Ex-Speaker Michael Madigan’s work with DC public relations firm sparks #MeToo anger, apology

Within the mountain of evidence that last month helped convict former Democratic Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s longtime chief of staff, Tim Mapes, federal prosecutors introduced a single email exchange that ignited a surprising political controversy.

In 2018, as the #MeToo movement was sweeping the nation and the speaker was facing accusations he ran an office for years plagued by sexual harassment, Madigan employed the Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm SKDK for guidance. The speaker met with Anita Dunn, a Democratic PR guru who helped found SKDK and currently advises President Joe Biden, and Madigan paid the firm more than $200,000 through his campaign fund, court documents and state records showed.

At the same time, however, SKDK was working with the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, a women’s advocacy group, to help arrange local public relations support for a former Madigan campaign worker who was the first to call out the mistreatment of women inside Madigan’s state and political organizations.

The former campaign worker, Alaina Hampton, and those who worked with her to battle Madigan over alleged political retaliation in federal court say they had no idea SKDK and Dunn worked with Madigan. And they say they didn’t learn about it until the email was disclosed in Mapes’ perjury and obstruction trial last month.

The revelation, Hampton and those aligned with her said, spurred anger, frustration and feelings of distrust about some of those who lay claim to championing the #MeToo movement and fears that big firms such as SKDK tied to national Democratic Party leaders may sometimes overstep when balancing political relationships with the sensitive needs of victims of sexual abuse and harassment.

“If I knew SKDK was working with Mike Madigan, I wouldn’t have even applied for funding from Time’s Up,” Hampton said in an interview with the Tribune. “It’s a clear conflict of interest that the communications firm SKDK was working with Mike Madigan while also working with the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund when I was a client and the legal defense fund was paying money for my legal fees and public relation fees.”

Following days of Tribune questions, SKDK issued an apology Wednesday morning.

“We understand the concerns that have been raised,” SKDK partner Jill Zuckman said in a statement to the Tribune. “In retrospect, we realize that the decision to work with then-Speaker Madigan’s campaign on these matters was an error in light of the support Ms. Hampton was receiving from another firm through a separate initiative we were proud to support.

“We apologize to Ms. Hampton and her allies and reiterate our full support for the survivor community,” Zuckman said.

To Hampton, though, the apology fell flat: “It feels like they’re gaslighting me. Even now.”

Democrats are poised to renominate Biden for a second term at the Democratic National Convention next August in Chicago. The convention is scheduled just months after Madigan’s April trial on unrelated charges of racketeering where some of these issues might be raised about the former chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois, who left the House in 2021.

A source close to Madigan said the issue had not come to his attention and he was unaware of any potential conflict Dunn and SKDK may have had when it worked for his operations.

Joanna Klonsky, a Chicago-based public relations strategist paid by the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund to help Hampton, said the Madigan arrangement with Dunn and SKDK was not only a surprise and “deeply concerning” but also felt like the PR firm was “playing both sides.”

Klonsky, who has worked with politicians such as former Mayor Lori Lightfoot as well as multiple survivors of sexual violence and harassment, said Dunn and SKDK should have disclosed they were working with Madigan so she and Hampton could have considered whether to work with them or set up parameters so all sides were comfortable.

Before issuing the apology, Zuckman stressed SKDK and Dunn, also a veteran of the Obama administration, had a “stringent internal conflict process. The work for the former speaker cleared that conflict process and had nothing to do with the lawsuit” filed by Hampton.

“In 2018,” according to Wednesday’s statement, “SKDK engaged an outside contractor on behalf of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund to arrange for communications representation for survivors of workplace sexual harassment. The contractor worked with dozens of firms around the country to pair PR professionals with countless numbers of survivors, including Alaina Hampton.”

Zuckman said the private contractor assigned to Hampton “did not work for or advise any of SKDK’s other clients and Ms. Hampton was not an SKDK client.”

“At the time, then-Speaker Madigan’s campaign was a client, and the firm judged that helping him and his staff to take responsibility and correct systemic workplace issues benefited the movement as a whole,” Zuckman said.

Even so, Hampton said “an apology without taking accountability is just not enough to repair the harm that they’ve done to me … and the damage they’ve done to the movement. Other women or victims of workplace harassment and bullying are going to see this and feel discouraged by what has happened in my case and not feel safe to come forward.”

Neither Dunn nor the White House responded to repeated requests for comment.

Klonsky, who said she communicated with at least two people working with SKDK regarding her public relations work with Hampton, questioned the SKDK arrangement with Madigan from the moment she learned of it.

“Even if what they’re saying is true, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have disclosed it,” Klonsky said, adding SKDK could have opted to steer clear of Madigan during the Hampton case. “All I can do is take them at their word that they never passed any information along (to Madigan), but we have no way to confirm that. And so, it’s troubling.”

“Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter what they did or didn’t do. The conflict existed innately,” Klonsky said.

Hampton also had questioned whether her information was tightly controlled, noting multiple people with SKDK emails were copied on correspondence with her. She said her SKDK contact also requested information about plans for media outreach, court dates and court filing deadlines that might generate press attention.

“I don’t know what their firewalls were,” Hampton said.

Over the years, according to SKDK, the firm worked with Christine Blasey Ford, who testified about alleged misconduct issues before a U.S. Senate panel to oppose the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The company also worked with nearly 30 survivors leading up to and through the trial of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein.

But Dunn also drew criticism for communicating with Weinstein before his rape conviction. Weinstein sought Dunn’s advice as he was under increasing scrutiny, The New York Times reported, and Dunn replied in a blunt email: “You should accept your fate graciously, and not seek to deny or discredit those who your behaviour has affected.”

When the issue arose in 2017, SKDK issued a statement that Weinstein was not a client and that a friend asked Dunn to speak with him, adding, “If you know Anita, you can only imagine what she said to him.”

The Mapes trial courtroom disclosure that Dunn and SKDK worked for Madigan also caught the attention of activist Maryann Loncar, who accused then-state Rep. Lou Lang of Skokie, a Madigan ally, of sexual harassment at the height of the 2018 outcry over the Capitol’s toxic culture.

Loncar sent a copy of Tribune coverage about the email being introduced as evidence in the Mapes trial to officials connected to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, saying “this should not be acceptable behavior.”

In response, Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund Director Jennifer Mondino wrote back: “We recognize how concerning reading this must have been for you — we also had no knowledge that Speaker Madigan had hired SKDK at any point and are only learning about this now through press coverage, just as you have.

“Having said that, the day-to-day team at SKDK who worked with the Fund maintained the utmost professionalism and was not necessarily involved with all of SKDK’s clients,” said Mondino, whose group is based at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington.

Lang has repeatedly denied Loncar’s allegations but he resigned after being pressured by Madigan to step down. A legislative inspector general deemed Loncar’s claims unfounded, though Loncar refused to take part in the IG investigation, calling it a “joke.”

Both the National Women’s Law Center and the defense fund’s team “stand by our assistance of” Hampton, according to a statement by Uma Iyer, a spokesperson for both groups, who also acknowledged that, “we were surprised to learn from press coverage that Speaker Madigan retained SKDK and had no prior knowledge of this fact.”

From 2018 to 2021, SKDK was on a monthly retainer to focus on connecting survivors with PR professionals who were supported by the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, Iyer said, but that contract ceased at the end of 2021 and the work was brought in-house.

The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, Iyer said, assists with funding for cases like that of Hampton, where people face workplace sexual harassment and related retaliation, as well as for media assistance. The fund itself does not represent individuals in cases, leaving legal decisions and strategy to survivors and their lawyers, Iyer said.

“SKDK no longer plays any role in Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund efforts,” Iyer said, adding the decision was made “in part to ensure that there are no potential perceived or actual conflicts.”

During the Mapes trial, the September 2018 email was presented as one of dozens of pieces of evidence. The email was part of an ongoing conversation between Mapes and Michael McClain, a Madigan confidant who has been convicted in the “ComEd Four” corruption trial and is a co-defendant in Madigan’s racketeering case.

The email exchange occurred only months after Madigan had ousted Mapes in June 2018 when a midlevel legislative employee accused the chief of staff of sexual harassment and fostering a “culture of sexism, harassment and bullying.”

Mapes started the email correspondence with McClain by noting a Madigan-signed commentary in the Tribune from September 2018 that said he took responsibility for failing to “do enough” to address inappropriate behavior in Springfield and that he promised to do more.

In his email response to Mapes, McClain explained the commentary arose because Madigan agreed to hire a “crisis management firm” and landed on SKDK with Dunn as the lead.

“She met with us and the speaker and laid out a plan,” McClain wrote, referring to the speaker as “S.” “The S liked it and he hired her.”

McClain wrote that Dunn recommended starting with an “op-ed” piece.

The Tribune later revealed the Madigan commentary came out about the same time McClain was rounding up friendly utility lobbyists to send checks to Kevin Quinn, whom the speaker had bounced in February 2018 after Hampton accused Quinn of sexual harassment. Prosecutors also have alleged Madigan knew ahead of time about the plan to send Quinn funds, citing a secretly recorded call between McClain and Madigan.

Quinn, the brother of Madigan’s hand-picked 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn, had sent an unrelenting stream of inappropriate texts to Hampton despite her demands that he stop.

In March 2018, Hampton sued Madigan-controlled campaign funds in federal court, charging his political organization blackballed her for “asserting her rights to be free from unlawful harassment and a sexually hostile work environment by failing to hire her to work as a political consultant for the 2018 campaign cycle.”

In November 2019, Hampton attorney Shelly Kulwin said a deal was reached in which Hampton was to receive $75,000 of a $275,000 settlement from four Madigan-controlled campaign funds. Kulwin said at the time that his law firm was to receive the bulk of the rest of the settlement money, but a portion also went to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund.

The lawsuit was pending when the Friends of Michael Madigan campaign committee, the former speaker’s personal campaign fund, paid $242,619 to SKDK for “media strategy” between August 2018 and September 2019, state election records showed.

In the work with Madigan, Zuckman said, “Anita agreed to help Speaker Madigan take accountability in a very public way so he could start to fix his workplace. We empathize with the survivor of Madigan’s aide, and we’re glad she got to settle her case.”

The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund and the National Women’s Law Center, said Iyer, are separate from the charity-related groups known as Time’s Up, Time’s Up Foundation and Time’s Up Now, entities that ceased operation in early 2023.

The Time’s Up charity drew criticism over concerns it went too far to help Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo when he became engulfed by a sexual harassment scandal, leaving some survivors feeling betrayed and confused about the group’s direction.

In 2021, The New York Times reported SKDK official Hilary Rosen, then a Time’s Up board member, was involved in the group’s response to the first of the allegations of inappropriate conduct against Cuomo, who eventually stepped down. Rosen, who no longer works for SKDK, told The Washington Post she never talked to Cuomo’s office directly but tried to “encourage them, through a friend, to fully address this allegation and to take any problems in his office seriously, but I was shut down.”

The Cuomo controversy also contributed to Chicago attorney Tina Tchen’s resignation as chief executive of the Time’s Up charity following reports Cuomo and his aides sought her advice on how to handle the growing harassment scandal while she simultaneously led that nonprofit.

Tchen first apologized, saying she was “used as cover” and only got involved because she thought Cuomo’s “office was interested in doing the right thing for women.” But Tchen later said she wanted to end battles between women and activists involved in the #MeToo movement “who should be working together to fight for change.”

At that time, the National Women’s Law Center and the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund announced it would end its contract with SKDK to connect survivors with public relations advocates. Tchen, who worked in the Obama administration, including as chief of staff for first lady Michelle Obama, would later become an executive vice president for the Obama Foundation.

rlong@chicagotribune.com

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com