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The moment state Rep. Steve Andersson, R-Geneva, picked up the Tribune last Friday and saw the now-famous photo running from edge to edge across the front page, he figured he'll be seeing it again. And again. And again.

The image, captured by Justin L. Fowler of The State Journal-Register and reprinted by media outlets all over the state, shows Andersson shaking hands with Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan. Madigan is simultaneously clasping Andersson's right elbow with his left hand, one of those lightly intimate gestures that suggests more than an obligatory greeting.

The lawmakers were on the floor of the House of Representatives in Springfield. Andersson had just voted, along with nine other Republicans, to join 62 Democrats in overriding Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of a budget bill that included increases in the state's personal and corporate income tax rates.

Andersson said he'd stopped on his way off the floor to chat with Rep. David Harris of Arlington Heights, another Republican defector, also in the photo, when Harris suggested he turn around. There was the speaker, his hand outstretched.

To further set the stage: Andersson, 52, began serving as a Republican precinct committeeman when he was a college undergraduate, and has been loyal to the party ever since. His voting record in the General Assembly has earned him an 86 percent lifetime approval rating from the American Conservative Union and he seldom agrees with Madigan politically.

Madigan, 75, is the archvillain in every Republican narrative about the state's dreadful finances. The party portrays him as the corrupt insider and cruel despot who for decades has hoodwinked leaders from both parties into agreeing to let him run Illinois into the ground for his own dark purposes.

For a Republican to be seen, much less photographed, having a chummy moment with Madigan is highly risky. Think of the all the grief that New Jersey's Republican Gov. Chris Christie took for embracing President Barack Obama when Obama came to survey storm damage in Jersey in 2011. Then double it.

Andersson didn't hesitate. "When someone offers his hand to me, I'm going to shake it," he said. "I'm not the kind of person to turn away."

They had a very brief conversation Andersson estimates it lasted 10 seconds in which they expressed mutual gratitude for the passage of the first full-year budget since 2014. Madigan's spokesman Steve Brown confirmed the outlines of Andersson's account.

Andersson, who moved up from the Geneva Library District Board to the General Assembly in 2015, was unopposed in both the primary and general elections when he ran for a second term last year. In January his colleagues elevated him to the position of House GOP floor leader.

But Monday, House GOP leader Jim Durkin asked for and received Andersson's resignation from that position. And Andersson said he fully expects to receive a primary challenge from the right in 2018, one that prominently features the photo of him shaking hands with Madigan on mailers and billboards and in web ads.

"They'll play it as evidence that I sold out," said Andersson. "But I didn't. It was the hardest vote I've ever taken, but I took it to protect my district and save my state."

Andersson said that earlier in the budget standoff between Rauner and Democrats, most constituents he heard from in his far west suburban district encouraged him to stand firmly with Rauner, who was refusing to negotiate a new taxing and spending plan until the Democrats agreed to pro-business legislative changes.

But as the stalemate dragged on and the increasingly disastrous effects of operating without a budget became clear, Andersson said sentiment shifted. At a mid-June town hall meeting he heard no support for a radical, spending-cuts-only budget or for continuing to operate without a budget, he said, and grudging acknowledgment, even from "superconservatives in the room," that bringing tax rates back nearly to where they were in 2014 was necessary to prevent a full-on meltdown of state finances.

"They told me they want me to keep fighting for reform, but they want a budget now," he said.

The House and Senate passed a budget bill that included many elements of the so-called Capitol Compromise, a Republican plan with tax rates Rauner had agreed to and spending cuts at least as deep as Rauner had proposed. But Rauner vetoed the plan because, he said, it didn't contain enough "reform."

Andersson announced he would join most Democrats in the vote to override. And my theory that Rauner secretly wanted the budget deal enacted so the state would stay afloat and he could also blame Madigan for the tax increases is supported by Andersson's report that Rauner's only effort to get him to support the veto was a brief and bland voicemail message delivered the morning of last Thursday's override.

He's taken considerable heat for both his vote and the photo taken in its immediate aftermath it was pouring in through social media and on his office and personal phone lines. He was called a traitor, a devil, a fool, a dupe and many names he would not repeat. He received a death threat serious enough that he referred it to the Illinois State Police.

But he has no regrets.

"I voted for what I believe are Republican values," he said. "We don't stiff our vendors. We provide our businesses with stability and predictability. We don't let our state collapse."

I asked how he thought history will judge him.

"History will forget me," he said. "But I did the right thing."

ericzorn@gmail.com

Twitter @EricZorn

Continued here:
Rep. Andersson sticks up for 'Republican values' by bucking GOP governor - Chicago Tribune