Tom Dart
WCT: Please talk about what your House district is like and how you came to the issue of gay rights, whether out of personal or political beliefs.
TD: I've been in office 11 years. I started off as a state senator. I replaced somebody. Then I ran for the House and I've been in the House 10 years, the last six of which I have been chairman of the judiciary committee and chairman of our prison reform committee. The 10 years I have been down here I have introduced more legislation than anyone else in the House or Senate. But I am probably best known for the changes in our child welfare laws. I completely redid our child welfare. It was a monumental struggle.
WCT: Can you talk about how it changed for the better?
TD: We had without a doubt the worst system in the entire country. We had about 55,000 children in substitute care when I got involved. We had the longest period of time from when a child entered our system, when they would be taken away from a family, to when they would be reunited or put into a new permanent setting. We had the longest period of time in the country. Children getting into our system were being treated worse once they were in the system than the one they were taken from with their families.
So I went for awhile, it was pretty lonely, on a crusade to change all this, and spent one summer just traveling around the state in my car by myself pretty much going to foster homes and meeting with people in hospitals that deal with the children, going to residential homes, talking with the kids themselves, the judges, the lawyers, everybody. And I came up with a reform package of about 30 bills. I introduced it, tried to get it passed, got nowhere with it. And probably would not have gotten much done but for the fact we had Joseph Wallace murdered by his mother in such a vicious way. The little boy lived in my district and he was given back to his mom despite her saying that she was going to kill him, and within a handful of days she hung him by an electrical cord in the livingroom. The outrage that came about as a result of that finally woke people up and we were able to get everything we were working on done. And at the heart of what I was working on was to try and be more decisive at the front end—there was this bureaucratic mindset that these children had all the time in the world to have us get our act together for them. I required people to make decisions immediately, put hard and fast timelines on parents if they were going to get their rights restored and act within a certain window of time if they didn't, that was going to be grounds for not restoring them because in my opinion it was indicative of someone that didn't care about the child. Then I put more resources on the back end and at the same time I put more resources on the front end trying to repair the families. And then I put a lot of resources on the back end for permanency issues as far as setting up adoption and residential homes for kids.
WCT: We've covered the foster care system as it relates to gay and transgendered teens. There is a complete unwillingness to cooperate with us whenever we want to interview a kid that is being abused for those reasons. The kids themselves seem to have so few rights to change the system if they are in a home or group situation. They seem so frustrated in their ability to talk to the media about trying to work for change, especially teenagers.
TD: I gave children the right to testify in court; but before that they didn't have the ability to say in court where they thought they should go. A lot of people think of abused and neglected kids as all these little children, but those kids were by and large well taken care of, it was the older kids, the teens, that were criminally ignored. They lived in places I wouldn't kennel my dog in. I used to make pop inspections. I would just drop by. I always upset the apple cart when I did that. I was so well hated by the bureaucrats and they never knew what I would be doing next. It was just heart-wrenching to talk to these kids, especially the teens, because the younger kids, there was some element of hope, but the teens would tell you they knew no one wanted them. If you really step back, what that must be like for a human, especially a young one, to know that there is no one on the face of the earth who cares about them.
WCT: Did you come across a lot of gay teens, because certainly a lot of gay teens are the ones that are feeling the most ostracized?
TD: Yeah. I spent a night out down the street here at Dunkin' Donuts on Belmont and Clark. I met with a lot of the kids and talked. They told about immense [ problems ] . Their issues were much more complex because our system has not begun to address that issue. I had so many hopes of doing many things, but our system is so dysfunctional. I am a lawyer but I gave up practicing law to do this job full-time. I'm the only lawyer that is like that. For everybody else this is a part-time job and they go home and practice law and pick up their mail and introduce a bill or two. I had the liberty to really get to know a lot about what was going on in the system and the problems. But a lot of the things I was more ambitious about were quelled by how far we had to go, just the basic things we were trying to get done.
That issue comes under the heading of another part of the system I was working on, and made minor improvements in, which was the treatment of the children themselves, because the services we provide the children, unless we give them quality services, then we are not in any way trying to fix them or help them. What was happening was there was this cookie-cutter mentality where every child between this age and that age will go talk to a shrink once or twice a month. Whereas anybody would tell you that the needs of the children are all completely different. One might only need to see you once a month, those other ones might need to see you every day. And so I passed a bill that was called the Best Interests of the Child law that was pretty expansive. What was best for the child both in the area of placement but also in the area of what the services were supposed to be. Now, they still nickeled and dimed me and that's where all the problems get, because once again I am only one person. I really don't get a staff. ... There is still a lot more that needs to be done.
WCT: So the Best Interests of the Child law did pass?
TD: Yes. And we also have gone from where we started with 55,000 children and we are down to 23,000 now, which is a monumental change. And we now receive national awards for our adoption efforts. We lead the nation every year since these bills passed. We put a lot of focus on the adoption side of it too.
WCT: Do you have any concerns yourself about gay and lesbian people adopting children?
TD: My concerns were only what some people were trying to do. Two years ago I was chairman of the judiciary, I got a bill sent to my committee, which was to prohibit gays and lesbians from adopting or becoming foster parents. There are a lot of committees that you go to in Springfield where the members actually walk into the room with a list of how they are supposed to vote. And the chairman has a list given to him or her saying call this bill, don't call this bill. I always prided myself—in my chairmanship, I never did that ever. Everybody got to vote on bills, every bill got called. We never played any games. It was always very bi-partisan. This bill got sent to me about two years ago. I was amazed that it got out of the Senate and I was further amazed in people that voted for it because I think there were some Democrats that supported it. I don't give instructions, but I am good at counting. I know all the people on my committee and I know how many votes are needed to pass a bill or kill a bill. I was very effective at working my committee, when I needed something I could go to someone and say help me out on it. When I started going around to my committee, I found out Democratic members of my own committee had been gotten to, and apparently there had been some deal struck with our party and somebody in the religious right. All of sudden people I relied upon ... I did not have the votes anymore. So I started counting very quickly and found myself in a little bit of a pickle.
The day came for the bill to get called and the religious right all got up there to put the bill on and when I did not call the bill they had a little bit of a conniption, got a little bit upset.
WCT: It never got called?
TD: I refused to call it.
WCT: Is that one of the only times you ever did that?
TD: That was the only time I ever did that in my career. I got in a little bit of a heated exchange. I was just ignoring them for the most part. It was one of those things where knowing the welfare system as well as I know it, I know what they are up to. 'You tried to do something bad and I stopped you and let's let it go from here.' But they decide to have a debate with me in which I explained to them in no uncertain terms how mean-spirited and horrible what they were trying to do was. I know more about the child welfare system than any legislator in Springfield does. I tried to explain to them that we are dying to put children into a loving home and you are going to try and stand in the way of that? Those are some of the cruelest things I've ever heard in my life. And I said I cannot believe an adult would do something like this. And I got a little bit more upset and yelled a little bit more. But they got the message. They did a little protest in my office. The area I come from on the Far Southwest Side of the city of Chicago is not a real bastion of liberal dollars.
WCT: Are there parts of the suburbs in it?
TD: A couple of blocks. It's about a 65-70 percent African-American district. And it's literally all on the city of Chicago's South Side. It runs from the southwestern border.
WCT: How much did the District change this time around? Was it a lot?
TD: They cut it up into about five or six different pieces. I made it clear I wasn't going to run again so they took the liberty of doing what they wanted to do with it. And they put it back to the way it used to be, which was pretty segregated. There was a white district and an African-American district.
WCT: Let's talk a little bit about the judiciary committee. When we have interviewed folks about your race, everyone was glowing about your support of the human-rights bill. We talked to a few African-American gay activists and the thing they talked about was the bill called the Safe Neighborhood law. And I am wondering if this has come up as an issue for you in the campaign in particular with the African-American community?
TD: A lot has come up in the campaign with Topinka's people just making things up. I have a couple of enemies; like any other legislator, you make some friends and you make some enemies. I have a couple of my colleagues who aren't my biggest supporters. That's called life. The Safe Neighborhoods Act has come up a couple of times. And I always find myself dumbfounded because a lot of people who claim to be upset with one aspect or another are usually people who sit and try to explain to everybody that they are civil libertarians and the system is harsh. I say to them, Can you explain to me what part of the bill you don't like?' And they say, 'No we just don't like it.' The very people that are accusing me of something are saying I am being unfair in some criminal type of way, refuse to tell me what it is I have done wrong. ... The bill has been around now for seven or eight years. It is readily available to anybody who would care to take the time to look at it. Most of these people do not like the you to let the facts get in the way of a good argument. It really makes things too complicated.
WCT: You have represented such a strong African-American district—talk about your support within the African-American community and the gay community. Where are your bases?
TD: My support in the African-American community is close to total. I have every African-American elected official outside of Bobbie Rush, who doesn't like me for personal reasons because I supported Barak Obama against him for Congress, and I ran Mayor Daley's last mayoral campaign. Other than him, every other African-American elected official is proudly supporting me, some of them very vocally. Congressman Jackson, Congressman Davis are doing commercials for me. I have spoken at Operation PUSH. They are supporting me. I have Pastor Meeks and Sen. Shaw, the two people who cannot agree on anything are both supporting me. Every major African-American minister supported me. ... This past year the Black caucus had 41 pieces of legislation that they were supporting and most of the members of the Black caucus did not support every one of the bills. I supported all 41. It wasn't as if they handed me a piece of paper saying these are the 41 bills. It just is something that in retrospect I found out I supported all of them. I am in a district that is 71 percent African American. I haven't had an opponent in my last two or three elections. All the alderman, all the committeemen, all the ministers have worked with me. And I don't get opposed because I have worked in the community. I don't do anything other than this job. I put together mentoring programs, after-school programs, tutoring programs, basketball programs. Most of it is with my own money. I refed, I coached. This is all in the African-American area. I put together forums. I took kids down to Springfield. I put together a legislator-for-the-day contest, toured all the public schools. I taught classes in most of the public schools in my district. I took foster kids out to farms so they could see certain animals for the first time ever. ...
The area I live in is conservative. The area I represent isn't. And that is where people had a hard time finding out where I stood. In the gay community, they are just always surprised at how strongly I supported their issues because of where I came from. I have always told them, 'This is a personal thing. I just have always felt that way.' I don't know how else to explain it.
WCT: How many times have you had an opportunity to vote on the gay-rights bill?
TD: I was one of the co-sponsors of it. ... In the House. Every year it was there I voted for it. As a matter of fact it sort of got humorous because a lot of the activists didn't get to know me and they always said it's one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't, Tom. They said, 'We didn't get to know you because we never had to convince you. You were always in our corner. So we ignored you.' I said, 'That's fine. You have other people who are tougher nuts to crack than me.'
WCT: Your visibility is not that high in the gay community. Within the primary, you didn't have an opponent either. Who are some of the major gay players who are backing your campaign? And in particular, you are the only one running against a Republican who has a really high visibility in the gay community. All the other statewide Republicans do not.
TD: It is because she's aggressively been courting the gay community and I have been aware of that. She's never really ever done anything substantively other than offered her moral support. It is one of those things—it is easy to talk. It is a difficult thing to actually put those things into action. I have put into action every opportunity that I have to help. If Judy is so committed to all these different issues, can you explain to me how it is … she had some crazy votes and she sponsored some bills to deal with HIV/AIDS. One thing that I find so fascinating too is there are certain realities that we all know. In the political world people try to get a
