Illinois state Rep. Bob Rita told jurors in the “ComEd Four” bribery trial Monday that former House Speaker Michael Madigan for years had “total control” of the state General Assembly and ruled his fellow Democrats “through fear and intimidation.”

Rita, a 20-year veteran of the House whose district encompasses parts of Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs, is the first sitting elected official to take the witness stand in the trial, which began last week at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

Rita is important to the prosecution’s case because he was on Madigan’s House leadership team and a co-sponsor of ComEd’s massive 2016 legislation at the heart of the indictment. He has not been charged with wrongdoing and told the jury he received a “non-target letter” from the U.S. attorney’s office in exchange for his testimony.

Rita is also expected to testify how he was made a sponsor of another major piece of legislation after a meeting in Madigan’s office in 2013, though the judge has barred Rita from mentioning that it was the state’s massive gambling overhaul.

Meanwhile, Madigan’s former chief of staff, Tim Mapes, has been charged with lying to a grand jury when he said he had no knowledge that McClain had communicated with Rita in 2018 on Madigan’s behalf. That indictment is not expected to be mentioned in the ComEd Four trial, however.

Testifying in a thick south Chicago accent, Rita said Monday that Madigan was by far the most powerful person in the state General Assembly, based on his longevity as an elected official and House speaker, as well as being the chair of the state Democratic Party.

Rita said that Madigan controlled how members of his party got elected and how business was conducted in the House, including setting the rules of the chamber, deciding who served on coveted committees, and which legislation made it to the floor for a vote.

Rita also said Madigan was “very good at raising money,” and that his control of the purse strings come election time made members dependent upon his support for their political survival.

Rita said Madigan valued “loyalty to himself, to the caucus, to the party” above all else. He said he counted himself as among Madigan’s loyal supporters in the 18 years they served in the House together.

Asked how Madigan typically exercised his power, Rita paused for a second before saying flatly, “Through fear and intimidation.”

Rita testified Madigan could crush a lawmaker who took positions that the speaker didn’t like, citing how Madigan orchestrated the defeat of former Rep. Ken Dunkin, a Chicago Democrat who sided with then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, to cause legislation Madigan-backed legislation to fail.

A record of more than $6 million was spent in the 2016 primary contest in which Dunkin lost to Democrat Julianna Stratton, who is now the state’s lieutenant governor.

As he testified, Rita sat mostly expressionless on the witness stand, dressed in a dark suit, dark tie, white shirt and brown shoes. He spoke slightly softer when he needed to say the names of Madigan and McClain while getting quizzed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker.

Rita’s testimony began near the end of the fourth day of trial and lasted only about half an hour before U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber recessed the trial for the day. Rita will be back on the stand at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

On trial are Michael McClain, 75, an ex-ComEd lobbyist; former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, 64; ex-ComEd lobbyist John Hooker, 73; and Jay Doherty, 69, a lobbyist and consultant who formerly led the City Club of Chicago.

The indictment alleged ComEd poured $1.3 million into payments funneled to ghost “subcontractors” who were actually Madigan’s cronies, put a Madigan-backed person on the ComEd board, and gave coveted internships to families in his 13th Ward, all part of an elaborate scheme to keep the speaker happy and help the utility’s legislative agenda in Springfield.

The defendants’ attorneys contend that the so-called scheme was nothing more than legal lobbying, part of the state’s high-stakes, often-messy politics where myriad interest groups and stakeholders compete for access to lawmakers.

Madigan and McClain, meanwhile, are facing separate racketeering charges alleging an array of corrupt schemes, including the bribery plot by ComEd.

At the center of the case are more than a hundred wiretapped phone calls and secretly recorded meetings that prosecutors say captured the defendants laying out the scheme in their own words.

The approximately two dozen recordings played so far have focused on the relationship between Madigan and McClain, who served with Madigan in the General Assembly beginning in the 1970s and was one of his most trusted confidants.

Earlier Monday, former Illinois Senate President John Cullerton’s name surfaced in recorded conversations between Madigan and McClain talking about a 2018 political dispute that had brewed largely out of the public eye.

Madigan complained about a political ad critical of him and tied to Senate Democrats that Cullerton led in 2018, saying that the attacks should be aimed at President Donald Trump and other Republicans rather than the speaker, who doubled as chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois.

In a secretly recorded telephone call in July 2018, McClain opened by saying bluntly, “Sorry about that stupid Cullerton move.” After Madigan asked, “What’s your take on what I should do?” McClain suggested letting him and other allies of the speaker hammer Cullerton with “body blows.”

McClain told Madigan on the recording that the longtime lobbyist had sent Cullerton a text expressing displeasure and that sooner or later Cullerton had to be told it is “(expletive) inappropriate.”

Listen to the audio:

McClain maintained criticism of Madigan could be picked up and used by Rauner, Madigan’s GOP nemesis running against Democratic J.B. Pritzker in the November 2018 gubernatorial race.

“It’s got enormous implications in my view,” McClain said of criticism from Senate Democrats. “It’s so stupid, I can’t even put my arms around it.”

Madigan said the general election is a time to work against Republicans and that Democrats have “plenty to work with” by going after Trump and Rauner.

McClain asked Madigan to “let me work on it for 24 to 48 hours. If Cullerton hasn’t by that time called you, you’re going to have to call him. He should come to your law office.”

“OK,” Madigan said.

McClain added Madigan had “enough problems” with #MeToo scandals involving misbehaving aides and a push by Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, to improve Madigan’s handling of sexual harassment complaints and the general treatment of women in Springfield.

While the call concerning the political rift with Cullerton has nothing to do with ComEd, prosecutors are using it to try to establish to the jury that McClain was a key member of Madigan’s political brain trust, someone the speaker strategized with on a regular basis and delegated authority to when it came to thorny political situations.

Later in the same call, McClain worried that criticism from Senate Democrats could give “ammunition” to opponents who might try to challenge his speakership, but the speaker maintained he wasn’t even thinking of that because the focus at the time was on the November election.

Knowing that Madigan and Cullerton had a decadeslong friendship from their days in the House together, McClain recalled words of his father, a onetime legislator like his son: “My dad always said, ‘You always got hurt from your friends, not your enemies, because your enemies, you had your guard up.’ ”

Wrapping up the call, they talked about how Cullerton should be told to “pull the ads down,” that it is at Madigan’s request, and that the speaker could respond by doing nothing or taking unspecified action.

“If you want to put the squeeze on the guy,” McClain said, Madigan could “hurt him pretty badly,” calling the speaker a “street fighter.”

In other calls from 2018 played at trial on Monday, Madigan asked McClain to get hold of Sam Panayotovich, a former state representative from Chicago who had a lobbying business with former Rep. Joe Berrios, the longtime Cook County assessor who was under fire over campaign contributions from real estate lawyers who did business with his office as he also chaired the Cook County Democratic Party.

“Are you in position to advise Mr. Panayotovich to stay away from me?” Madigan asked, according to the call played for jurors.

McClain immediately called Panayotovich. In that call, also played for the jury, he very sternly told him, “Hey, you made a request for you and Joe to go see the speaker. There is a feeding frenzy on this guy right now ... the optics just aren’t good for him.”

McClain later called Madigan’s secretary, telling her to tell the speaker he “took care of” the matter with Panayotovich, according to what was played in court Monday.

Prosecutors Monday also called Scott Vogt, ComEd’s vice president of strategy and energy policy, who testified about the nuts and bolts of the energy business and how the utility, largely under Pramaggiore’s direction, turned its fortunes around by pushing for two massive bills in the Illinois General Assembly in 2011 and 2016.

Vogt said Madigan’s assistance was crucial in passing both bills, holding meetings with legislators and stakeholders and shepherding the legislation through the necessary committees.

“It’s my belief is that (Madigan) had opened up the pathway to move it to the floor,” Vogt said about the passage of the 2016 bill, which he said left the leaders inside ComEd “jubilant.” Without Madigan’s support, he said, the bill would have “died.”

Despite all of the alleged behind-the-scenes machinations, Madigan was listed on the roll call as “not voting” rather than taking a position in favor or against the measure — a move that sometimes is done when a lawmaker recuses himself from legislation.

The 2011 bill in particular gave rise to some intense moments in the legislator, including one mini scandal that became known in Springfield simply as “Buttongate.”

While Quinn vetoed the 2011 smart-grid bill and it was overridden, the House scrambled on another utility bill roll call that prompted the Democratic governor to call for a review of why several lawmakers were recorded as voting when they were not on the House floor to push their own voting buttons.

At the time, several lawmakers complained that they had just left committee hearings and didn’t get to the House in time to vote but still saw they were recorded as voting.

Eventually, then-Legislative Inspector General Tom Homer determined the voting rule was violated, but he found no evidence of “malicious intent” nor a conspiracy by House leaders over how the vote took place.

Vogt was not asked about the button scandal, but did recall for jurors how things got so strained during on one utility bill votethat people had to physically run the latest version of the bill over to the Senate in order to ensure it could be put up for a vote under the deadline.

On cross-examination by Pramaggiore’s attorney, Daniel Craig, Vogt agreed that ComEd got bills it wanted passed long before any bribery scheme allegedly began. He also said that the 2011 “smart grid” legislation ended up helping customers and stakeholders alike, and that Madigan owed nothing to ComEd or its parent, Exelon.

Craig ended his cross by asking Vogt if he could “think of any reason” ComEd would have suddenly felt the need to start bribing Madigan in 2011, after scoring “big wins” in the Illinois House years earlier. Prosecutors objected, so Vogt did not answer.

On redirect by Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz, Vogt acknowledged that by insisting on a “sunset provision” in the 2011 bill, Madigan basically forced ComEd to go back to the legislature in a relatively short period of time.

“What kind of control did that give the speaker?” Schwartz asked.

“A fair amount,” Vogt said.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

rlong@chicagotribune.com