* Background is here if you need it. Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) appeared on Brian Mackey’s Illinois Public Media show…

Kelly Cassidy: The speaker says he did an investigation. Well, he talked to the two parties involved and decided it was a he said, she said. That’s not an investigation. That is, as I used to say about what Speaker Madigan would propose in terms of ethics reform, the least you can do.

And so, we don’t necessarily have a really good process laid out anywhere in the building for how to truly get to the bottom of these things and what to do about it when you do. But common sense would dictate you would want to talk to more than just the perpetrator and the victim and make a decision based on that alone. […]

This young woman at the beginning of her career didn’t feel safe going to the LIG, and we still don’t know why. What I know as someone who has gone to the LIG is that it is an incredibly daunting process. It feels huge and scary. And if you’re afraid that, just as the speaker concluded, well, it’s just a he said, she said, you’re likely to just try to keep your head down and keep moving. And so we have built a system that doesn’t work for the people that we need it to work for.

Brian Mackey: I’m looking at a news headline here from 2018: “State representative says she’s facing retaliation for speaking out against Madigan.” And that’s obviously about you. Why did you choose to speak out again this time, specifically against Speaker Welch and his handling of this case, when so many of your colleagues have not?

Kelly Cassidy: At the end of the day, you are never safer from retaliation than when you’re standing in the middle of the street screaming the truth. And that’s something I would like all of my colleagues to understand and all of these victims to understand — that as hard and scary as it can be, and I don’t like that I have colleagues dragging me and, you know, talking about me in very unpleasant ways as they try to defend the speaker — but the bottom line is right is right. And we can’t — if I hide, that’s telling the victims who are hiding that they’ve made the right decision.

Brian Mackey: There are people who are going to say she’s doing this because she wants his job. What do you say to that?

Kelly Cassidy: Sorry. I don’t know why in the world anybody would want to be speaker. It’s a terrible job. I have no interest in being Speaker of the House. I have a great deal of interest in having a Speaker of the House who is going to be the leader we deserve and need.

Brian Mackey: Can Welch maintain your confidence to do that?

Kelly Cassidy: That remains to be seen. The speaker’s election is going to be in January. We’re going to have months of this. We’re going to be on the doors for ourselves or our colleagues when the mail is full of, you know, all of the news about the police reports and the sexual harassment suits and all the stuff from the past — and then this stuff, whether it’s his social media activity, his mishandling of the case, all of these things. This is going to be in our faces for months. How he navigates that is going to be very telling.