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DESIGNATED HITTER

House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie
has learned that you can't always hit
home runs in the Illinois legislature

by Jennifer Davis

It was steamy mid-July and Barbara Flynn Currie was working up a sweat pitching baseballs to her husband in the side yard outside their Hyde Park home. It must have looked like fun to any constituent happening by But, true to form, Rep. Currie was working.

No doubt when she finally let that first pitch fly at her White Sox fundraiser, it seemed effortless. That's because Currie knows that baseball — like politics — is won through practice and endurance. You just don't bat 1.000 the first time out.

When it comes to the legislative game, though, Currie is no rookie. She's spent 18 years in the General Assembly, four of them as an assistant leader. Even so, the Democrat got a tough workout last spring — her first as majority leader and House Speaker Michael Madigan's designated hitter.

Call it a training camp, of sorts: a brutal session that tested her tolerance and negotiating skills as she struggled to help get landmark education funding reform through, secure agreement on this state's welfare reform plan and assure the credibility of impeachment hearings against a state supreme court justice.

Those hearings on Justice James Heiple went smoothly, after all. And welfare reform passed. Education funding reform didn't.

That's better than .500, certainly.

But given the rhetorical windup, the failure of what some call the most important policy question facing the state left the General Assembly, the governor and their bipartisan "gang of eight" negotiators looking like losers.

Barbara Flynn Currie

In truth, it's been a long season for school finance reform: about 25 years. In that time, the state's share of school funding has declined, falling to about a third of total spending from about half. As a result, Illinois' school districts get most of their revenue from the local property tax, leading to disparity in the dollars available to property-rich and property-poor districts.

Yet this session opened with such promise. Imagine the Cubs winning their first few. After all, legislators weren't just saying they would end the spending inequity in school funding. They made it their top priority.

The bases were loaded, and they dropped the ball.

Practice and endurance. And knowledge, rooted in experience, that there's always another season.

"She used to have a poster that her son gave her when she first started. It had a duckling on it and it said, Arise, go forth and conquer,'" says former Rep. Susan Catania, a Chicago Republican who served during some of Currie's early years.

"Clearly that's how her family saw her, and probably how she saw herself."

Past tense? Definitely. That picture fit Currie as a freshman. Now she's a team player, the House MVP.

Who else could lead the fight for school funding reform while helping to craft a compromise on a historic welfare reform bill affecting hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans and co-chairing another historic event:
the House committee investigating possible impeachment proceedings against then-Chief Justice Heiple?

And make it all look easy.

Illinois Issues September 1997 / 21


Why, of course, no one, says Madigan, and that's why he chose her.

"I made my decision based on her merits, without regard to her gender," says Madigan as he ticks off these qualities: the ability to handle the administrative responsibilities of the job while staying well-versed on the issues and building consensus among the party's divergent members. "On all scores, she has done very well."

Nevertheless, the appointment wasn't made without risk. There was some grumbling in the ranks: too liberal for conservatives; too Chicago for downstaters. And a woman. Indeed, the first woman.

No woman has ever held such a high leadership position in the Illinois General Assembly. As House majority leader, Currie's power and influence is second only to the speaker's.

This is a far cry from the legislative scene Currie first encountered in 1979 when women made up only a small percentage of the General Assembly: 27 of 236 legislators. Today, women hold 46 of the 177 seats in the House and Senate, the most ever. Slow but steady progress — much like everything that happens under the Statehouse dome.

Other states have pushed women faster and farther into the political spotlight. North Dakota, for instance, elected a woman House speaker in 1933. And this year, Maine's House speaker. House majority leader and Senate majority and minority leaders are all women, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Nationwide, the number of women in state legislatures has increased fivefold since 1969, yet women still constitute only one-fifth of lawmakers.

Illinois' progress is linked to Currie, now obviously so. Yet even before her appointment, Currie advanced herself and other female legislators by simultaneously pushing women's issues and slowly allying herself with those in power, the male legislative leadership.

She's gone from a freshman to a fringe insider dining out with "the boys" to the most powerful woman in the General Assembly.

Nevertheless, ask her about the perks of power and Currie will flash that famous grin before genuinely laughing in your face. "Power" is a session full of "running from pillar to post." It's dragging oneself into the office by 7:30 a.m. and rarely leaving before 7:30 p.m. It's a headache Currie worked herself up to.

"Tim Mapes, the chief of staff, kept asking me all session, 'Currie, is it worth it? For the extra salary? Is having that two-word leadership title and not the three-word leadership title worth it?'" says Currie, referring to her rise from assistant majority leader to majority leader. "And I think his expectation was that I would say, 'absolutely not.' But I absolutely thrived on the experience."

She thrived on mornings of complicated school aid formulas: income tax increase plus property tax relief equals one session-long headache. She thrived on afternoons co-chairing the Heiple hearings: four days of testimony and 1,100 pages of transcript used to decide whether to pursue impeachment. (Ultimately, the 10-member bipartisan House committee decided there was no evidence of an impeachable offense.)

With Michael Madigan and David Phelps

House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, Speaker,
Michael Madigan and Eldorado Democratic Rep.
David Phelps.

She thrived on working with her more conservative counterparts to craft a historic new welfare plan, one that would meet stringent federal requirements without crippling Illinois' low-income citizens.

A lot of the daily details are now purposefully forgotten, Currie says with a laugh. By the summer break, the spring session was just one blurry rush that worked out well in the end. One game out of many.

Yet certain things stand out: the sleepless nights during the Heiple hearings when she was weighed down with the import of the committee's task. "Deciding what standards to follow. ... It all required a lot of thought. It wasn't easy."

Not much that Currie tackled this session was. Lawmakers had until July 1 to develop a welfare plan to meet new federal rules giving recipients two years to find work and five years of help total.

On education, lawmakers would have had to overcome regional interests and politicians' inherent fear of raising taxes. In the end, Republicans and Democrats couldn't agree on a plan. And Gov. Jim Edgar's proposal for a 25 percent income tax increase offset by substantial property tax relief didn't make it past first base. Legislators went home empty-handed.

Currie doesn't lay blame. At least not much.

"There are always 15 good reasons to oppose any bill that comes before us," she says philosophically, adding that, with the education bill, part of the problem was that people wanted to negotiate too late in the game.

They didn't get their act together — although not for lack of trying on Currie's part. "Who was doing anything but Barbara Flynn Currie?" says Catania, who preceded Currie as chairwoman of the Illinois Commission on the Status of Women. (The panel has just been reinstituted.)

Currie's work ethic is one thing that hasn't changed over the years. (She looks much the same, too. Same toothy smile and sleek bob. Same

22 / September 1997 Illinois Issues


sharp blue eyes.) Up at 6 a.m., out promoting herself in her liberal, mostly minority district until 11 p.m. That's how her husband David recalls her first race back in 1978. Her district hasn't changed much demographically, but it's about half the size it was when she shared it with two other representatives. (A 1980 ballot proposition reduced the size of the House from 177 members to 118.) Still about 75 percent African American, Currie's South Side Chicago district includes part of South Kenwood, Hyde Park, Woodlawn and the area known as South Shore. Her constituents, whom she considers fairly liberal, range from upper-middle-class to poor.

Although she is now re-elected by overwhelming margins, Currie was an unknown in her first race. A mother of two working on her doctorate in political science at the University of Chicago, Currie had never held public office before. Or ever aspired to, she says.

"You know, it didn't actually occur to me to want to be in politics. And whether that was because there weren't very many women who did in those days or whether it was because I just didn't have very much imagination, I don't know."

But she was reared on public policy around the dinner table by her professor father and school teacher mother. Later she got active in the Chicago League of Women Voters and other organizations in her Hyde Park neighborhood. So it wasn't all that surprising that she found her way down to Springfield.

"She's had more on the ball than most since the day she was born," says former Democratic Rep. Alan Greiman, now an Illinois appellate judge, in praise of his former seatmate and dinner companion.

They palled around in the early '80s when Jim Thompson was governor and Madigan's legendary reputation as the "Velvet Hammer" was at its peak. Greiman, Madigan and then-House Majority Leader Jim McPike invited Currie into their dinner clique — a back table at Springfield's Baur's Restaurant where they used to hash out strategy from the day's events.

Currie and Greiman, the more liberal pair, would smoke cigarettes and line up against Madigan and McPike. At least that's how Madigan remembers it. Currie recalls the odds as not quite so equal. She recalls the teasing that goes along with being "the person who stands out like a sore thumb." In this case, the only woman. She heard "knee-jerk feminist" often. "A lot of that kind of stuff," Currie says with a laugh, waving her hands dismissively.

Barbara Flynn Currie

Obviously, she didn't take the teasing from her friends seriously. Quite likely, she was used to it. As a freshman, Curries knees shook the few times she dared to speak on the House floor. "And, of course, I sat near some of the guys who only exacerbated the problem. People were coming up with feathers, tickling the backs just to make sure they would shake even more."

Learning to take a little tickling, though, or the few sexist remarks flung her way, is not the main lesson Currie has absorbed during almost two decades of working to get bills through the Statehouse. Simply put, every team faces its share of snags and slumps. You work through it, Currie believes.

"I think I've learned a lot about the timing of legislative activity. When I first came to Springfield, I did think that if one had the right of the argument, one certainly was going to carry the day. Well, I did learn pretty quickly, and I keep learning, that that isn't the way it works. If you expect to remake the world in a day, this is not the job for you. If, on the other hand, you're satisfied to move inch by inch toward progressive policy outcomes, it's a terrific job."

Getting a bill through for state-funded preschool programs for at-risk children was a long haul, but now it's among Currie's favorite accomplishments.

"It took six or seven years — a lot of time and education."

That was Curries pet project years ago, long before Gov. Jim Edgar decided to make it a priority in his most recent State of the State. Currie credits terrific teachers:
legendary legislators such as Eugenia Chapman and Giddy Dyer, who started the Conference of Women Legislators the year Currie took office and pushed for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. But those who know her agree with Greiman: She's never needed much guidance.

Catania recalls how from the start Currie was able to maneuver a spot on the House Revenue Committee, and then a few years later pass the Freedom of Information Act, something Catania tried to do for years.

"She's extremely intelligent," adds Catania. "She will not be cowed or dissuaded. That does not mean she is not able to compromise. She knows how to use her vote to be a force to be reckoned with."

With her new role, Currie has conquered new ground for women in Illinois politics. But, like the legislative process, her progress has been slow. Currie spent years as an assistant House majority leader. She has devoted years to pushing some legislation. Indeed, it may take years to accomplish her next goal: refinement of Illinois' new welfare plan. And, of course, there's always another year for another crack at school funding reform.

As her boss puts it, "Barbara has learned well that you don't hit a lot of home runs here." 

Illinois Issues September 1997 / 23


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