Lisa Madigan

Lisa Madigan ( born July 30, 1966 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. Since 2003 she has been Attorney General of the State of Illinois.

Life

Lisa Madigan's adoptive father Michael Madigan is longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives from Illinois. She attended the private Latin School of Chicago and studied at Georgetown University ( Bachelor of Arts 1988) and Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she earned a Juris Doctor degree. She worked as a teacher, temporarily in South Africa, as well as a lawyer. Lisa Madigan is married to the cartoonist Pat Byrnes. The couple has two daughters.

Political career

Madigan was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, where she was employed until 2002. In 2002 she ran for the Democrats for the office of Attorney General of Illinois and won the election for the successor to Jim Ryan narrowly defeated the Republican candidate Joe Birkett. She is the first woman to hold this office. In 2006 she was re-elected with a large majority. It is considered a possible future candidate for governor of Illinois, and was occasionally referred to as successor of Barack Obama in the Senate of the United States. But in July 2009, she announced that she would run for either the 2010 gubernatorial still for Obama's former Senate seat. Instead, they wanted to apply for a third term as Attorney General of Illinois. The re-election in November 2010 she succeeded then safely to Republican Steve Kim.

After December 2008 Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald the Democratic governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who was accused of corruption - among other things he had tried to obtain compensation in exchange for the appointment of a successor to Obama in the U.S. Senate - asked Madigan to the Supreme Court of Illinois, Blagojevich provisionally impeach because he was no longer able to officiate. This application was rejected by the court. Later the impeachment of Blagojevich by a unanimous decision of the State Senate took place.