Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  Five days before the fund-raiser, Barack’s top contributor, housing developer Tony Rezko, was featured in a Chicago Tribune story describing how he and his partner Dan Mahru’s Rezmar Corp., in addition to rehabbing mixed-income apartment buildings, was working with Barack’s former law firm colleague Allison Davis to begin building medium-priced town houses throughout Kenwood, the neighborhood just north of Hyde Park. Before long, Howard Stanback, whom Barack knew well dating back to the 1987–88 negotiations over the O’Brien Locks site, was working with Davis and Rezko too.51

  For one of his occasional Hyde Park Herald columns, Barack summarized the spring 1998 session by reporting that the education bill approved months earlier “failed to tackle the structural inequities that arise between districts as a result of our state’s disproportionate reliance on local property taxes to fund education.” He had to reconcile himself with how at each of his town meetings, “constituents cite education as the single most important issue facing our district and the state as a whole.” In addition, “one of my top priorities” is “to curb the distorting effects of money on the political process,” especially because Illinois has “almost no rules at all regarding how much candidates can accept.” He predicted that the campaign finance reform proposal “will probably not contain everything I’d like to see . . . but it will contain tough new rules regarding disclosure, personal use of campaign funds, and gifts from lobbyists.”

  At the end of April, Mike Lawrence told journalists “we do have what I regard as a consensus,” and he hoped they could announce it during the first week of May. Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller noted that the caucus representatives had only agreed on bullet points, and that at least one of the Four Tops did not want to endorse it until actual statutory language was drafted. Miller said that Common Cause’s Jim Howard “has maneuvered himself into a position to effectively assert veto power over the final product,” because Carter Hendren and Pate Philip did not want to have Howard publicly lambaste Senate Republicans. Yet Philip was still angling to get a later date for state primary elections included in the package even though Lawrence’s group had nixed the idea, an effort that angered House Speaker Mike Madigan.

  The Juvenile Justice Reform Act returned to the Senate floor after Governor Jim Edgar’s amendatory veto. Illinois’s 1970 Constitution gave the governor the authority to put forward “specific recommendations for change” in legislation, and in this instance Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Carl Hawkinson urged the Senate to agree to Edgar’s modest changes. The Senate unanimously approved the revised bill, with Barack telling reporters that “the governor’s suggestions are sound” and expressing pleasure that the funding issues that led him to vote “present” four months earlier had been remedied. “The vast majority of young people in trouble with the law are young people who aren’t getting attention at school, have maybe dropped out of school, and are caught in circumstances of poverty, possibly substance abuse—a host of problems that with effective intervention would be cured,” Barack optimistically stated. “Counseling programs for families” and “after school programs for kids” should help teenagers get “back on track.”

  Four months earlier, Barack’s aunt Zeituni Onyango had taken early retirement from Kenya Breweries and had written to Barack asking if she could visit him during a multistop tour of the United States. On Tuesday evening, May 5, she arrived at Chicago O’Hare, called the Obamas’ home, and spoke to Michelle, who told her that Barack was in Springfield. She took a taxi to East View, and the next morning Michelle put Zeituni on the train to Springfield, where Barack was waiting for her on the outdoor platform and then took her to the Renaissance Hotel and an evening reception. At the end of the week, she rode back to Chicago in Barack’s Jeep Cherokee, staying with Barack and the now seven-months-pregnant Michelle for ten days before boarding a train to Boston to see her brother Omar Onyango Obama.52

  Back in Springfield the next week, the ongoing campaign finance reform discussions remained almost everyone’s top concern, but on May 13 the Senate unanimously passed a bill that received almost no public attention. HB 705 created the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or “KidCare,” a three-year “Medicaid look-alike” program to provide coverage to children whose low-income, working parents lacked health insurance. Senate Appropriations Committee “budgeteers” Steve Rauschenberger and Donne Trotter played lead roles in shepherding the measure forward, but inside the Public Health and Welfare Committee, which approved the bill on May 7, Barack had helped encourage conservative Republican chairman Dave Syverson to embrace the effort, just as he had with the welfare reform program a year earlier.

  For Senate Republicans, it was essential that the program be only a benefit, not an entitlement, but once again expert Democratic staffer Nia Odeoti-Hassan was impressed by the extent to which conservative Republicans could be coaxed into backing a significant if limited expansion of public benefits. Barack also played a behind-the-scenes role in adding a progressive provision that doubled Illinois’s personal tax exemption to the budget bill that the Senate would unanimously approve on the final day of the session.

  The second and third weeks of May featured day-by-day developments regarding the campaign finance measure. Common Cause’s Jim Howard told reporters, “I’d rather get good reform than not get great reform,” and on Thursday morning, May 14, Mike Lawrence and his quartet of legislators finally went public with their consensus proposal at a statehouse news conference. Howard jokingly told Barack he needed to speak into the microphones if he wanted to run for higher office, but Barack did not enjoy the joke. “I’m not running for higher office,” he coldly responded in what Howard took as “a very arrogant, very condescending kind of putdown.” In contrast, Mike Ragen, the veteran Democratic staffer whom Emil Jones had assigned to help Barack on the measure, found him “very nice, very cordial” and “a prince of a guy to deal with.” Republican senator Kirk Dillard warned reporters that “this is the toughest of all topics for a legislator,” but Senate president Pate Philip made clear that he did not want failure to pass such a measure to be a cudgel Democrats could use against his members, or Republican gubernatorial candidate George Ryan, in the upcoming November election.

  Mike Lawrence gave the four legislators a set of talking points to use in privately presenting the proposal to their caucuses. He said that Illinois news media was extremely interested in the issue, and that the consensus “addresses some of the major complaints raised in a reasonable way that will not impact your ability to campaign competitively.” The proposal’s three major ingredients—a ban on legislators accepting personal gifts worth more than $100, a requirement that members file their campaign disclosure reports electronically, allowing for immediate journalistic access, and a prohibition on the conversion of campaign funds to personal use—“will be viewed as major reform by the media.” Lawrence warned that a failure to move on all three would be seized upon by “campaign opponents and critics. . . . Let’s bite the bullet and do it now.”

  Barack would have gone further and imposed limits on how much contributors could give, but even Lawrence’s three points drew intense flak from Democratic colleagues like downstaters Denny Jacobs and Vince Demuzio, as well as African American rivals Rickey Hendon and Donne Trotter. Denny Jacobs understood that Barack had received the assignment because he was “perceived to be Mr. Clean,” given his reputation for refusing to let lobbyists buy him any food or drink. “Rickey gave him a hard time, I gave him a hard time, Donne gave him a hard time,” Jacobs recalled, and Vince Demuzio really unloaded. “Who the hell are you, Mr. Newbie, Mr. Good Government, trying to change all this?” Barack’s fellow freshman Debbie Halvorson recounted. “We did just fine before you got here.” Kirk Dillard, Barack’s Republican counterpart, remembered Barack calling the experience “brutal” and telling him that Demuzio had condescendingly asked, “Son, how much money do you have in your campaign account? You’re negotiating on my behalf” yet would never face meaningful Republi
can opposition.

  Downstate moderate Pat Welch, who held one of the most competitive seats, saw the acrimony as “pretty much an upstate-downstate split,” while lame duck Chuy Garcia thought it was more “new school versus the old school.” Chief of staff Mike Hoffmann, the only non-senator to attend caucus, recalled that “it got kind of heated, especially Denny,” and Emil Jones remembered that Barack “caught pure hell. I actually felt sorry for him,” but Jones spoke up firmly for Barack. “It may not be something that we want, but this is the direction that things are going, so we might as well be on the track,” just as Mike Lawrence had suggested. Jones remembered that Barack “stuck to his guns” and “he was able to win the majority over.” Hoffmann was impressed that “Barack did a nice job of maintaining his composure” and was able to “separate the issue” from the personalities and thus avoid “making it personal.” North Side senator Howie Carroll thought Barack “did an excellent job with it,” one that “moved him up to the top of the pack” among state Senate Democrats.

  Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller called the reform proposal “potentially historic,” and Paul Simon sent Barack a thank-you letter, predicting that “in the years to come it will be one of the things that you will be proudest of in your legislative years.” But Simon and everyone else knew that most of the credit went to Mike Lawrence. House Democrat Gary Hannig, who realized that he, Obama, and Dillard “were seen as traitors by some of the people in our own caucuses,” viewed Lawrence as “the guiding light that kept the committee alive” during a process that had begun as “a little bit of a long shot.” Hannig sensed that Barack was “very idealistic about how to approach this,” but in the House as in the Senate, “there was a lot of skepticism with the Speaker, a lot of skepticism with my caucus” over actually calling the bill for a floor vote. Kirk Dillard knew that Pate Philip “clearly thought that we needed to make changes to protect the institution of the legislature and some members from themselves,” but the final consensus “never would have happened without Mike Lawrence.” Andy Foster, Governor Edgar’s young representative, had found Barack “very collegial, very funny,” with “a good sense of humor,” and recalled both Barack and Dillard “joking about the beating they’re taking in their caucuses.” Everyone believed that “if Pate went along with something, everybody was going to be okay with it,” and come Monday morning of the session’s final week Capital Fax reiterated that “the future of this bill is in the hands of Senate President Pate Philip.”

  On Wednesday evening, Barack and Kirk Dillard appeared on the telecast of Illinois Lawmakers with host Bruce DuMont. It was Barack’s first time on the show. They acknowledged that a “grandfather clause” had been added to the bill to placate angry old-timers by allowing legislators to convert to personal use whatever sum they had in their campaign accounts as of June 30. Barack explained that “it’s difficult to get everybody on board” and that he reluctantly had agreed “to grandfather something in that will soften up the resistance and get on board the majority of members.” The crucial decision took place between Mike Lawrence, Pate Philip, and Carter Hendren. “Mike and I had that discussion and I went in and talked to Senator Philip about it. I remember that very vividly, and that was the way to pass the bill,” Hendren recalled. “We didn’t really like it, but we did it.”

  On Thursday night, with only twenty-four hours to go, Lawrence believed that everything was almost in order, but he asked Barack how best to word one provision so as to preclude a constitutional challenge. Barack promised to have the language first thing in the morning. On Friday, Barack was late and then apologized for having left the crucial passage in his office. Lawrence recalled that “I blew up at him,” but Barack just chuckled and replied, “Gee, Mike, you’re really intense.”

  The Senate convened at noon and Pate Philip’s all-powerful Senate Executive Committee sent HB 672 to the floor on a vote of 12–0–1. “The real strategy here was to get it to the floor,” Mike Lawrence explained, for “we figured all along that if legislation reached the floor, members would have to vote for it whether they wanted to or not.” Philip had been true to his word, and early in the afternoon, Kirk Dillard rose to present the bill, thanking staffers Glenn Hodas, Peg Mosgers, and Mike Ragen for their work on it. “Having spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with Barack Obama on this over the last few months,” Dillard said the measure was “the most important piece of campaign finance reform in twenty-five years in the state of Illinois.” Then Barack followed, acknowledging that “this is one of the most difficult issues” because “it’s something that everybody feels affects them directly.” But “this bill moves us in the right direction” and is not “overly onerous.” After Dillard was questioned extensively by Denny Jacobs and several other members, the vote was called and HB 672 passed by an overwhelming margin of 52–4–1.

  An hour later the Senate adjourned, and the bill moved to the House to await passage there. HB 672 had begun life as a modest piece of legislation, introduced by ranking Republican Tom Cross, who shared a Springfield house with minority leader Lee Daniels, before becoming the vehicle onto which the Lawrence group’s measure was appended. Democratic representative Gary Hannig already had House Speaker Mike Madigan’s approval, because “you never agree to anything until you ran it by the Speaker,” but at 10:00 P.M., Cross told reporters the bill needed more study over the summer. Lawrence knew that meant Daniels “did not want this to become law,” but when Lawrence asked Madigan to take the bill away from Cross, as the Speaker could do, Madigan refused. With his apparent triumph now headed for last-minute defeat, and with Jim Howard angrily announcing that Common Cause would declare war on House Republicans, Lawrence called Pate Philip and reminded him that Republican gubernatorial nominee George Ryan, a former House speaker, would be highly vulnerable to Democratic attacks that Republicans had torpedoed campaign reform. “This really gives the Democrats an issue,” Lawrence emphasized, and with Carter Hendren agreeing, Philip called Ryan, who readily agreed to call Daniels and lean on him with everything he had.

  “Daniels protested, but Ryan insisted,” Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller reported. Well after midnight, Madigan called HB 672 and recognized Tom Cross, who immediately yielded to Jack Kubik, the House Republican member of Lawrence’s group, who brightly remarked, “I thought you’d never ask me,” and presented the bill. For close to an hour, Kubik faced an onslaught of objections and remarks from representatives on both sides of aisle. As 2:00 A.M. neared, Madigan closed the debate and called the vote. Just as in the Senate, the number of professed opponents magically shrank and the bill passed by an overwhelming margin of 102–3–13.

  Proponents and journalists reacted ambivalently to the victory. The ban on lobbyists’ gifts ended up with twenty-three exceptions, including golf and tennis fees as well as “meals or beverages consumed on the premises from which they were purchased.” Jim Howard, complaining that “Springfield is a snake pit,” admitted “there are parts of it that stink” and acknowledged that “the gift ban has more holes than St. Andrews Golf Course.” Pate Philip later remarked that “it was so watered down it was a joke,” but Paul Simon and Mike Lawrence called the end result “a very good package,” with Lawrence believing that the ban on personal use of campaign contributions was “the most far-reaching aspect of this bill.”

  Attention quickly turned to the fact that lawmakers had five weeks in which to augment their campaign accounts before the June 30 “grandfather clause” took effect, and Capitol Fax noted that “some lobbyists are reporting an unusually heavy number of fundraising calls this month.” In a Chicago Tribune op-ed, former League of Women Voters director Cindi Canary, now heading the new Joyce Foundation–supported Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, commended Barack and his colleagues for “this landmark legislation.” She later reflected that “the central big win, which I don’t think any of us realized at the moment, was the electronic disclosure,” because it made contribution data readily available on the Web.

>   Illinois political scientist Kent Redfield, who had assisted the Lawrence group early on, noted that the bill “doesn’t address the fundamental question about the role money plays in public policy” and therefore would “force few changes in the real-world relationship between cash and politics,” particularly with how the Four Tops funded their vulnerable members’ campaigns. Illinois would still have “the least regulated campaign finance system of any state,” and the resulting concentration of power “makes most legislators essentially irrelevant to policymaking.” Without a limit on how much could be contributed, the wealthiest interest groups would continue to have an outsized impact, with the Illinois State Medical Society, at almost $1.5 million a year, and the Illinois Education Association, at $1.2 million, topping the chart.

  Barack was worried about citizens’ cynicism about government. “They believe they have no influence on the process since they don’t have the money of special interest groups. With the gift ban and the ban on Springfield fundraisers that are contained in this legislation, I think at least some of this confidence will be restored.” But he vowed to “continue to push for strict limits on campaign contributions by individuals and political action committees to reduce the amount of money spent on campaigns.” Two years later, Barack admitted that “we didn’t go as far as I would like” because of the “deep-rooted resistance among a lot of my colleagues.” He acknowledged that “many of the lobbyists are very well-informed and do a good job of advocating the interests of the people they represent,” yet it remained true that “there is a culture in Springfield where lobbyists buy legislators dinner every night,” and the Campaign Finance Reform Act had not changed that.