CHICAGO — Ed Moody, a former powerhouse precinct captain in the 13th Ward Democratic organization, took the stand Wednesday against his ex-boss Michael Madigan and answered a question at the center of the corruption case.

How much work did he do over the years in exchange for monthly checks from various ComEd contractors close to Madigan?

Little to none, Moody answered. And from 2012 to 2019, he was sent some $354,000 for essentially no work.

Moody along with his twin brother, Fred, was one of Madigan’s most trusted election-time door-knockers. And the money came with a catch, he said. Madigan told him if he stopped working on political campaigns for Madigan’s organization, he would lose the contract, Moody testified.

“(Madigan) said if I leave my politics, if I stopped doing what I was doing, I would lose the contract.”

“He influenced getting it, and he could influence me losing it,” Moody said, adding that Madigan told him “this is how I award my good soldiers.”

Madigan and longtime ally Michael McClain are charged in a sweeping racketeering indictment alleging they ran Madigan’s state and political organizations like a criminal enterprise.

Prosecutors allege the subcontractor payments to Moody and other Madigan loyalists were part of a larger scheme by ComEd to provide a stream of benefits to the speaker in order to secure his help with legislation in Springfield.

On Wednesday, Moody, 60, entered the courtroom in a dark gray suit and strode right past Madigan at the defense table without looking at his former boss. The ex-speaker’s gaze followed him all the way to the witness stand.

“My name is Ed Moody,” he began, and continued his testimony with a relaxed attitude and a voice so loud that prosecutors initially asked him to back off the microphone. From the defense table, Madigan stared at Moody, expressionless.

Moody, who is testifying under a grant of immunity, walked jurors through his history with the Southwest Side Democrats. Over the years he and his brother became so effective in rallying votes that they rose to the top of the rankings, over much more experienced precinct captains.

For the most part, they were not paid for their political work, Moody said, but he leveraged his connections into a job with the Cook County highway department and then a job at the Bridgeview courthouse for which he didn’t even have to formally interview.

The brothers first met Madigan in 1989 or 1990, Moody said, when they were out for a walk together.

“(Madigan) was walking and we just like politics, and we knew who he was, so we just started talking,” he testified.

Beginning in 2012, Moody was paid nearly $355,000 through various subcontracts, starting with McClain and later moving under ComEd consultant Jay Doherty and then lobbyist and Madigan ally Shaw Decremer, FBI Special Agent Katharine Heide testified in Madigan’s trial earlier this week.

Moody met with McClain in 2012 at a Huck Finn restaurant on the Southwest Side, where McClain handed him sheets with names of legislators to call and reemphasized Madigan’s role in getting him the work.

McClain said “this was a hell of a plum and that I owe the speaker big,” Moody testified, and also told him to “keep knocking on those doors.”

Moody said he did minimal work under that first contract, spending about an hour each month calling lawmakers to tell them that if they had any issues with ComEd they should reach out to McClain. In early 2013, he said, he passed out some ComEd flyers while going door-to-door in support of his own campaign for Worth Township highway commissioner.

He never lobbied anyone on ComEd’s behalf and never provided the legislators with any information about ComEd, he testified. For his efforts he was paid about $4,500 a month.

Madigan, 82, of Chicago, served for decades as speaker of the Illinois House and the head of the state Democratic Party. McClain, 77, is a former ComEd contract lobbyist from downstate Quincy. They have pleaded not guilty and deny wrongdoing.

Moody is expected to be one of the last witnesses to testify in the ComEd bribery section of the sweeping indictment.

Meanwhile, the emergence of Moody as a government cooperator sent shock waves throughout Democratic circles, from Madigan’s base of power on Chicago’s Southwest Side to the insiders hanging out in the Illinois Capitol’s rotunda.

For years, the Moody twins promulgated an almost mythical reputation as a special-operations team that Madigan often referred to as his “best,” legendary for their door-knocking skills and a gift of persuasion that kept votes coming in for the speaker and his acolytes year after year.

They were the go-to soldiers dispatched all over the state when Madigan needed to turn around the voters in a critical legislative district in the heat of the campaign. And they did it time after time since the mid-1990s.

Jurors in Madigan’s trial have already heard plenty of testimony about Moody’s importance to Madigan’s political operation. Earlier this week, they also heard a pair of voicemails recovered from Doherty’s phone in May 2019.

The first message was left by McClain on Oct. 9, 2016, the day after Moody had been appointed to the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

“I talked to the speaker, uh, speaker talked to Ed Moody and so speaker suggested Ed and you get together and talk ’cause ya know, he’s got some disclosure things he’s gonna have to do at the county board level,” McClain said on the recording.

An hour and a half later, Moody called and left a voicemail of his own, which was also played for the jury. “Hey, Jay, this is, uh, Ed Moody calling. Uh, the Speaker wanted me to reach out to you, uh, if you wouldn’t mind returning my call.”

Prosecutors allege that to avoid raising eyebrows, Moody’s payments were moved three weeks later from Doherty’s account to Decremer, who did not lobby the city or county.

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