Maxwell: What level of press access can you commit to?
Welch: I know what you’re doing, you just want to do your job. And I do believe, from this perspective, government should be transparent.
Maxwell: Even if it’s uncomfortable at times?
Welch: Absolutely. I don’t like all the questions you ask, you know that, but you gotta be transparent. […]
Maxwell: Did you mean 20 years ago, that younger version of yourself was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that that younger version of yourself hit a woman?
Welch: I didn’t hit a woman. But I still think I could have handled the situation differently. I think, the way you handle a situation to something that either escalate or de-escalate. Obviously, I didn’t handle the situation to the point where someone didn’t get so upset that they went and made a police report. I can say in that incident, I cooperated fully, answered all questions. And that’s all there was was a police report. There was no arrest there was no charges. And that was 20 years ago.
Maxwell: The police report says there was an arrest, you’re disputing that now that there was not?
Welch: I was asked to come down to the station and answer questions a couple hours later, they said, ‘Mr. Welch, you’re free to go.’
Maxwell aside: That’s one reason he defended Speaker Madigan’s rights to due process during the ComEd corruption case. Welch said he and the entire black community knows how it feels to be wrongly accused. He plans to bring that perspective from a life as a black man in America to his new job.
Welch: Here in 2021, a state that was founded in 1818, for the first time we have a Black person as Speaker of the House. If that doesn’t give you hope, I don’t know what does.
The police report claims he was arrested, but we’ll need to check the actual records.
Hours before a General Assembly was to be inaugurated and still short the votes he needed to be elected speaker, Emanuel “Chris” Welch intensified his campaign to persuade House Democrats he should be the one to lead them after Michael Madigan’s decadeslong tenure.
“I spent time going member by member, talking to each and every one of them, to try to address their concerns,” Welch said in a phone interview Thursday. “There were no specific promises made, but everything comes down to people knowing you and trusting you and believing in you. And the fact that I listened to them and heard what their concerns were, I think was extremely important. I know what everyone’s issues are.” […]
Welch said Thursday the allegations “have come up in every election that I’ve been in.” He said that if anyone undertakes an investigation “and comes to me, I’ll cooperate, just like I’ve always done.”
“But I think people need to move away from the distractions and focus on the difficult work ahead,” Welch said.
The second-term Yednock didn’t join 70 others in the House in voting for Emanuel Chris Welch to be the new speaker. He says the process was too fast with many candidates changing by the day. Yednock says Welch was one of the last candidates to join the process and he never had a chance for a personal meeting to learn his views. With that in mind Yednock says he wasn’t comfortable voting on a new speaker without more time to choose.
The Democrat from Ottawa does say he supports Welch and is hoping to hear more from him in the near future.
