Just a couple of weeks into a job that most people couldn’t imagine being held by anyone other than the guy who had it for decades, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch is putting together a House that looks both familiar and different at the same time. Speaker Welch’s first week included a rollout of his new leadership team, with a Black woman as Speaker Pro Tempore and fresh faces throughout. By the third week, we’ll see committee membership rosters and vice chairs. The following week will be the new rules.

“The legislature is going to be a check on the executive branch,” newly-elected House Speaker Chris Welch flatly declared to me during an interview the other day. Speaker Welch was responding to a question I posed to him about his January 13 inaugural address, when he asked not-so-rhetorically, “Why is it difficult to ensure that families' unemployment checks continue unabated and arrive on time so struggling families can feed their children? Why is that hard to grasp?”

I reached out to several House Democrats who could be considered politically vulnerable in 2022 to ask them how they plan to vote on Speaker Michael Madigan’s re-election in January. With one exception, I didn’t make much headway.