By LORRAINE SWANSON

Editor, Lake Effect News

Heather Steans was handpicked by former 7^th District State Senator Carol Ronen to fill her seat after she resigned mid-term in October 2007. Since she first announced her candidacy for Ronen’s seat in 2007, two major issues have haunted her.

One of those major issues is the accusation that “the fix was in” when she suddenly emerged as the heir apparent to Carol Ronen’s seat, just days after Ronen announced her intention to resign before the November filing deadline for state candidates.

The other major issue involves the major amounts of cash that she and husband Leo Smith contributed to Rod Blagojevich’s campaign fund for years. Steans has sidestepped or avoided questions about that, and the press has essentially given her what seems to be a pass on the issue.

Ironically, Steans is running on a platform that includes supporting campaign ethics reform, as she also did in 2008.  In her current campaign, however, Steans has stated that will voluntarily comply with Illinois’s new campaign finance law, Senate Bill 1466, that was signed into law by Gov. Pat Quinn last month. Until very recently, few have challenged the paradox of Steans’ own massive contributions to both Democrat and Republican candidates.  For the first time in state history, SB 1466, which does not take effect until after the next election cycle, limits the contributions that individuals and political action committees (PACs) can make to candidates running for Illinois offices.

During the Democratic candidates’ forum on January 6, Senator Steans was subjected to a grilling by challenger Jim Madigan, who is running against Steans as an openly gay candidate in the Democratic primary in the 7^th District State Senate. It was probably the toughest Q&A session that Steans has experienced since entering the realm of elected officials. The January 6 examination was far more grueling, for example, than the one Steans and her husband sat through in December 2007 for the Northside Democracy For America(NDFA). At that event, Smith was asked to explain why Steans’ name was all over Blagojevich’s campaign disclosures. His response was, “We have a joint checking account.” But last week’s forum differed from the December 2007 forum in two important ways: It included a highly motivated, well-informed and articulate challenger (Jim Madigan), and it was open to the public (not just to DFA members).

Steans did not (could not) dispute Madigan’s frequent references last week to the multiple contributions totaling more than $205,000 to Blagojevich that she and Smith made between February 2002 and April 2007. Steans could not deny those contributions because they are a matter of public record. Five of those contributions were in the amounts of $25,000 each. The Steans-Smith contributions to Blago continued even after it was publicly known that Blagojevich was under federal investigation.

In recent weeks, however, a road map of where all those contributions went, and the implications of how they may have benefited Steans, has emerged. That road map has been discussed by others for the past two years, but not in the fullness and clarity that Jim Madigan has brought to it during his current campaign. At that forum, Madigan focused on that road map with GPS precision.

Steans is immensely popular in the part of her district that is known as the “Far North Liberal Lakefront.” When she attends event, she sometimes draws cheers that rival those given to Mayor Daley at firehouse dedications and public art unveilings. Her personal credentials are impressive, with degrees from Princeton and Harvard. She’s the kind of person you’d like to have for a next door neighbor. When she says she has committed her adult life to advancing progressive causes and social change, either through political and charitable giving, it sounds credible.

When it became apparent in 2002 that Gov. George Ryan and his cronies had leaned on Illinois Secretary of State employees into selling commercial drivers licenses to unqualified truckers to pay for tickets to Ryan fundraisers, among other charges for which Ryan and his pals were ultimately convicted, we believed candidate Blagojevich when he promised to bring his broom and a can of fresh paint to clean up the corruption of another disgraced Illinois governor.

That belief, however, was shaken in October of 2005 when the Chicago Tribune revealed that a federal grand jury was investigating the Blagojevich administration’s own alleged political hiring practices. Even so, the campaign contributions from the joint Steans-Smith checking account kept rolling into the Blagojevich campaign coffers, with one final gift of $25,000 to Blago’s Citizens for Tax Fairness, Healthcare and Education PAC. That money was used in April, 2007 to buy advertising to promote the governor’s proposed – and ultimately failed – gross receipts tax.

Questions about Steans’ campaign contributions to Blagojevich, and about the dotted line to Ronen deserve to be asked. Between 2000 and 2007, Steans and Smith donated more than $16,000 in cash and in-kind donations to the former state senator. In July 2005, Steans and Smith hosted a fundraiser for Ronen, in conjunction with Blagojevich ally John Wyma that netted Ronen $50,000.

After Ronen resigned in the middle of her senate term in October 2007, she went on to serve two months as a senior staff advisor in the Blagojevich administration, adding an additional $38,000 to her annual public pension. Steans got Ronen’s seat in the Illinois State Senate, handily winning the February 2008 Democratic primary against opponent Suzanne Elder.

Those questions were put directly to Heather Steans at the January 6 forum by Jim Madigan. She did not dispute the validity of those questions. Steans has said, as she did again at that forum, that she is happy “to have pulled the switch on Blagojevich.”

It would have been somehow refreshing if instead she had said, “I paid to get in so I could end pay-to-play.”

Tags: Carol Ronen, Heather Steans, Jim Madigan