Rep. McCombie: GOP needs to ‘move forward’
SPRINGFIELD — In March 2019, Republican state Rep. Tony McCombie pushed back against a bill that would require more diversity on the boards of publicly held corporations in Illinois.
Its main sponsor was Democratic state Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch of suburban Hillside. McCombie blasted the proposal, which required publicly traded corporations to appoint at least one woman and one Black person to their boards, as a “horrible bill” and said it was the latest example of the state meddling in private business.
“We are destroying the ability for our state to grow,” she said.
During the sometimes-heated floor debate, Welch at one point declared, “I’m not going to stand here as a Black man with a 5-yearold daughter and be ashamed that I am fighting for her to have a seat at the table.”
The bill ultimately passed by a 61-27 vote in the House, with McCombie voting against it. But after changes were made through the Senate, McCombie voted for the legislation.
Three years after that House debate, which encapsulated some of the differences between the two parties, Welch is poised to head into his second term as House speaker, and McCombie is about to take over as the chamber’s Republican leader.
Representing a largely rural district outside the Quad Cities in northwestern Illinois, she will be the first woman to lead a House caucus for either party, a distinction she downplayed a day after the vote. McCombie told a throng of reporters in her new statehouse office that “women get things done” but said she doesn’t want to be defined by her gender.
“You shouldn’t be chosen because you’re a woman,” she said. “You should be chosen because you’re the right person.”
Welch, the state’s first Black House speaker, congratulated her “as a fellow history maker” and said he hopes her selection signals a fresh start for Democrats and Republicans in the chamber to work together.
“Obviously, we have some sincere disagreements, but I also respect Leader McCombie’s commitment to those who have elected her to serve,” Welch said in a statement.
Welch’s words belie the reality that Democrats don’t need much help from McCombie’s side of the aisle to get anything done. She’s taking over a caucus badly battered in the recent election, when House Democrats increased an already sizable 73-45 supermajority to a 78-40 edge.
Illinois’ GOP has alienated many of its traditional, moderate voters with the embrace by many in the party, particularly in southern parts of the state, of far-right ideologies. As the first downstate representative to lead House Republicans since George Ryan 40 years ago, McCombie stressed the need for the GOP to attract new supporters.
“We need to move forward after this last election and talk to the independent voters and commonsense voters, those folks that didn’t show up for us this cycle,” McCombie said in a Nov. 22 interview with the Tribune. “We have Republicans all over the state, whether it’s in the suburbs or in Chicago. We just need to get them to the table and show that we support them.”
In her time in the House, McCombie has voted against legislation that advances gun control and against measures that favor abortion rights — stances shared by most Republicans in the chamber.
She also joined Republican opposition to Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s handling of the COVID19 pandemic and to the sweeping criminal justice reforms, championed by progressive Democrats, known as the SAFE-T Act.
But McCombie also has demonstrated a willingness to work with Democrats during her nearly six years in the House. She’s often co-sponsored bills with the opposing party, including legislation last year that made threatening speech
a component for a stalking charge.
And earlier this year, she was the only Republican among 12 House sponsors to push though legislation that created a commission to advocate for children of incarcerated parents. She’s also worked with Democratic lawmakers on matters that promote the safety of child welfare workers.
“She has shown that she can focus on policy over politics,” said state Rep. Marcus Evans, a Democrat from Chicago and an assistant majority leader in the House.
Illinois Republican legislators regularly complain about getting shut out as the Democratic supermajorities in both chambers push their agenda without meaningful opposition.
But McCombie said it’s a new day for House Republicans, and that for her caucus to be productive it must work with Democrats.
“We’re going to have to be willing to have conversations with them. It’s been a long time since we were sitting at the table, so, you know, it’s about us working together to make a difference for Illinois families,” she said. “And the only way that we’re going to do that is to work together. And I do look forward to sitting down with Speaker Welch ... to share our vision and hear his thoughts for the next General Assembly.”
McCombie takes over House GOP leadership from Jim Durkin of Western Springs, who resigned a day after the party’s dismal election results. Her selection by colleagues represents a shift in Republican power from Chicago’s suburbs to downstate as Democrats have gained power in the vote-heavy collar counties and exurbs.
McCombie joined the House after winning a seat that had been part of the veto-proof Democratic supermajority. Formerly the mayor of Savanna, a Mississippi River town of about 2,800 people, she
defeated two-term Democratic state Rep. Mike Smiddy of Hillsdale in 2016.
Democrats had drawn the district in 2011 with the intention of keeping it safely blue, but “changing dynamics” turned it red, said state Rep. Tim Butler, a Springfield Republican who headed the House GOP’s campaign operation in 2016.
“I think the Democrats had kind of passed up that district philosophically and Tony did a good job, I think, of identifying with the district,” said Butler, an assistant House GOP leader who is leaving the legislature in January. “And I think certainly in 2016, that’s when (former President Donald) Trump was at the (top) of the ticket and won, and so I think that was a help in districts like that, blue-collar districts that really hadn’t been in the Republican column for a long time.”
An ardent critic of the Pritzker administration’s handling of the state’s child welfare system, McCombie has pushed for laws to improve the public safety of workers from the state’s embattled Department of Children and Family Services.
Earlier this year, McCombie co-sponsored several DCFS-related bills, including a proposal to allow caseworkers from the agency to carry concealed handguns while investigating cases of abuse and neglect. She also pushed for reinstating the death penalty for anyone 18 and over who murders a DCFS worker, as well as police officers and other first responders. Neither bill has gone anywhere.
More successful was a bipartisan bill she sponsored in the House that allows the families of DCFS workers to acquire state benefits if the workers are killed while performing their duties. The bill, which Pritzker signed into law, came after DCFS worker Deidre
Silas was stabbed to death during a home visit in central Illinois in January.
McCombie has pushed legislation to make penalties for attacking DCFS workers on par with those for attacking a firefighter or police officer. That bill was inspired by the death of Pamela Sue Knight, a DCFS worker who was badly beaten while trying to take a 2-year-old boy into protective custody in western Illinois in 2017. She died of her injuries the following year.
A Tribune analysis in 2017 found that Knight was one of at least a dozen DCFS workers who, since 2013, had been attacked or seriously threatened as they entered homes to protect children or investigate mistreatment allegations.
The Knight bill passed 112-0 in the House but it wasn’t enough to win over the Senate Democrats, who’ve resisted codifying penalty enhancements in recent years. Republican State Rep. Tom Demmer of Dixon, who worked with McCombie on the bill, recalled how she worked to sign up co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle.
“I just saw for, over the course of a couple of years, multiple sessions, her just continually, continually pushing and fighting to get that bill called,” said Demmer, a deputy House Republican leader who is also leaving the legislature in January after an unsuccessful bid for state treasurer. “She was also getting people on both sides to put their names to the bill to sign and support it, doing that just shoe-leather work of legislation, of getting out there and talking to people about why the bill was needed and earning their support on it.”
After winning the leadership, McCombie has said she’s hopeful that she can finally bring the Knight legislation over the finish
line.
“You know, as leader I might actually get that bill passed now. So, we’ve been fighting for Pam Knight for a long time. We’ve done it in the House and it dies in the Senate,” McCombie said.
Two months after the 2019 House floor debate over Welch’s public board diversity bill, he called a new version that had been altered in the Senate for a vote. This time, the bill had McCombie’s support.
The revamped bill dropped the requirement that the boards of publicly traded companies in Illinois include members of a specific race or gender, instead only requiring that those companies report on their websites the demographics of their boards and executive ranks as well as plans for promoting diversity in the workplace.
The bill also mandated an annual report card on Illinois companies’ diversity to be published by the University of Illinois.
McCombie and one other GOP House member commended Welch on the new bill, which Pritzker later signed into law.
“This is not only a much better bill, but this is an example of Rep. Welch being a good man,” McCombie said, praising him for taking in various viewpoints in the process of crafting legislation.
“I just want to say, I appreciate you listening to everybody on all sides of the state, and all sides of the business community, and just really appreciate you always working extremely hard to make a great bill and do the best thing for the State of Illinois,” she said.
Welch was moved by the compliments from the other side of the aisle.
“They’re making me blush,” he said, right before the changes passed with a House vote of 105-0.