North Egypt News

Franklin County conservative activist Karen Tucker fears news of Mike Madigan’s ouster as House speaker may be greatly exaggerated.

“I worry that it’s one of Madigan’s minions that’s replacing him, someone who’s handpicked and will probably do everything he says as if it’s still him in power,” Tucker told the North Egypt News. “I just wish his successor wasn’t someone who’s been in his camp on everything and seems to owe him some favors.

Lawmakers moved during the recent lame-duck session to put an end to Madigan’s nearly four-decade run as speaker by installing state Rep. Emmanuel “Chris” Welch (D-Hillside) as his successor.

The state’s longest-serving lawmaker, Madigan continues to be dogged by an ongoing federal corruption probe involving ComEd and a pay-for-play scheme where all the perks are purported to have been steered to him in exchange for favorable legislation. A Special House committee was also recently convened to look into his role in the matter with expulsion being among the potential penalties.

“Moving on from Madigan in any way is a step in the right direction,” Tucker added. “But like I said, the depth of all this depends on what Welch actually does. If he’s just a figurehead, we’re in same place.”

Tucker said she sometimes wonders if Illinois can ever make it all the way back given all the damage she feels Madigan has caused.

“I really don’t know, even now if we get the bailout from Joe Biden that everyone is expecting, you have to know we’ve gotten bailout money before and it hasn’t made that much of a difference,” she said. “We just keep spending; we never seem to want to curtail spending or do what needs to be done to get our finances in order.”

 In the end, Tucker insists what she sees as Springfield’s structure of corruption has to cease to be.

“We have to have things like term limits,” she said. “We can’t let anyone else stay in power to the point where they until they get so entrenched they feel like they can do anything.”