Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  In late February the pace of the spring session picked up, and Barack reintroduced his racial profiling bill plus another one to increase the state’s earned-income tax credit from 5 to 10 percent. Along with Republican Senate colleague Brad Burzynski and two other JCAR members, Barack met with U.S. district judge Robert W. Gettleman in Chicago to discuss the jurist’s unhappiness with the Illinois State Board of Education’s continuing opposition to his orders in the Corey H. special education case. Legislators like Burzynski wanted Gettleman to back off his insistence that ISBE promulgate new statewide standards, but Barack, the sole lawyer in the group, struck a far more deferential pose, telling Gettleman, “We’re just here to listen to you.” Afterward, Barack expressed displeasure with Burzynski’s forcefulness, saying, “I might have to appear in front of that judge someday!” On February 21, JCAR voted to suspend one of the new rules ISBE had filed pursuant to Gettleman’s rulings, and six days later, the judge ordered ISBE to implement the rule immediately, irrespective of JCAR’s disapproval. Gettleman did allow ISBE to hold public hearings on the new standards, and Barack commended that move, telling reporters the “judge deserves credit” for that gesture.

  Barack introduced another fourteen new bills addressing a wide range of subjects, although none merited a press release, and when Governor George Ryan presented Illinois’s proposed budget, Barack expressed disappointment that it failed to expand KidCare to include parents as well as children. At the end of February, Senate Democrats’ ugly internal divisions spilled into public view when Jimmy DeLeo and three Democratic friends—John Cullerton, Bobby Molaro, and Tony Munoz—joined unanimous Senate Republicans in voting to change Senate rules to allow President Pate Philip to elevate DeLeo from minority spokesperson to cochairman of the important Executive Appointments Committee. Additional Democrats sympathized with DeLeo, but on the Senate floor, Barack joined Rickey Hendon and Miguel del Valle in challenging the Republicans’ power play. “It may be, for example—this is just a hypothetical,” Barack facetiously declared, “that a Minority Spokesperson on a committee has gotten into an argument with the Leader and is not happy with the Leader. Maybe he was thinking about running for Leader himself and got upset. And so there’s a power struggle taking place within the caucus,” one that Republicans were now changing the Senate’s rules to take advantage of. “It is a mistake for us to use some power issues that are taking place within this Chamber to fundamentally shift what is already a pretty significant imbalance of power between the majority and the minority and make it even worse,” Barack warned. “It’s going to produce more recrimination, more rancor.”

  In early March the Illinois State Library, across the street from the statehouse, hosted Barack for a lunchtime reading of Dreams From My Father. He again chose the passage ending with Lolo’s lesson that it is “always better to be strong yourself.” Barack also cited “the tension between family and ambition, and that is a tension that I continue to struggle with.” As JCAR continued to wrestle with the payday loan industry’s unhappiness with the state DFI’s proposed new regulations, Barack and Lisa Madigan finally dissented from their colleagues’ desire to side with the rip-off artists. But in the ongoing dispute between ISBE and Judge Gettleman over his rulings in the Corey H. case, JCAR unanimously moved to ask that both houses of the state legislature approve a joint resolution upholding ISBE’s stance despite the judge’s repeated orders.

  The Chicago Tribune highlighted Barack’s earlier role in directing $200,000 in state funds to Jesse Jackson Sr.’s Citizenship Education Fund, and seeking to defend the expenditure, Barack said that “taxpayers will not be subsidizing a for-profit entity” but instead a venture capital fund that would be “almost like a think-tank about how do we get capital in the community.” As Barack had explained to former DNC chairman David Wilhelm, his goal was “asset-based economic development,” again echoing John McKnight. “What do we have to build on” so as to create “entrepreneurial enterprises that are indigenous to the community”?37

  With the Senate rarely in session prior to late March, Barack resumed active lawyering at Miner Barnhill in addition to his highly remunerative consulting for Robert Blackwell Jr.’s EKI. Four years earlier John Belcaster had filed a federal False Claims Act case on behalf of Dr. Janet Chandler, a medical researcher who had been fired by Cook County Hospital after blowing the whistle on fraud and corruption. The district court had dismissed the suit, but with Judd Miner determined to appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Barack spent considerable time drafting two briefs that were filed with the appellate court in late March. Barack’s former law student Marni Willenson, now a young Miner Barnhill partner, remembered them as “beautiful briefs,” and when Judd argued the case before a Seventh Circuit panel several months later, Barack’s handiwork proved to be “extraordinarily effective.” The appellate panel found in Dr. Chandler’s favor, and when Cook County appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, a unanimous affirmance resulted in Cook County and a second defendant paying more than $5.5 million in damages to the federal government and Dr. Chandler.

  In Springfield, Barack spoke on the Senate floor in favor of charter schools and also a bill authorizing the sale of clean needles to drug addicts while stressing that “none of us here are seeking to decriminalize drug use.” On March 30, three antiabortion bills championed by Republican senator Patrick O’Malley came to the floor, and Barack rose to say the first “is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny.” He added that “this is an area where potentially we might have compromised and arrived at a bill that dealt with the narrow concerns about how a pre-viable fetus or child was treated by a hospital,” but abortion opponents had forsaken that effort. Ten other Democrats as well as Republican Christine Radogno joined Barack in voting present, but SB 1093 was approved anyway, 34–6–12. Barack also voted present as the two subsequent abortion bills passed 33–6–13 and 34–5–13. Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times’ Dave McKinney, Barack said the underlying problem with all three bills was that “whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or other elements of the Constitution, we’re saying they are persons entitled to the kinds of protections provided to a child, a 9-month-old child delivered to term.” That presumption, “if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.”

  In early April, Barack opposed a bill to allow people with orders of protection to carry concealed firearms, calling it “a Trojan Horse” because of the erroneous claim “that concealed carry will create a safer citizenry.” The next day the Senate unanimously passed one of Barack’s layoff-notification bills, which soon became law, and he spoke passionately in favor of a measure to increase state education funding. Echoing his Annenberg Challenge experience, Barack professed his “extraordinarily strong commitment to public schools” while emphasizing that “one of the most important things is fostering innovation in the public schools.” A bill to require parental notice of minors’ abortions produced a 39–7–11 majority reminiscent of the earlier antiabortion trio, with Barack once again voting present. Barack also sought to cosponsor other senators’ bills, particularly ones introduced by Republican moderates like Christine Radogno, which he knew stood a better chance of Senate passage than Democrats’ measures. Whenever such a bill did pass, the Democratic caucus’s press staff churned out a press release. Stories such as a Chicago Defender one headlined “Obama Scores Big in Senate Passing of 3 Bills” resulted, with Barack warning that “we can’t continue to incarcerate ourselves out of the drug crisis.”

  By 2001 most progressive lobbyists viewed Barack as a disappointing legislator, despite those bills and press releases. Veterans like John Bouman and Citizen Action’s William McNary had befriended Barack early on. The capitol lacked a cloakroom, so lobbyists needed a senator whose office could be their home base, and McNary recalled that Barack’s “was the place that a lot of progressive organizations went to hang up our hats and coats
. We felt at home with him.” Although no one doubted Barack’s policy preferences, many thought his pragmatic attitude about what was politically possible in a body dominated by Pate Philip left him unwilling to champion many progressive issues. Doug Dobmeyer, an antipoverty lobbyist, remembered that “there were a number of times when he would say, “‘Doug, look, we can’t go that far.’ That pretty much precluded him from being the point person because he wasn’t willing to say ‘I can go very far.’” Instead Dobmeyer turned to Hyde Park representative Barbara Flynn Currie, who was “a much stronger legislator than Barack,” and in the Senate, expert Public Health and Welfare Committee staffer Nia Odeoti-Hassan was their “go-to person.” On Judiciary, hardworking John Cullerton was the most influential Democrat, notwithstanding Barack’s desire “to show people that he knew the law,” as Republican Kirk Dillard put it. Barack “would ask a lot of more detailed questions, sometimes more theoretical than practical,” Dillard remembered. Barack’s tendency to “verbalize his thought process” in “the tone of a U of C law professor” could be “a little annoying,” moderate Republican Dan Cronin explained.

  Al Sharp, the executive director of Protestants for the Common Good, shared Dobmeyer’s view. “‘I’ll do it, Al, but I have to tell you it’s not going to happen,’” Sharp remembered Barack saying. “I appreciated the candor, and I appreciated the realism,” but Barack was so “very pragmatic” that he was unwilling to fight the good fight. Legal aid veteran Linda Mills recalled that Barack “sponsored a number of bills I wrote,” but “I stopped seeking him out as a chief sponsor pretty early on” because Barack was “disengaged” rather than actively pushing the bills. “He was never involved in the legislation,” and on many days Barack was simply “unavailable, golfing, playing basketball. He was just out to lunch so often,” Mills remembered. “The energetic guy that I had anticipated coming in didn’t show up.” John Cameron, who worked with McNary at Citizen Action before moving to AFSCME, echoed Mills. “If you were working with him on a bill,” Barack had “an attitude generally of ‘I shouldn’t have to do any work. You guys do the work. . . . It’s your bill. Go work for it.’”

  During the 2001 spring session, organizing veteran Josh Hoyt worked hand in hand with John Bouman to expand KidCare into FamilyCare. They hoped Barack “would be a leader on this thing, which honestly he was not,” Hoyt explained. What “was really disappointing was we went in to meet with Barack, and he gave us this very politically sophisticated explanation of why there was very little room to maneuver in the Senate under Pate Philip, that he had worked very hard to build up the political capital that he had with his fellow Republicans, and he was not going to squander it in a losing fight.” Barack’s attitude of “sophisticated resignation” meant that “he just wasn’t going to fight when it was necessary to fight,” Hoyt remembered.

  Linda Mills believed Barack could be “exasperatingly rude” at times, with senators as well as lobbyists. On the floor, Barack “put his hands on people’s shoulders as though they were his subjects. It was the most patronizing and condescending body language I’d ever seen.” John Cameron agreed that Barack “exuded a lot of arrogance in that chamber,” and on occasion Barack could be insultingly dismissive to old 1980s acquaintances like Don Moore and Hal Baron. On school reform, Moore said, Barack “never really did much for us,” and when Moore took some Local School Council members to see him, Barack’s greeting was “Are you people still around?” Baron, Harold Washington’s former policy chief, had an almost identical experience, with Barack asking, “Hal, you’re still doing this jobs stuff?” Even William McNary experienced Barack being “somewhat dismissive,” although one former staffer felt that Barack was someone “you could just forgive being arrogant because he’s so clearly smarter than you and just a gifted person.” Campaign finance reformer Cindi Canary, who had known Barack since the “motor voter” case that preceded his Senate service, was struck that in Springfield “the people you expect to dislike him,” like old-school Democrat Denny Jacobs, “love him,” while “the people you expect to like him,” like many progressive lobbyists and African American colleagues, “hate him.”

  The Wednesday-night poker games at Terry Link’s house remained a mainstay of Barack’s schedule, and he again offered a “day in Springfield” for the law school auction. One onlooker remembered auctioneer Richard Epstein, a conservative law and economics champion, trying to increase the bids by proclaiming that Barack “could be a senator someday! He could be president someday!” The four male 3L winners drove to Springfield on what one recalled was “a pretty quiet day around the Capitol.” Barack took them to a committee hearing, onto the Senate floor, and to a late lunch at a small family-run Mexican restaurant near the statehouse. In the capitol’s rotunda, Barack paused briefly to chat with a “schlumped-over” Governor George Ryan, who looked like “the saddest sack you’d ever seen” as the commercial-driver’s-license scandal continued to roil. Lunch was “a great, very intimate time with him,” although Barack was visibly “exhausted.” Ted Liazos remembered Barack sounding “pretty reflective” and “telling us that he wasn’t sure Michelle was going to let him run statewide” any time in the future. Marty Chester recalled Barack remarking “sort of in jest” that “If I run for something else now, my wife’s going to divorce me.” As lunch was ending, Barack told the soon-to-be-graduates, “If you have a chance when you get out of law school to make a little money, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”38

  On April 15, Barack and Michelle had to write a check for more than $12,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. Barack told the Hyde Park Herald that in 2002 he would run for another term in the state Senate, and an April fund-raiser for which African American attorney Peter Bynoe footed the $6,700 tab brought in $1,000 checks for Barack’s state campaign account from African American financial figures John Rogers Jr., Mellody Hobson, Louis Holland, and Lester McKeever, as well as from prominent Chicagoans Penny Pritzker, Abby McCormick O’Neil, and Daniel Levin, plus $200 from Barack’s fellow Woods Fund board member Bill Ayers.

  In Springfield, JCAR gathered for what Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller called its “most closely watched vote in years” on the state’s predatory-loan regulations. Thanks to the National Training and Information Center (NTIC), a coalition of neighborhood groups had mobilized in favor of strong rules, counterbalancing the lobbying prowess of the lending industry. “This has probably been as heavily lobbied an issue as I’ve seen,” Barack told one reporter. At the meeting, House Speaker Michael Madigan spoke in favor of the muscular rules, and with all six JCAR Democrats primed to vote yes, and all three Senate Republicans opposed, two moderate House Republicans, Dan Rutherford and Tom Cross, would cast the decisive votes. The highly technical rules prohibited prepayment penalties and other practices that drained homeowners’ equity, plus costly single-premium credit insurance.

  Barack explained that “what we’ve been trying to distinguish is the difference between sub-prime and predatory, highly unfavorable loan arrangements that often result in foreclosures. If you’re charging 15 or 16 or 17 percent interest, and you’re tacking on fees and costs to this each time that loan is refinanced, then potentially you are drawing down thousands of dollars in profits before ultimate foreclosure.” Lenders make “a whole lot of money” from such practices, and “in many of these loans, you can’t identify any service or value that is being provided to the customer.” Given that, “I don’t see how as a state we can’t step in and say these are essentially practices that we need to restrict and curb.” With Cross and Rutherford joining Barack and the other Democrats, JCAR adopted the strong new regulations by a vote of 8–4.

  Looming over the end of spring session was the remapping of all Illinois legislative districts pursuant to the 2000 census. The state’s 1970 constitution provided for a bipartisan Legislative Redistricting Commission that had been intended to produce partisan compromise, but in each prior decennial iteration, disagreement had led to use of the constituti
on’s final step, where a blind winner-take-all drawing by the secretary of state decides whether a Republican or a Democrat casts the commission’s tie-breaking vote. Two young staff members, John Corrigan and Andy Manar, had been working for Emil Jones’s Senate Democrats since early that year on a new district map, with the explicit goal of creating “as many minority districts as possible,” Corrigan recalled. The affected members did not yet know the new boundaries, but an almost 70 percent increase in Chicago’s Hispanic population since 1990 guaranteed the creation of two additional Hispanic-majority districts.

  Barack returned to WBEZ’s Odyssey program to discuss redistricting with Robert Bennett, his good friend from Northwestern University, and Maria Torres of DePaul University, the wife of Barack’s legal buddy Matt Piers. “I would like to see more competition for the African American vote. I think it would be a healthy thing,” Barack remarked. One fundamental problem with redistricting was exactly the process that was now under way, with the two parties seeking to protect incumbents and maximize the number of safe seats. “We have a tendency in our current system for representatives to choose the people rather than the people choosing the representatives,” Barack observed. “What you end up having because of the lack of competition in the majority of these districts is probably an increase in partisanship and a breakdown in terms of the deliberative function of these legislative bodies.”