EXTRA: Run Lisa, run!!! Or, is Sheila the big loser of Madigan’s decision?

Lisa Madigan gained my vote for governor of Illinois. It’s just too bad that it was her announcement that she would not run that caused me to want to support her.

MADIGAN: Postponing a 'promotion?'

Her announcement Monday afternoon caught me off-guard. I bought into her previous talk that she would wait until August to say what she’d do – thereby causing a whole slew of other political people to have to wait before announcing the electoral intentions.

BUT SHE NOW says it would be a problem for her to be governor while her father, the mighty Michael Madigan, served as speaker of the Illinois House of
Representatives.

And her father isn’t giving her any sign that he’s the least bit willing to consider stepping down from the post he has held (with a two-year exception in the mid-1990s) since the early 1980s.

Admittedly, he’s getting up in age. Who’s to say how long he will be able to keep getting re-elected – unless he’s willing to go the Sidney Yates route. As in the one-time member of Congress from the North lakefront neighborhoods who was the butt of many “senility” jokes by the time he finally retired in the mid-1990s.

The fact that Lisa Madigan was willing to come out and bluntly say it would not be practical for state government to have two “Madigans” in prominent posts is a certain honesty that I’m not used to seeing, or hearing, from government officials.

IT MAKES ME want to have someone like her in office – and not just re-election to a fourth term as Illinois attorney general.

MADIGAN: Holed up, and going nowhere!

It makes me wish she were able to run for governor. Because a part of me wonders if she’s going to be in that attorney general post for so long (always being thought of as the “future” governor) that she will go from being the future of the Democratic Party to being its past – without ever being its “present.”

Such as the situation involving the one-time state Sen. Howard Carroll – who served in the Illinois Legislature for many years waiting for the aforementioned Yates to retire so he could move up to Congress.

But by the time that retirement came and his “turn” came about, another candidate came along and wound up winning the post. Which is why we have Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., amongst our state’s congressional delegation.

COULD IT BE that someone else will wind up coming along and swiping away a gubernatorial nomination from Lisa Madigan in some future year, because she felt the need to hold off from running in this election cycle – one in which she would have had ample funding to run a credible campaign?

DALEY: One less 'name' in his way

That will be the question to which we’ll never truly know the answer.

So now, we get Gov. Pat Quinn with one less opponent – and his primary challenger, William Daley, will face the same problem that Madigan would have faced. As in certain people not willing to even consider voting for him because he has a “connected” name. Although certain others will vote for him just because of that.

Personally, I wonder more about the people who were betting on Madigan to move up so they could have her attorney general post.

SIMON: What will she do now?

HER DECISION TO stay put may have ensured House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, remains in that post, while the big loser may well be another product of a political “family.”

Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon had already said she was not interested in keeping that post, and had dreams of being the “AG.”

She’s going to have to scale back her ambitions if she wishes to remain a political player beyond next year.

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