Fred Eychaner Quotes
I would go on the record with my respect for Mike Madigan, which will probably upset a lot of friends. He's enormously skillful at what he does. The only speakers of any House who survive are the ones who can keep their majority and keep everyone going largely in the same direction. Mike Madigan is superb at that.
Felsenthal, Carol. "The Enigma of Fred Eychaner." Chicago Magazine, Tribune Publishing, 17 Nov. 2014.
The Chairmen of the Committees then had tremendous, almost unilateral power. The chairman reached seniority by being elected over and over and had little opposition. At the time they were almost all older Democratic Congressmen from the "Solid South", very conservative and still racists despite the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They were outraged when a Freshmen member of Congress who rarely made a public statement, took on the most powerful members of the House and wanted to reform the Seniority. But Ms. Chisholm was a teacher in her professional life, and by challenging the seniority system and attracting the enmity of most of the Chairmen, the media and the public started to cover the dispute and Chisholm explained to America exactly how the system worked and how undemocratic and racist it was. Her effort put the Seniority System on the public agenda, and reforms evolved over the next decades." She was the first Black woman to be elected to Congress and was the first Black woman to actively campaign for the Presidency
The 2014 House of Representatives was probably the worst in American History. The Republican Speaker of the House did not have any control over the Tea Party wing of his caucus, but they controlled him in most instances. Even when he made bargains with the President and the Democrats, he could not get his caucus to go along. Almost no legislation was passed and the few bills that were passed were symbolic, were never considered by the Senate and the President did not even have to exercise his power of veto during that Congress.
The Liberals had not won enough seats to form a majority government, and in the Parliamentary system, they had to form an alliance with a smaller party and govern with a minority.
Fred Eychaner (born c. 1945) is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist.
