Emanuel ‘Chris’ Welch says he’s Illinois House speaker because ‘my colleagues asked me to step up’
Hours before a General Assembly was to be inaugurated and still short the votes he needed to be elected speaker, Emanuel “Chris” Welch intensified his campaign to persuade House Democrats he should be the one to lead them after Michael Madigan’s decadeslong tenure.
“I spent time going member by member, talking to each and every one of them, to try to address their concerns,” Welch said in a phone interview Thursday. “There were no specific promises made, but everything comes down to people knowing you and trusting you and believing in you. And the fact that I listened to them and heard what their concerns were, I think was extremely important. I know what everyone’s issues are.”
Welch, who made history on Wednesday by becoming Illinois’ first Black House speaker, also had to address concerns stemming from allegations of his past treatment of women. A 2002 police report says an ex-girlfriend told officers Welch slammed her head into a kitchen countertop numerous times after she called him “a loser.” The woman did not press charges after speaking with a relative of Welch’s, according to the report.
Welch said Thursday the allegations “have come up in every election that I’ve been in.” He said that if anyone undertakes an investigation “and comes to me, I’ll cooperate, just like I’ve always done.”
“But I think people need to move away from the distractions and focus on the difficult work ahead,” Welch said.
Welch said he took the speaker’s post because his colleagues — including female legislators — asked him to.
“I think people need to recognize that this moment only occurred because my colleagues asked me to step up,” he said. “It started with the Black Caucus unanimously asking me to step up. And I can tell you in eight years, the Black Caucus doesn’t unanimously decide on a lot of things, but it did on me.
“And many of the women in our caucus asked me to step up. I looked them in the eye and answered their questions. And they believe in me because they’ve worked with me and they know me, they trust me. And they asked me to step up in this moment. We’re going to work together and we’re not going to disappoint the people of the state of Illinois. We just have to stay away from those distractions.”
Rep. Ann Williams of Chicago, who was among the 19 House Democrats who publicly said they wouldn’t support Madigan for another term as speaker last year, was a candidate for the post until she withdrew earlier this week.
She said Welch’s past issues involving women were raised in many conversations he had with fellow Democrats over the last few days, “both individually and collectively.”
“The conversations we had were very real and provided us with the information we needed to feel comfortable moving forward with him as speaker,” Williams said.
Welch’s answers didn’t entirely satisfy everyone. Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat, said on Wednesday that she voted present on Welch’s nomination for speaker because “at the same time that we’re ending years of scandal over allegations of sexual harassment and corruption, we have also just been made aware of troubling allegations from Speaker Welch’s past.” She called for them to be “vigorously reviewed.”
Welch takes over leadership of a chamber that has been under the ironclad control of Chicago Democrat Michael Madigan for all but two of the last 38 years.
Welch, while a Madigan ally, has signaled a more collaborative approach to leading the chamber, saying he told House members that “before I make a decision you will know about the decision and we’re going to do it in partnership.”
The House normally sets rules on how its business will be conducted on its first full day of session, but that didn’t happen when members convened on Thursday at the Bank of Springfield Center, where the House has met during the pandemic.
Welch said he committed to fellow Democrats, who control the House with a 73-45 majority over Republicans, that “we’re going to take a quick, hard examination of (the rules) and make changes where we believe changes need to be made.”
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Madigan’s political and government operations were shaken a few years ago when women reported harassment by top deputies as the #MeToo movement took hold in Springfield.
But it was after Madigan was implicated in a federal corruption investigation last summer that House Democrats began to publicly peel away their support, saying they wouldn’t support him for another term as speaker.
Still, Madigan strove mightily to hang on to the post. But earlier this week he suspended his campaign after falling nine votes short of what he needed in an initial closed-door ballot. That opened the door for candidates, including Welch, who had stopped short of officially making bids as long as Madigan was actively campaigning for another term.
As Welch worked to round up votes, he said one of the concerns he heard from fellow Democrats was “the legislature getting back to work” after a year where “the executive branch basically made all the decisions.”
Amid the pandemic, lawmakers seldom met in Springfield last year, and state policy was primarily driven by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
“We want to let people know that the legislature is back in business and we’re going to be engaged in the government process in 2021,” Welch said.
Welch’s commitment to a more active legislature this year should be welcome news for Republican lawmakers, who for months have lamented Pritzker’s “governing by executive order” during the pandemic and have pushed for a return to in-person sessions in Springfield.
Welch opened Thursday’s largely ceremonial House session with his wife and two children standing beside him on the makeshift dais.
In floor speeches, Democrats and Republicans both took note of the historic election of the first Black speaker of the Illinois House.
Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth, a Democrat from Peoria, said a lame-duck session that saw the Black Caucus succeed in passing a number of the priorities in its wide-ranging social justice agenda, as well as Welch taking the speaker’s chair “has been the absolute highlight of my career, to see this come to fruition.”
Rep. Tim Butler, a Springfield Republican, noted that one of his great-grandfathers, who served in the Illinois General Assembly, was an enslaver.
“The fact that I can stand here today with a Black man, an African American man, as the speaker of the House of Representatives, is something he never could have imagined — that a few generations removed from him, I would stand here with you as my speaker,” Butler said.
Welch on Thursday called the milestone of his election as speaker “monumental.”
“When you come from where I come from, Black boys and Black girls are told you’re not going to achieve anything. But today they can wake up and not only believe it, but they can see it,” Welch said. “And so, that’s important because that’s not just for the people in my community, that’s for people all across the state.”
