 cents and $4.54 a month. One Democratic state representative at the
time joked that energy industry lobbyists “probably made a lot of money this
last year or two,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
At least two dozen former Illinois state lawmakers have lobbied on behalf of
ComEd or Exelon since 2000, according to a 2017 analysis from the Illinois
Policy Institute. A majority of those lawmakers served on their chamber’s energy
or public utilities committees. Some even chaired those committees, including
McClain, who was chairman of the House Environment, Energy and Natural Resources
Committee from 1979 to 1980.
Perhaps more than any other political figure, McClain is known to have Madigan’s
ear, often dining and traveling with the speaker. He served as assistant
minority leader under Madigan from 1981 to 1983.
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“I feel like I’m very close to him and I love him
like a brother, and I’m loyal to him,” McClain told the State
Journal-Register in 2016.
Federal agents in May also raided the home of former Madigan
political lieutenant Kevin Quinn, though it is not clear what they
were looking for. Quinn was ousted from Madigan’s political
operation in 2018 after campaign worker Alaina Hampton accused Quinn
of sexual harassment. He was also deposed as part of a lawsuit
alleging Madigan recruited two “sham candidates” to siphon Hispanic
votes away from the speaker’s 2016 Democratic primary challenger,
Jason Gonzales. In that deposition, Quinn admitted to attempting to
recruit one of them, Joe Barboza.
“I had asked [Cicero politician] Charlie [Hernandez] to see if Joe [Barboza]
would be interested in running as a Democrat,” he said. “I had
simply reached out to Charlie to see if Joe had an interest,” he
said.
What will come of the raids on Zalewski and Quinn is still unclear.
Madigan is the longest-serving legislative leader in U.S. history,
holding the speaker’s gavel for all but two years since 1983. He has
wielded the most undemocratic House rules in the nation to
single-handedly kill popular legislation, and is the only
legislative leader in any state to also serve as chairman of his
party organization. He has drawn the state’s gerrymandered political
maps for three of the past four decades. And he has long been
criticized for his lucrative side-job as the owner of property tax
appeals firm Madigan & Getzendanner.
But for a man with such broad power, his inner circle is tightly
knit, as McClain noted in a January 1983 Chicago Tribune article on
the brand-new speaker.
“It’s hard for him to show affection,” McClain said.
“To be his friend, you have to work hard for it.’”
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