* Raquel Martin at WCIA TV…

All but one Democrat, Rep. Anne Stava-Murray (D-Naperville) voted for him.

Stava-Murray said she couldn’t vote for the Speaker because of a series of sexual harassment complaints in his office. The complaints became public last year, in the midst of a #MeToo fallout at the Capitol.

“I felt great, I was smiling before hand and it felt so empowering to do the thing that I promised,” said Stava-Murray.

Stava- Murray says Madigan apologized to her in private about the harassment complaints and promised to address the issue moving forward.

Much of her campaign was based on a promise to vote against Madigan and she kept her promise.

* Sam Dunklau at NPR Illinois…

Stava-Murray says voters in her district “factored into” her decision, since she campaigned on voting against Madigan. She says they did not support the longtime speaker’s leadership in the House, though some of her colleagues were “hard-selling” a Madigan vote.

But it was primarily Madigan’s stance on sexual harassment in the state legislature that drove Stava-Murray away. She says the Chicago Democrat hasn’t done enough to combat what she calls “a culture of sexual assault and violence.” She also claims she’s been harassed on several occasions by people working for Madigan since she was elected in November.

“When you have leaders who have to step down as a result of the “MeToo” movement, you’ve clearly been promoting people who display those aggressive behaviors,” she said. “Whether or not you know, you’ve chosen to know or not know.”

* Greg Bishop at Illinois News Network…

State Rep. Will Davis, D-Hazel Crest, said Stava-Murray should find ways to work with her colleagues.

“Don’t work to try to alienate yourself,” Davis said. “There are still things that you want to get done and you need 60 members in the House and 30 members in the Senate.” […]

Stava-Murray said she’s on the Democratic team, but that doesn’t mean staying silent when the leader isn’t doing enough to address harassment and intimidation at the statehouse.

“I think dissent is patriotic,” Stava-Murray said. “It makes us stronger to be able to say ‘that’s OK, I respect a difference of opinions. To me, only dictators get 100 percent of the vote.”

* Mark Maxwell at WCIA TV…

[Sen. Ann Gillespie, D-Arlington Heights] shrugged off concerns about the potential for witnessing harassment in a statehouse where so many stories of harassment had been reported.

“I came out of corporate America, so that didn’t scare me at all,” she said. She added that electing more women to office would be the only lasting solution to change the culture and cure the problem.

* Mike Riopell at the Tribune…

Even before Stava-Murray was sworn in to her first Illinois House term on Wednesday, she announced she’d challenge U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in 2020. She has started referring to Durbin as “my opponent” on social media.

* She’s been advertising her US Senate campaign on Facebook. Here’s both of them…

In honor of Girl Scout cookie sales kicking off, I’m introducing a Couragous Cookie Contest:

This competition will be sponsored by my campaign and include 6 Prizes…
Grand Prize: $200 in sales (donated to the troops) and a pizza party for the winner’s troop
5 Runners-Up: 10 boxes each (donated to the troops)

If your IL Girl Scout is interested in participating, please have them create a 2 min video introducing themselves and sharing the most valuable lesson they learned in 2018.

Please email entries that include entrant first name, troop number, favorite badge she’s earned, age, school, and video to cookiecontest@teamstavamurray.com before ***midnight January 16th, 2019***

Winners will be announced 1/31/19.

Please tag a Girl Scout parent in the comments below to help spread the word!

Also, love the mission, my former Brownie days, and that they’ve accepted trans members since 2012 🌈.

“Our fundamental value is empowering girls to be leaders in their own lives. By helping them build the courage, confidence, and character to lift their voices, champion their views, and be advocates for the issues and ideas important to them, Girl Scouts supports girls as they become catalysts for change who strengthen their communities.”

Posted by Anne Stava-Murray for U.S. Senate on Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Posted by Anne Stava-Murray for U.S. Senate on Thursday, January 10, 2019

* Madigan on joy ride after ‘four long years’ of Rauner’s ‘my way or the highway’