State senator takes job with law firm

Feb. 7--State Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, who left a job as a Sangamon County assistant state's attorney in 2017 to run for the legislature, is beginning Monday as a lawyer with personal injury firm Kanoski Bresney.

"I made sure to go someplace where there is not a lobbyist working for them," McClure said.

Seats in the legislature are considered part-time, and many lawmakers have other jobs under the citizen legislature model. McClure noted that there's a history of local senators having professions. Former state Sen. Larry Bomke, R-Springfield, who has long been in the insurance business, carried on that business when in the Senate.

"When I'm in session, I'll be at the Capitol," McClure said. "I'll be doing my full senatorial duties."

McClure thought his campaign would take full time back in 2017 when he left the state's attorney's office after nearly six years. He had been chief of the juvenile division and later in the felony division in that job, and his salary was $48,000 a year when he left.

As a senator, he makes a base pay of $69,464, plus a stipend of $10,574 for being minority spokesperson on the Senate higher education committee. That makes his annual salary $80,038.

McClure said he wasn't a prosecutor and he isn't a senator because of the money, but to serve the public. He also said he "lost a ton of money running for office," and as a senator, he doesn't take per diem pay and he did not sign up for a state pension.

After leaving the prosecutor's job and before taking office as a senator, he did economic development work for his father's firm, KSM Consulting.

When McClure announced for Senate in 2017, it appeared he would have to win a primary against incumbent Sen. Sam McCann. But McCann made a third-party run for governor under the Conservative Party banner. McClure was unopposed in the 2018 elections.

Contact Bernard Schoenburg: bernard.schoenburg@sj-r.com, 788-1540, twitter.com/bschoenburg.

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