By MADELEINE DOUBEK

When a vote is in progress in the U.S. House of Representatives, he's there working the floor. Lately, he says he has been meeting with Speaker Newt Gingrich "a couple of times a week" to hammer out a Medicaid funding and health care proposal. He just completed work on a massive telecommunications bill that he says probably affects one-seventh of the nation's economy. And his next legislative assignment is to spend a year rewriting the Federal Communications Act.

U.S. Rep. J. Dennis Hastert, the majority's 53-year-old chief deputy whip, has come a long way from Yorkville High School in Kendall County where he spent 16 years teaching government and coaching wrestling.

Within Illinois' congressional delegation and beyond, Hastert is the new go to guy. With the GOP in control for the first time in 40 years, it is Hastert who keeps the majority machine greased, the revolution rolling. Gingrich, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, and Whip Tom DeLay rely on Hastert to tell them whether an issue will pass and to predict how many votes it will receive.

"The last thing you want to do is be surprised on the floor," he says.

Of Hastert and his chief of staff, Scott Palmer, U.S. Rep. John E. Porter of Wilmette says succinctly, "They are in charge of getting the votes on major party matters."

When Gov. Jim Edgar and Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra have business or politics in Washington, D.C., they now operate out of Hastert's office. The 22-member state delegation is headed by Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul Simon. But for the past three or four months, the group has been holding its monthly get-togethers in Hastert's ornate suite of deputy whip offices on the first floor near the Capitol's center.

"I guess it's convenient," Hastert says with a chuckle. The offices are the most visible sign of his heightened stature. A banquet-sized dining table gleams in the inner chamber that also features historical oil paintings, muted pink-colored wing chairs and drapes, an ottoman and couch, a desk, a small side table stocked with soft drinks and two curio cabinets.

Ever low-key and soft-spoken, Hastert says his Illinois colleagues are familiar with his new digs by now, but allows that they used to kid him: "Geez Hastert, how'd you get this office?"

How indeed? Hastert got it by managing the intraparty campaign of Whip DeLay, who won the party post over Gingrich's choice for the job.

Now in his fifth term in Congress, Hastert has long held an interest in the party politics that are a part of the job. He briefly considered a run for chairman of the House Republican Campaign Committee, and he and Palmer were key players in helping to shape the 1990 congressional district map. After a six-year Illinois House stint, he developed a bond with retired House Republican Leader Bob Michel of Peoria and is doing just fine now in the post-Michel era.

"Denny has always been very, very interested in the party side and has worked very hard at it, being part of redistricting and being the point person in the whip organization for Illinois and then regionally," Porter says. "He's paid his dues and done yeoman's work for the party. He's very much involved in the translation of Republican policy into legislation that passes."

Clearly, Hastert's Republican star has risen. But he eschews the Washington beltway mentality and is astute enough to know that even the go-to guys better get themselves to the voters on a regular basis.

And so, on a recent sweltering Friday night, the Republican Party's chief deputy whip was gearing up to talk issues at his annual 14th District farmer's picnic.

Madeleine Doubek is political editor of the Daily Herald based in Arlington Heights.