(light music) (camera beeping) (dramatic music) - Welcome to Capitol View, our weekly look at the happenings inside and outside the Illinois State Capitol.

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

Our guests this week are Dave McKinney of Chicago Public Radio/WBEZ, and Kent Redfield, Emeritus Political Science Professor at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Gentlemen, thanks for joining us.

- Morning.

Good to be here.

- As we sit down for this first episode of Capitol View in 2023, there are a lot of things in a state of flux.

As we're recording, we're still watching the numerous ballots for a US House Speaker, as well as what's going on in Springfield regarding an assault weapons ban, the Safety Act, and more.

So lots to get to this week.

As I said, there is this turmoil regarding a new US House Speaker as Republicans take control of the US House after the November elections.

There is a group of 20 Republicans who are what they're calling a never Kevin group.

They don't want Kevin McCarthy to be the next US House Speaker.

And Dave, what is this turmoil doing in terms of showing Republicans in a negative light, perhaps, or perhaps showing the power that these 20 people have?

- Well, it's a leadership struggle that we as a country have not seen since 1923.

That's the last time there were multiple roll calls for an election for a US House Speaker.

I mean, usually this is a sort of a scripted proforma kind of event where everybody knows going in who is gonna be in charge.

And here we don't know that, even now, I think McCarthy, he vows to do roll call after roll call after roll call.

But the reality is he still has not gotten to 218 votes, which he needs to have a simple majority to take control as speaker.

And it's this group of about 20 that Congresswoman Mary Miller from Downstate Oakland is part of that is really thrown a wrench in the gears for House Republican leadership.

And I think what it does for the party is it sort of demonstrates that they are, at least in Washington, they are a party of dysfunction and not governance.

And that that is a, there's plenty of time to show what they're all about.

But this internal struggle has really laid bare that there are deep, deep sort of Trump-driven divides in the Republican party that basically they, it's a dysfunctional party.

- There are those who would say this kind of dysfunction, as you mentioned, is relatively new or something that we only see after the turn of the century, for example.

But, you know, Kent, you have some examples just here in Illinois in terms of choosing leadership and who is actually in control or pulling the strings, so to speak.

- Yeah.

And in Illinois you have a formal process that is set out in more detail than the US Constitution.

And so, you have to get a majority of those elected, whereas the rules are a little more squishy in terms of what's going on in Washington DC.

But in the 1974 when we got a new governor and a Democratic majority, and the governor two years earlier, the governor had been Dan Walker had been elected running against Daley.

And so when the Democrats took control of the House, there was a huge fight that Southern Illinois Democrat Clyde showed a protege of the famous Paul Powell of shoebox fame who had hundreds of thousands of dollars in his hotel room when he died, when he was Secretary of State.

Walker set out to block Choate's appointment because he was gonna show Daley who's boss, and it took more than 70 ballots to get a speaker and eventually it was a compromised candidate.

This was back in the days where you had cumulative voting.

And so you had three reps from every district that meant you had Chicago Republicans and in this case DuPage County Democrats.

And so Bill Redmond was the compromise candidate who was willing, and he presented himself as being kind of a presiding officer, which is the opposite of the way we normally think about people wanting to be speaker.

And so, that took three or four days and there were people that never backed down from voting, from supporting Choate.

And so it actually took Republican votes to get Redmond over the 89 votes that he needed to be elected speaker.

So this, it could go on.

And then everybody says, well, why don't you have your act together?

But if you get, right now there's, McCarthy's given about everything that he could give in terms of concessions.

And if those people, if the people want another candidate, then there's no particular incentive for them to back down.

The people that are blocking his nomination, I mean, his election, if they were to suddenly say, okay, I'm gonna vote for McCarthy, they would lose all of their credibility with, these come from very safe districts like Mary Miller in Illinois.

It's a very safe, very conservative district.

And if she were to suddenly shift gears and be voting for somebody they've been saying, this is the establishment, this is the status quo, we've gotta blow up the process and stuff.

So, you know, they really have backed themselves into a corner.

If you're a Democrat it's fine, obviously you like to see the opposition and disarray, but at some point we do need to govern and we do need to fund government.

And so it's not pretty, and it certainly doesn't help rehabilitate the political process for people that you're trying to get people interested in politics and participating in politics.

This kind of chaos is not conducive to building civic involvement and civic engagement.

- Dave, I'm gonna ask you to gaze into a crystal ball just a little bit as we wrap up the conversation on this particular issue.

But when you've got 20 people of any caucus saying, we are going to hold out, we're going to stick together and say no to, whether it's the establishment or something else, what does that portend for legislation or the effectiveness of this Congress for the next two years?

- Well, I think we're getting a glimpse of what that's gonna look like.

You know, there's a big vote looming months down the line here about raising the country's debt ceiling.

And again, that's something that happens in Republican administrations and Democratic administrations.

But if Republicans can't decide on who their leader should be it really kind of begs the question, what are they gonna do with something like that?

Because if we don't, if we don't raise our debt ceiling, it affects our standing in the credit world as a country.

And it can have a very profound impact on our economy.

And so I think they really need to get their act together here because they need to have a strong leader to sort of be a counter to Joe Biden, who seems to be rounding the corner in the new year with a little bit of wind behind him heading into a reelection campaign.

And so they need to have a forceful presence as House Republican leader, and especially, none of us knows quite what the Donald, how the Donald Trump story is going to end.

But, if Trump's influence is waning or beginning to wane, then this is the moment where whatever the new Republican party looks like, it begins to take shape.

And there should be, there should be a forceful presence there.

And until one side blinks, we're not gonna see who that is.

- Taking things a little closer to home, we'll head back to Springfield with a couple of issues that are also in flux.

The SAFETY Act, which was set to go into effect on January 1st, was put on hold when the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal on particularly the cash bail issue.

You know, we've spent a lot of time on this program taking a closer look at the legislation and then once it was passed the law and what it's going to do in terms of eliminating cash bail and making some other changes.

But a lot of state's attorneys who were on both sides of this issue were saying they're glad to have this pause so that there can be some consistency and you don't have one county implementing the law and another county refusing because they're still in the midst of this appeal.

Kent, what do you expect from the Supreme Court?

Are they going to take the law apart, or do you expect that they'll send it back to be reheard?

What's going on here?

- Right now, I mean, what came forward, the judge at the trial court level, essentially only in terms of what he said was unconstitutional, focused solely on the cash bail part of it.

And so the other parts of it are not really in question requiring that you have a body cams by a date certain, there's money in it there.

I mean, there's a variety of things that don't relate specifically to the cash bail question.

It is anything (indistinct) you have a law declared unconstitutional, you have an immediate appeal to the Supreme Court.

The other cases you would go through the appellate level, then get to the Supreme Court.

That was what we dealt with this on COVID vaccinations on mass mandates.

You know, we were working through the court's system and it really never got resolved definitively at the state Supreme Court level, this will be, and right now it looks like this morning that they're talking about a schedule for filing briefs but you're probably not gonna have oral arguments until March.

And so, you're looking at a couple of months, probably at least three before you'll get a ruling from the court, and the court could uphold the law, they could modify it, they could declare that particular section unconstitutional and provide some guidance.

You know, that would be the hope is they would say this is how, this is where it conflicts and at least give some outline of how one might get around it.

So it's not gonna be resolved soon.

The other thing we should briefly note is this is almost an entirely new Supreme Court for a very long period of time, we had judges that were, have been on the court for 10, 20 years, and now the Chief Justice is probably the only one.

Theis is the only one that's been on the court more than I think, you know, two, three, four, four or five years.

You know, Neville's been there, but you know, so you've got two appointed judges that are gonna be the seats will be up in two years.

You've got three new judges that just got elected, two this time around.

So we can't really say, well, this is the way the Supreme Court deals with these kinds of questions because you don't have any sense of exactly what this body looks like.

And the other change is, it's gone, it is now a five to two court in terms of judges that were elected from as Democrats or Republicans.

It's a five to two Democratic majority.

A lot of uncertainty.

- Yes, there is, as you said, a lot of uncertainty.

Dave, I know you did a lot of reporting on the race for Illinois Supreme Court and looking at issues like abortion rights and other things that could come before the court in the coming years.

The SAFETY Act perhaps wasn't on the list as you were doing the reporting, but can you tell at all based on that what you might see from these new justices?

- Well, I mean, I agree with Kent.

You know, it's a sort of a fool's errand to try to predict what any Supreme Court is gonna do on things because they always manage to throw you a curve ball now and then, we all look funny when we try to predict these things, but the fact remains that the court is Democratically controlled and what we have right now, Kent did a good job of laying out the composition of the court.

But what we have is a Democratic controlled court, elections have consequences as we all know, and had the two races that were getting all the attention in the Collar Counties, had they swung Republican and had we had a court that was a four to three Republican majority as opposed to one that is a five to two Democratic majority, then, you know, I think the calculus on an issue like this would be looked at entirely differently because you had people who had backgrounds in law enforcement that on the Republican side who were poised to be in the court, they didn't make it.

So I think, you know, we heard Governor Pritzker say this week that he was comfortable and confident that this provision of the SAFETY Act would survive.

And so I think, the governor's people are feeling fairly good about the chances of this withstanding legal scrutiny at the Supreme Court.

So we'll see in a few months how it all shakes out.

- Certainly we'll continue to take a closer look at that.

Another issue that remains in flux, and we've had some conversation about this is a proposed assault weapons ban in the state of Illinois.

And this is pending legislation in a lame duck session, the Illinois legislature just in for a few days before a new session of the general assembly takes effect at noon next Wednesday, January 11th.

So what are we seeing, Dave, just in terms of what's happening now, and do you think that this urgency to pass the assault weapons ban before the end of the lame duck session is something that that may fade, they may go ahead and wait until the next session?

- Well, this would be a major change in our state policy on these types of weapons.

I think, you know, for all of the state, the July 4th massacre in Highland Park is still fresh on people's minds and is a major driver in this effort to try to ban these high capacity weapons and ammunition cartridges that were used in Highland Park.

But gun control issues are so thorny.

You naturally have the Second Amendment that you butt heads with.

But in this case, there's just the simple question.

Say, if you ban the possession, it's one thing to ban the purchase of these types of weapons and ammunition.

But when you get into the question of possession of them, that's a different thing.

Well, what if I am a gun owner and I feel like I have a need for one of these weapons and I go to the state of Texas to buy one and I come back home with it?

Am I breaking the law?

And what about from the standpoint of those who favor tighter restrictions?

How is it making the state any more secure from massacres like we saw in Holland Park, if there's so many of these things out in circulation already, but no accounting of them.

You know, there has, one of the early versions of this legislation that was kind of being thrown around, or at least, I don't know if it was ever put on paper or not, but the idea of confiscating these weapons, which of course could never happen, but then that opens the door to like, well, all right, will these folks who own an AR 15 have to register that in some fashion with the state of Illinois?

Well, they have to reveal themselves, and that opens up the whole can of worms for gun owners as well.

So, you know, the idea that you can kind of get all of this accomplished in spite of the force, the gravitational force that Highland Park created.

The fact, you know, it's so complicated, it would not surprise me to see the spill beyond this lame duck session, which runs until the 11th next Wednesday.

The reality is, the voting thresholds are the same as they are now in the new general assembly that kicks in on January 11th.

So if they don't get it done now, they certainly can do it in the spring.

So I would not be surprised to see that be punted.

- Sure.

Kent, this is not the first time we're seeing controversial legislation be a part of this so-called lame duck session, where you've got some lawmakers who are on their way out, others who are appointed for this very short amount of time because someone retires after not winning reelection, for example.

But you can even just look two years ago the SAFETY Act was passed in the lame duck session.

About a decade ago we saw an income tax increase during a lame duck session.

Is this what the constitutional framers were really looking for when they talked about a lame duck session?

- Well, you know, again, what you had was extraordinary veto power given to the governor under the 1970 Constitution.

And they created a process whereby you delayed, you could send legislation to the governor, he had a certain period of time to act on it, then he can, he has all of these powers so he can do line item reduction, veto on appropriations, he can do mandatory veto.

So they set it up so there's a process so that the general assembly could come back and react to the governor's vetoes.

And that was set for the fall.

The problem with that is when you get all the legislature in town, there's an incentive to legislate and it also allows you to, well, we could take care of that in veto session.

So you put stuff off, you've got people in town that wanna push a pet project, something comes up, it's now a fall legislative session often, and rather than just a veto session, you add to that the wrinkle in what we have with effective dates within the Constitution and state law and you need a 3/5 vote from the 1st of June now till January till December 31st to get an immediate effective date.

But then you've got this magic window that exists between the 1st of January and when you square in the new legislature where the old legislature exists, and you can do things with 30 votes in the Senate and 60 votes in the House that caused you to be creative in terms of constructing roll calls.

You've got a member that didn't run for reelection, you've got a member that got defeated, can you give, you've got controversial legislation, you wanna give somebody a pass, you don't want 'em to make a bad vote.

So, when you're constructing roll calls, you're often doing two things.

You're trying to convince people to get on the roll call, but you're also trying to convince other people to stay off the roll call because it's a bad boat in their district, regardless of how they feel.

And so now, but I completely agree with Dave.

This is not about a tax increase.

This is about something that really is deep within the culture and the regional differences and the urban and the rural differences.

You know, even though you look at it and you say, well, the Democrats can lose, they can give 15 people a pass and still have 60 votes.

And it's hard to find those 15 people on this kind of an issue.

So it it very well, there's huge pressure to do something and we'll probably will do something, but whether or not that really has any substance, the more substance they put into it, the more you're inviting or guaranteeing a judicial review.

And this US Supreme Court has not filled in the fine print.

They think we ought to be giving a lot of more deference to the Second Amendment, but they haven't been, we haven't had the cases yet to see just exactly how far that goes.

So they'll try desperately to get something done, but it's gonna be really difficult to thread that needle between now and I think it certainly could spill over.

- Sure.

And as you said, it might get done in the legislature, but not certainly finished in terms of the judicial review and other things that may come about.

Just a few minutes left in the show and before we come to air again, we will see a new inauguration of the constitutional officers in Illinois as well as the swearing in of a new general assembly, that's all coming up early next week.

Dave, when we look at the inauguration, you're looking at almost all of the constitutional officers being reelected in the November election.

The one issue or the one race I should say was the Secretary of State's race.

Do we expect to hear a lot in terms of priorities or changes from Alexi Giannoulias as he takes over an office that had been held by Jesse White for so long?

- Well, I mean, we've gotten announcements in this past week alone about his new management team.

I mean, there are not a lot of holdovers from the Jesse White era.

These are a lot of these folks are people who worked with Giannoulias when he was at the state treasurer.

And so, it's really kind of his leadership team that is coming in and taking over this sprawling state office that really affects everybody's lives.

So I think it'll be an interesting thing.

He'll be given a few minutes probably to say a few words.

So, we'll be tuning into that.

And certainly whatever the governor says about the main agenda items of his second term, that'll be something that we're paying attention to.

But these inaugurations, they tend to, if you have a new regime coming into power, that's when they become newsworthy, and here we have a governor who won reelection quite easily.

So I think it's gonna be more of a kind of a relaxed celebratory kind of environment in Springfield that I think, for those of us looking for major screaming headlines out of it, I think it'll just basically be past the next drink and party on.

'Cause they're not, you know, I just think that this is exactly the script that Pritzker drew out and he's in the driver's seat.

- You did quite a bit of reporting, Dave, on the legacy of Jesse White who held the office for decades.

What do you think is most memorable out of what you found from that reporting?

- Well, I mean, he's just, he's a guy who inherited an office that was scandal written from George Ryan.

I mean, it was the subject of a federal investigation that ultimately sent Ryan to prison.

And during that period of time, the 24 years that White held the office, he was able to avoid even the hint of scandal.

And so I think that's one of his big legacies.

I mean, there's so many different pieces of the Jesse White legacy in Illinois and the piece that I did focused on how racism shaped him.

And he grew up in the '60s or he grew up in the '50s and '60s, but a relationship with Martin Luther King.

He was within an eyelash of becoming a Chicago Cub.

But he believes racism kept that from happening.

You know, just story after story after story can come out of this man's mouth and at 88 he still has political life ahead of him.

I mean, he's just as sharp as ever, physically, he's in great shape.

I asked him what he does and he says I take the steps.

- Good deal.

Would like to thank Dave McKinney and Kent Redfield for joining us on this episode of Capitol View.

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

You can find all of our shows online at wsiu.org and at our YouTube channel.

Until next time, thanks for joining us.

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