Barbara Flynn Currie, Illinois First Woman Majority Leader, Dies at 85

Barbara Flynn Currie, a trailblazing Illinois politician who served for 40 years in the Illinois House and became the first woman to serve as majority leader, died Thursday at age 85.

She remained involved in state government even after retiring from the Illinois House in early 2019, serving as head of the Illinois Pollution Control Board until her death.

State Rep. Curtis Tarver, D-Chicago, who was elected in 2018 to replace Currie after she announced she would not seek a 21st term, honored her legacy on the House floor in Springfield.

"The impeachment, actually," House Majority Leader Robyn Gabel, D-Evanston, said, referring to Currie's role in the impeachment proceedings of ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2009. Gabel broke down in tears Friday as she asked the House for a moment of silence to honor her friend and mentor.

Currie led the House committee to investigate the governor after his December 2008 arrest by FBI agents. She was appointed chair of the committee and made clear the work would be "a very solemn experience" with "every i dotted and every t crossed."

The committee had to invent the impeachment process from scratch because the state constitution did not specifically lay it out and Blagojevich was the first constitutional officer impeached in Illinois.

"Heather Wier Vaught, an attorney in the speaker's office at the time who worked on the impeachment effort, recalled that when Madigan formed the bipartisan committee, many in Springfield expected a quick process wherein articles of impeachment were drafted and Blagojevich swiftly removed from office.

But from the outset, Currie made clear that the committee's work would be 'a very solemn experience' and that 'every i was dotted and every t crossed,' Wier Vaught, who is now a Springfield lobbyist, said.

Wier Vaught said Currie and the committee had to invent the process 'from scratch,' because the state constitution did not specifically lay it out and Blagojevich was the first constitutional officer impeached in Illinois."

Madigan's appointment of Currie to majority leader in 1997 was not popular, but Tarver said she had earned it "through preparation, discipline, and most importantly, intellect."

"She did not inherit it," Tarver said. "She built the path."

Women comprised roughly 13 percent of the legislature in those days, but there are now 78 women in the General Assembly, which account for roughly 44 percent of the Illinois House and Senate, a statistic Tarver said can be directly traced back to Currie.

Currie grew up in Hyde Park and graduated from University of Chicago laboratory high school in 1958. But the next year, she withdrew from her university studies at the U of C and married her husband David, a recent graduate, whom she followed to Harvard Law School.

In the early 1960s, the couple moved back to Chicago when David began teaching at the U of C's law school. While raising young children, Currie finally obtained her undergraduate degree in 1968 before working on the campaign of activist and lawyer Michael Shakman to be elected delegate to the 1969-70 constitutional convention.

As she told the University of Chicago's alumni magazine in 2019, it was Shakman who encouraged her to run for an open House seat in 1978.

When Currie arrived in Springfield as a newly minted legislator in January 1979, it was to a Capitol — and by extension, a state government — run almost exclusively by men.

According to transcripts of House proceedings at the time, she was referred to as "Mrs. Currie" more than a third of the times she was called on to speak on the House floor during her first term.

Women comprised roughly 13 percent of the legislature in those days, and as Currie told the U of C's magazine in 2019, the few women who were in public office "generally inherited the job."

But Tarver noted Friday that there are now 78 women in the General Assembly, which account for roughly 44 percent of the Illinois House and Senate, a statistic that can be directly traced back to Currie, he said.

Gabel expounded on Currie's example of serving "with dignity ... humility" and her example of how "to dedicate your life to something larger than yourself."

"She didn't just treat it as a political exercise," Wier Vaught said of the impeachment proceedings. "It was important to her that it not look like a clown show and that it be a legitimate process."

Wier Vaught pointed to Currie's same seriousness in leading the post-impeachment negotiations on campaign finance reform, along with other matters like criminal justice reform, which she said Currie championed "before it was cool."

Another former Democratic House staffer-turned-lobbyist, Liz Brown, agreed, calling Currie "the original Illinois progressive."

Currie was often criticized as being too close to Madigan and what many referred to as his "Democratic Machine." But from Brown's vantage point during a near-decade on staff, she said she saw Currie "work within the system" to change it.

"If you look at all the bills that passed under Madigan that had any progressive bent, that was Barbara," Brown said. "There wouldn't be any progressive wins without her pushing back on Madigan."

But Currie was also a pragmatist, Brown said, and a master negotiator with an acerbic wit.

She also recalled Currie going to bat for her personally when she wanted to leave staff to become a lobbyist in 2009. Brown said that key Madigan deputies told her flat-out no — "this isn't the year you become a lobbyist."

According to Brown, Currie stepped in, "physically pushed me" into the office of the senior staffer and said simply: "she's becoming a lobbyist."

When the message back was that Brown "wouldn't be getting any help from the speaker's office," Currie retorted that "she won't need any."

Brown said the episode was another example of Currie working within the system to change it.

"You had to earn her respect," she said. "But if you earned it, she had your back for life."