The state senate’s recent vote on Marty Cohen’s nomination for chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission shakes up more than a few preconceptions about party ideologies. The party of big business took a surprisingly strong stand for the consumer and against deregulation. The so-called party of the people hung one of their own out to dry and stabbed constituents in the back. Confirmation hearings are often brutal. But this vote left even insiders shaking their heads.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“It was Alice in Wonderland,” says Bob Vondrasek, executive director of the South Austin Coalition advocacy group.
You can’t blame Cohen’s defeat on the Republicans. The Democrats have a senate majority. If they had simply voted along party lines, Cohen, a nominee tapped by a Democratic governor, would have been approved. He even had the votes of 13 Republican senators–not bad for a consumer advocate who supposedly has an ax to grind.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan has strongly opposed ComEd’s proposal, contending that there aren’t enough electricity providers to guarantee legitimate competition in an auction. Indeed, the largest provider of electricity in the state is Exelon, ComEd’s parent company. If ComEd gets its way on deregulation it might wind up holding an auction at which its parent company is the dominant bidder. Sounds more like a monopoly than a market.
With Cohen on board as chairman, ComEd would have faced a difficult battle over deregulation. But then the senate torpedoed Cohen’s nomination. “If you view the vote on Marty in terms of these other issues, the senators were being used to send Blagojevich a message: ComEd wasn’t going down without a fight,” says the insider.
“I don’t know if the senate’s going to muster up the votes to do again what they did to Marty,” says Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn. “It’s a real shame what happened to Marty. I believe he would have made an outstanding chairman. But this is only the opening round.”
