Christine Radogno didn’t begin her political career out of ideological fervor. She began it because the Village of LaGrange was considering putting a fire station near her home, and she didn’t want her three young children being awakened by sirens at all hours. 

That’s why she started attending meetings in the 1980s of the LaGrange Village Board of Trustees, eventually getting herself elected. That launched a political career that led her, last November, to become Republican minority leader of the state Senate and the first woman ever to lead one of the four party caucuses in the Illinois legislature.

“I read in the paper how they were going to move a fire station down the block from our street,’’ Radogno recalls of that first political battle two decades ago. Her activism on the issue, she admits, “wasn’t at all altruistic.’’

But it was, in a way, the very definition of a new kind of Republican politics arising in the Chicago suburbs at that time. The ongoing fight between the party’s moderates and conservatives was expanding to include a new label — “soccer-mom Republicans’’ — to describe no-nonsense suburban women who just wanted government to work and weren’t especially concerned about the entrenched old ideological battles surrounding it.

“It was part of the war within the Republican Party’’ between old-guard social conservatives and younger, more progressive Republicans — many of them women — that was raging at that time, says Kent Redfield, an emeritus political science professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Radogno’s ascension as Senate minority leader, Redfield says, is a clear indication of how that war has gone since then for the social conservatives. “Now you have the ‘soccer moms’ moving into leadership.’’

Radogno’s political persona is, to put it mildly, multi-faceted. Her 1996 state Senate campaign was among the most expensive in Illinois history, putting her in a seat from which she has become a crusader for campaign finance reform. She gave an interview to a gay and lesbian newspaper last year in which she forcefully rejected her party’s anti-gay-rights mantra — then became the most effective voice for the party’s anti-tax mantra to stop Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed state income tax hike this year. She has been endorsed by both the Sierra Club and the National Rifle Association.

She holds a leadership position that not that long ago was held by James “Pate” Philip, the white-haired, acid-tongued epitome of Springfield’s old-boy political culture. She insists that “the qualities of leadership transcend gender,’’ but she’s also quick to tout what she sees as a central accomplishment as caucus leader ­­­— smoothing the rougher edges of the party’s image — and to credit that, in part, to her gender.

“There was some sense at that time that Republicans needed to be old, white men,’’ says Radogno, 56. “Pate had a different style in the media that wasn’t necessarily helpful’’ to the party. Her own style, she says, is “to listen, and then to articulate a message.’’

That kind of diplomacy has helped Radogno win or advance some causes while diplomatically downplaying others — such as abortion rights, which she supports in concept but seldom champions in Springfield. Her approach to political conflict is classically diplomatic, always allowing room for movement. 

After conservative activist Jack Roeser savaged her in columns for her moderate social views, she responded by working with him on teacher pension reform. (Roeser now lists her as the least objectionable of the objectionable moderates in the party.) Having humiliated Quinn on the tax-hike issue, she’s quick now to call him “a good and honest person’’ whose “heart is in the right place.’’ 

Even Paul Caprio, the conservative Family PAC organizer who made a crusade last year out of trying to prevent Radogno’s ascension to head of the Senate GOP caucus, admits now that he’s impressed with her leadership in stopping the tax hike. 

But he and others on the right remain bothered by what they say is her lack of commitment to core values of the party. “What’s diplomacy to one person is, to another person, capitulation,’’ says Caprio.

Radogno was born in LaGrange and graduated from high school at 16. She earned her Loyola University master’s degree (in the decidedly un-Republican field of social work) at 21. At Loyola she met her husband, Nunzio, now an attorney, and married him soon after graduation. 

She started a career as a social worker, doing intake, discharge and counseling at Mercy Center for Health Care Services in Aurora. “It was very good background for the job I have now’’ leading the Senate Republicans, Radogno quips.

Radogno stopped working after seven years to raise her three children. By the late 1980s, she was a self-described “stay-at-home mom’’ in LaGrange with two toddlers and a baby when she began her political career, attending LaGrange Village Board meetings to protest the proposed move of the firehouse. 

“I realized that these people making decisions that affected me were no different than me,’’ she says. “They weren’t any smarter than me.’’ She ran for trustee and won, taking office in 1989. Her tenure there focused largely on local environmental issues and fiscal responsibility –– two causes that older-school politicos might have viewed as incongruous.

But it epitomized the so-called “soccer-mom’’ Republicans: professional women and mothers who were conservative on fiscal issues (because they bought the groceries) but bucked the GOP party line on other issues. They tended to define “family values’’ more in terms of the conditions of their children’s schools or the cleanliness of their family’s drinking water than by any standard ideological litmus test imported from Washington, D.C. 

“They were interested in family issues but not ideological ‘family values’ fights,” says Redfield, the UIS political scientist. “They were interested in home and community, so they were in favor of government services. Socially, they tended to be more pro-choice, but they weren’t defined in terms of feminism.’’

As a village trustee, Radogno became frustrated at what she said was a lack of communication with her state senator, Republican Robert Raica. “He didn’t return my calls,’’ she says. “That was the wrong call not to return.’’

Radogno challenged Raica in the 1996 GOP primary, with husband Nunzio managing the campaign. It was a contest that personified the shifting demographic and ideological landscape of Republican politics in the region: an older white male social conservative versus a young pro-choice mom whose resume included the formation of an environmental group.

She won the primary by 82 votes. She went on to win the general election by 118 votes against Democrat Nancy Kenney, a fellow LaGrange trustee, in a race notable mostly for the lack of substantive disagreement between the two candidates on issues.

She was re-elected in 2000. Redistricting in 2002 forced a primary contest between Radogno and fellow GOP state Sen. Bill Mahar. The new boundaries put Radogno in a more conservative district –­– and, some believe, prompted her to tone down her more liberal political views.

“Her Second Amendment voting pattern became consistent after redistricting,’’ with more emphasis on gun-owner rights, says Sen. Kirk Dillard, the Hinsdale Republican who was Radogno’s opponent in last year’s contest for the GOP Senate leadership post. Dillard calls her “a friend’’ and says she’s done a good job as caucus leader. But he still maintains she is “the most liberal member of our caucus’’ and that she is outside the party’s mainstream.

The allegation by conservatives that Radogno isn’t a “real Republican’’ has followed her throughout her career. Her Senate resume hasn’t done much to tamp down that criticism. Among other offenses, she supported a landmark 2004 gay-rights bill, and she sponsored legislation to mandate emergency contraception for rape victims. 

The apparently cordial working relationship between her and newly installed Senate President John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat, isn’t likely to endear her much to the hard right, either. 

“I think we had a better relationship than [ex-Senate President] Emil Jones and [former Republican Leader] Frank Watson,’’ says Cullerton, who calls her “a pleasure to work with.’’

“Those people out there on the right are so far right that she looks left to them,’’ Cullerton says. “She’s a moderate Republican. If there were more moderate Republicans, there would be more Republicans.’’

Still, she defends her Republican credentials and her definition of what the party should stand for.

“My family is Republican. Those are the values I grew up with,’’ says Radogno. Those values are summed up in the premise that “it’s government’s role to provide opportunity but not to take care of people.’’

There may not be a lot of Republicans out there who would quibble with that philosophical statement. But Radogno’s way of applying it in real life has earned her the continued animosity of some on the right of her party.

She’s clearly aware of the ideological fault line and doesn’t tread on it unless she has to. Asked recently about her pro-choice views, for example, she says only: “I am somewhat moderate; everybody knows that about me.’’ 

She was a supporter of the controversial 2005 bill (Senate Bill 3186) that outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation in Illinois. She went on to give a 2008 interview with The Windy City Times, a gay and lesbian publication, in which she touted her “very good relationship with the leaders of the gay community. They’ve been very reasonable and helpful, and I’ve tried to be the same with them.’’ 

ChampionNews.Net, a conservative Illinois political site, posted a scathing column in November 2008 in opposition to Radogno’s candidacy for Senate minority leader, citing in particular “her foolishly giddy support of gay issues.’’

“So-called moderates and leftists like Radogno are not going to help real Republicans get elected,’’ the column warned GOP state senators who were at that time preparing to vote on a leader. 

Radogno won anyway, against Dillard, who was widely viewed as the conservative candidate. 

Dillard says Radogno’s victory wasn’t reflective of a leftward shift in the state GOP but merely an indication that “caucus leadership elections are the ultimate insider politics.’’ 

Dillard today credits Radogno for her “dignified leadership style’’ and her spearheading of campaign ethics reform. “Having a woman as leader is a positive for the state and for the Republican Party,’’ he adds. 

But of last year’s contest, he insists: “It was about loyalty and geography. Nothing should be read into it ideologically.’’

Radogno says she won because even conservatives within the caucus realized it was time to elevate a leader who could “rally the team so we can be politically effective.’’

“Most of what the state legislature does is not ideologically based,’’ she says.

That’s the kind of sentiment that makes moderate Illinois Republicans nod in agreement and makes the conservative ones angrily shake their heads. 

Still, as part of the moderate Jim Edgar wing of the party (Radogno enthusiastically accepted that designation during a recent interview), the remarkable thing about her rise isn’t that she’s faced trouble from the right, but that she’s been able to blunt at least some of it.

Even Roeser, the Chicago-area conservative crusader and author of last year’s ChampionNews column slamming Radogno, has mostly put away the knives since she’s been in the party’s top Senate spot.

Roeser still bristles at Radogno’s support of gay rights and abortion rights. But he credits her open support of legislation to open up the way the GOP selects its party leaders –– a topic that most establishment Republicans in Springfield don’t want to talk about –– as well as her work on school pension reform and the anti-tax-hike campaign this year. 

“The trend with Radogno is in a positive direction,’’ says Roeser. He repeatedly compared the minority leader, favorably, with other moderate Republican leaders who, he said, have collectively been “a catastrophe’’ for the party. “She’s getting better, not worse.’’

Radogno ran for statewide office in 2006, losing the treasurer’s race to Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. “It was not a good Republican year,’’ she notes. “[But] I learned a lot about the state.’’

She hasn’t ruled out another run at statewide office, though it won’t happen for a while. While campaigning for her current leadership post, she promised her fellow senators she would keep the position for at least a full term. 

Supporters and foes alike credit Radogno for the general stabilizing of a party that has been seen as anything but stable in recent years. “Senators are sometimes a little egotistical and hard to handle. ... With conservatives, it can be like herding cats. She’s done a pretty good job there,’’ Roeser says. “She’s been a congenial person in general and a positive influence in organizing the party.’’ 

Roeser didn’t specifically attribute that quality to Radogno’s gender. But she does, at least in part.

“Oh, absolutely,’’ she says, when asked whether she believes being a woman has affected her leadership style and the way others in Illinois’ political structure interact with her.

“Obviously, I have a different style than Pate [Philip] or Frank [Watson],’’ says Radogno. The major difference between her and her two predecessors in the top GOP Senate spot, she says, is her focus on finding common ground with adversaries rather than fighting them.

“Women are sometimes perceived as weak and passive. ... There’s a line there you have to walk,’’ she says. “I speak when I have something to say. I don’t look for conflict.’’

Kevin McDermott is the Springfield bureau chief for the St.?Louis Post-Dispatch.

Illinois Issues, September 2009