Madigan tells jurors of alcoholic father, Lisa’s abusive biological father, ‘toxic’ political relationship

Mike Madigan grew up with an alcoholic father, never heard the words “I love you” from either parent and later helped shield his adopted daughter Lisa Madigan from a biological father he said reduced her to tears.

For more than three hours on Tuesday, jurors in the former Illinois House speaker’s federal bribery trial heard intensely personal revelations from a tight-lipped 82-year-old man who had previously kept those sorts of details private for decades.

“In that house, why, the word 'nurturing' did not exist,” Madigan said in describing his childhood Southwest Side household as cold and dominated by his father.

“My parents never told me that they loved me,” Madigan offered. “They never embraced, never hugged. That was just the condition that existed at the time.”

Once when a young Madigan came home “greatly under the influence of alcohol,” his father delivered a “solid slap” across the side of his face. That prompted a discussion In which Madigan said his father confessed that he had suffered from alcoholism and was concerned his son might share the same affliction.

Madigan’s father laid down two rules for his son's drinking: “Never drink before sundown,” and “never drink on an empty stomach.”

“And so, I told him I would abide by that, and I have,” Madigan said.

Madigan was 24 when his father died at age 60 on October 17, 1966, according to an obituary published in the Sun-Times.

‘They got out the whips, and I went to work’

Despite his father’s dominance, Madigan testified that the strict parental upbringing helped him get a needed push in his academics — and that it led to the first of many city jobs in his mid-teens. His father, then the ward superintendent for the city’s Department of Streets & Sanitation, helped get his son his first job as a junior laborer for a nursery in Marquette Park, where the younger Madigan helped move grown trees and bushes to other parts of the park.

"As it was in those years they got out the whips, and I went to work,” Madigan said.

That led to his second job, working for his father in the 13th Ward sanitation department office — a dump truck job that Madigan had previously detailed during a lengthy 2009 interview compiled as part of an oral history of former Mayor Richard J. Daley for the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“I worked under my father, so I know what it's like to take orders,” Madigan said in 2009.

That oral history and a publicly released 2018 deposition for a lawsuit are the closest personal insights that Madigan has disclosed during his lengthy political career. A very careful Madigan sat down for that deposition for more than five hours, answering questions about everything from former Ald. Ed Burke, whether he goes to church and his philosophy on keeping politics and government separate.

On Tuesday, before an even more important audience of 12, Madigan outlined his work history on the witness stand, as he sought to show that’s how he learned to be “hard working and disciplined.” He said his father gave him a “nightly interrogation” about his work on the dump track, which the former speaker called a "dirt truck."

“‘I’d be the subject of his displeasure," Madigan said of his father, whom he said had quit drinking but had an “anger problem” and “short fuse.”

“It was not a pleasant experience and in my case, why, it just had me develop a habit where I never wanted to disagree with him,” Madigan told jurors.

He was reassigned to a garbage truck a block from his home, a decision his father, who was also a ward superintendent for the 13th Ward Democratic organization, opposed.

“He didn’t like the idea that his son would be loading garbage,” Madigan said. “He thought with his role with the local Democrats and such, you ought to be able to get an easier job.”

Madigan, who had attended Catholic schools, joked that his attendance at the University of Notre Dame was a "pre-ordained decision" in his house.

‘A really quick romance’

Madigan smiled when he talked about his wife Shirley, a relationship he called “a really quick romance.” They married in 1976 after just months of dating. Her parents had migrated from Mexico to Oregon — and Madigan met her while she worked at a Chicago law firm. She had recently gone through a very difficult divorce and had a contentious relationship with her first husband, the father of their daughter, Lisa.

“And my view was that I would treat Lisa as my daughter,” Madigan said, as his four children Lisa, Tiffany, Nicole and Andrew sat in the courtroom. “And I was not the biological father but I had married Shirley, and I understood at the get go that this was a duo package. And so I just took on the parental responsibilities.”

Madigan testified that when she was a child, he once heard Lisa Madigan crying on the phone.

“I took the phone out of her hands, and her biological father was on the line shouting at her, and the language was so vile that I don’t even want to repeat it, but he was using the F-word as part of his expression,” Madigan said as former Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan listened from a front-row seat in the courtroom's gallery.

“As a result of what you heard, what did you tell Lisa?” defense attorney Dan Collins asked.

“That she never had to see him or talk to him again,” Mike Madigan said, also revealing that her father “liked to send a lot of threatening letters.” But the former speaker said he tried to avoid confrontations with him, just as he did with his own father.

Beyond personal stories, Madigan shared colorful details about his dealings with a half century of Chicago pols – from an “acquaintance relationship” with the late Mayor Richard J. Daley to what he agreed was a strong relationship with the late Mayor Harold Washington.

‘It was a memorable experience’

But most telling were his memories of some of his contentious dealings with former Illinois governors Rod Blajojevich and Bruce Rauner.

Asked about what he described as a “difficult relationship” with Blagojevich, Mike Madigan laughed.

“It was a memorable experience,” he said. “It was very, very difficult.”

"[Blagojevich] and I just had different views on legislation and politically,” the former speaker said. “We thought that he was concerned that my daughter, Lisa, might run against him … So he embarked on a course of conduct where he was trying to defame the Madigan name."

Madigan called his relationship with Rauner “toxic,” and often referenced the Republican governor’s “turnaround agenda” — which ultimately led to a more than two-year budget impasse that decimated the state’s finances.

On the last day of the regular legislative session calendar in 2015, Madigan said he warned the House Democratic caucus that they were in for a big fight.

“‘Ladies and gentleman, we’re going to be involved in a monumental struggle against the governor of Illinois,’” Madigan said. “And in my view, this is all about the heart and soul of the Democratic party.”