Profile: The life of a politician and lawyer

By: Robert Loerzel

Cullerton has been a prominent name in Chicago and Illinois politics for a long time.

Back in 1871, Edward F. Cullerton won a seat on the Chicago City Council, going on to serve 41 years as an alderman. An archetypal Irish-American ward politician who was also a state legislator, Cullerton’s nicknames reveal the divided opinions about him. He was known both as “Honest Old Ed” and “Foxy Ed.”

Other Cullertons have been aldermen and ward committeemen, too. P.J. “Parky” Cullerton became the Cook County assessor in 1958, holding that post for 17 years.

And now state Sen. John J. Cullerton (D-6th) — the great-grandson of Edward F. Cullerton’s brother — is a powerful political figure in Springfield. After 12 years as a state representative, and 17 years as a state senator representing neighborhoods on Chicago’s North Side, 60-year-old Cullerton became Senate president in January.

“He’s just one of the most talented people under the dome in Springfield,” said State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D-12th), who worked as Cullerton’s chief of staff when he was in the Illinois House. She said Cullerton’s rise to power was slow and methodical. He put in his dues over many years of writing legislation and building relationships, Feigenholtz said.

Cullerton has received his share of criticism, including newspaper editorials that claimed he weakened this year’s ethics reforms. Addressing Cullerton, the Chicago Tribune said: “Rather than agreeing to … crucial reforms, you stick with your rope-a-dope squabbling.”

But it’s not just fellow Democrats like Feigenholtz who speak highly of Cullerton.

State Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-24th) said, “Sen. Cullerton is a workhorse, nuts-and-bolts, hard-working lawyer-legislator. … John Cullerton is a credit to the legal profession, and he gives lawyer-legislators a good name. Professionally, we should be proud to have people like Sen. Cullerton in the General Assembly, even if he leans too far to the left for me.”

Throughout his political career, Cullerton has continued practicing law. He’s a partner with Thompson Coburn, where he handles mostly real estate-related matters. The Illinois Bar Foundation plans to honor Cullerton at its Oct. 16 gala at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago.

“He’s been very active — helping us to raise money, helping us to find different ways to provide access to justice,” said gala chair Shawn Kasserman. The foundation raises money to provide legal assistance to people who can’t afford it, as well as helping lawyers who can no longer support themselves.

Kasserman said Cullerton has a history of standing up for these sorts of programs when they come up for funding in the state budget.

“He’s always been someone down there fighting for the little guy,” Kasserman said.

In the family

Even though Cullerton’s family tree seems to be full of politicians, he said he didn’t know much about that history when he was growing up.

He knew his cousin Parky Cullerton, but no one in John’s immediate family was involved in politics. His father and paternal grandfather were electricians. The idea of becoming a politician did not enter Cullerton’s mind, but at about age 12 he decided he wanted to be a lawyer.

Cullerton’s role model was his maternal grandfather, Tom Tyrell, a real-estate lawyer who practiced on Chicago’s West Side.

“He took a liking to me, but he was a stern guy,” Cullerton said. “He’d give me books and encourage me to become a lawyer. … I had two grandfathers. One was a lawyer and one was an electrician. The lawyer always had a new car every year, so I figured that lawyers made more money than electricians.”

Laughing, Cullerton added, “Now it’s the other way around.”

The oldest of nine children, Cullerton remembered his brothers and sisters impatiently waiting as their grandfather delivered a legal lesson at the dinner table.

“I remember him cutting up the cherry pie for dessert,” Cullerton said. “And the kids were all there waiting for their dessert, but my grandfather was trying to explain how a corporation has shares. And he cut the pie up into individual shares and was lecturing me about corporations.”

A career path

After earning a bachelor’s degree in political science at Loyola University, Cullerton stayed at Loyola to study law. That was where Cullerton had one of his first experiences of seeing how litigation can work as a tool for change.

After becoming the president of the Loyola University Chicago Student Bar Association, Cullerton and some fellow students drafted a complaint against Loyola.

“We were about ready to sue the university because they did not provide us adequate facilities at our law school,” Cullerton said.

The students hired a lawyer and negotiated a deal without actually filing the lawsuit. “A brand new law school at the corner of Pearson and State was built a few years after we graduated,” Cullerton said.

After getting his law degree in 1974, Cullerton’s first job was working as a Cook County assistant public defender.

“It’s a great, great place to practice,” Cullerton said. “There’s nothing that surprises you in life anymore after you’ve worked at 26th and California.”

Cullerton’s first task was defending a man charged with murdering a police officer.

That case, which ended in a guilty verdict, was one of about a dozen trials Cullerton handled over the next five years.

In one trial, he won an acquittal for a man charged with raping a teacher in front of her class.

“He didn’t do it,” Cullerton said. “We proved he didn’t do it. We showed that he was somewhere else at the time.”

But most of Cullerton’s cases as a public defender never went before a jury.

“Let’s face it,” he said. “Ninety percent of the time they would plead guilty because it was in their best interest to plead guilty. They would have been found guilty and they wanted to get a lesser sentence. That’s part of plea bargaining. But even in cases where I thought that the guy did it … you force the state to prove someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s what the state’s job is.”

Political involvement

Cullerton’s first political experience was getting elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1976.

“I met the politicians and said, ‘I can do that,’ ” he said. Two years later, Cullerton won a seat in the Illinois House.

At the same time, Cullerton quit working as a public defender and went into private practice. In 1988, he joined Fagel Haber, which merged with Thompson Coburn in 2007. He works at the firm alongside his youngest brother, Patrick.

Many of Cullerton’s clients are property owners who believe their assessments and tax bills should be lower. Cullerton researches their properties and presents their cases before the Cook County Assessor’s Office and the Cook County Board of Review. He also handles zoning cases, usually in the City of Chicago.

Cullerton said he strictly follows state laws concerning potential conflicts of interest between his work as a lawyer and a senator. Cullerton said he watches out for people who want to hire him as a lawyer because of his role as Senate president.

“We don’t take on cases because people think they can get some favorable benefit,” he said. “There’s a total divorce from my law practice and the way I vote. The way I vote is based on my conscience and my district. I don’t take into account anything having to do with the law practice.”

When clients talk with Cullerton, they get the sense that he is genuinely interested in what they have to say, said Thomas Minogue, chairman of Thompson Coburn. And Cullerton is skilled at coming up with practical solutions, he said.

“John has a very nice ability to quickly ascertain what the essence of the problem is and what the alternative ways of resolving the situation are,” Minogue said.

Feigenholtz offered similar observations of Cullerton’s work in Springfield.

“He’s a great listener,” she said. “He’s an incredibly quick study and understands the complexities of things. … His experience and his training as an attorney have obviously molded how he operates. He’s very fair-minded.

“He is very skilled at coming to a resolution among parties that have very divergent opinions about something, and forcing people to the table to negotiate on practical solutions.”

Cullerton is also known as something of a comedian.

In his early days as a legislator, he did a humorous impersonation of Mayor Richard J. Daley during political fund-raisers at Second City. But then one day, Daley spoke to him about it.

“He said, ‘Hey, don’t do impersonations of me any more,’ so I said, ‘OK,’ ” Cullerton said.

On another occasion, when Feigenholtz was working on his staff, Cullerton secretly entered her in a beauty contest for “Trucker Queen of the Year.” She ended up as a finalist.

“Everyone knows that John has a wicked sense of humor,” Feigenholtz said. “He’s kind of a prankster.”

Although he clearly retains his sense of humor, Cullerton said he doesn’t joke around quite as much as he used to now that he’s in a leadership position in Springfield.

Two careers

Cullerton said his education and experience as a lawyer give him an advantage whenever he works on writing new laws, and it makes it easier for him to see ways of reaching compromise in Springfield.

“The legal thought process is very helpful in allowing you to understand what the effects of the law are,” he said.

“You can bring about compromises by utilizing your legal skills to try to find an amendment that might accommodate two points of view.”

And his experience as a public defender has also been valuable. “You can visualize and picture the effect that laws might have in the courtroom,” he said.

When Cullerton was the chief sponsor of laws reforming the death penalty in Illinois, he said, “I was very much aware of how those reforms would affect people in the courtroom.”

Cullerton said his work in Springfield makes him more knowledgeable on a wide range of topics, which is useful as an attorney.

“Sen. Cullerton is a walking encyclopedia of statutory drafting issues,” said Dillard, a state senator and lawyer who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor in 2010. “And he clearly has memorized key court decisions on how we structure our legislation.”

Cullerton and Dillard co-chaired the State Senate Judiciary Committee, where Dillard observed Cullerton bringing his experience as a public defender to the table when criminal law issues were up for discussion.

Dillard said Cullerton’s viewpoint as a public defender was a unique perspective “in a sea of prosecutors.”

Over the past four years, the two have also served together on the Criminal Law Edit, Alignment and Reform (CLEAR) Commission, a group calling for an overhaul of the Illinois Criminal Code and Code of Corrections, aiming to make the laws “more readable, understandable, consistent and just.”

As a result, Gov. Pat Quinn signed a new Code of Corrections in April. Now, the CLEAR Commission is pushing for changes in the Criminal Code, which hasn’t been overhauled in more than 45 years ago.

“That was a monumental, several-year process that would never have been completed without the initiation of Sen. Cullerton,” Dillard said.

Cullerton said the CLEAR Commission’s recommendations are among the most significant measures that the General Assembly will deal with in the coming year.

Dealing with the challenges

On Jan. 14, as impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich was on the verge of being ousted, the state Senate elected Cullerton as its new president, replacing the retiring Emil Jones.

Cullerton’s first year as president has been filled with challenges. He’s proud that the General Assembly passed a capital-improvement plan, paying for it with tax and fee increases.

He was disappointed that the House did not go along with a Senate vote to increase the income tax while doubling the income-tax credit that residents receive based on their property-tax bill.

Instead, the General Assembly approved a budget that borrows money to get through the year, he said.

Cullerton plans to bring up the income-tax hike for another vote in 2010.

“We’ll make some changes to it and try to get some more votes in the House,” he said. “The main thing is we don’t want to have to borrow any more money.”

Cullerton defended the ethics reforms that he and House Speaker Michael Madigan shepherded through the General Assembly, saying the measures “surgically” dealt with the most important issues.

But critics say the reforms did not go far enough, especially when it came to campaign finance.

“The one blemish that Sen. Cullerton has in my eyes is that he let a watered-down version of ethical changes be passed,” Dillard said.

A Chicago Sun-Times editorial accused Cullerton and Madigan of liking their campaign- finance bill “because it ignored real reform and actually increased their power, a trick that would have made Machiavelli smile.”

In an Aug. 6 interview, Cullerton defended the bill, saying, “It’s the first time that we’ve ever had campaign-finance limits. There are no more loopholes in it than there are in the federal laws.”

But he later had a change of heart, asking Quinn to veto the bill, in the hope of writing new legislation with broader support. Quinn vetoed the bill on Aug. 27.

Cullerton said he has a different style of leadership than Jones. “My emphasis is to work with the speaker, and to work with the Republicans as well. The style is to work together with everybody, not fight. And Emil fought with the speaker.”

“Sen. Cullerton runs the Senate much more professionally than his predecessor,” Dillard said. “He is very accessible, and on some issues — and I underline some — he actually takes input from Republicans, although I wish he would do it more on big issues like the budget and ethics.”

Being Senate president is time-consuming, but Cullerton said he also remains committed to his work as an attorney.

And he sees the recognition he’s receiving from the Illinois Bar Foundation as a call to action. He said he views it as his responsibility to help raise money.