Joe Walsh, the most implausible of apparent Republican victors last week, may soon head to Washington to represent Illinois’s Eighth Congressional District. But he, along with several other Republican winners, had best not spend much decorating their offices.
That’s because one of them is a political dead man walking. The executioner is a maniacally shrewd Democrat whose top aides will hover over computer screens and draw lines on a map of the state, overlaying color-coded, block-by-block schematics of where Democrats, Republicans, blacks, Hispanics and other groups live.
Lost in the Election Day fray was one ramification of the Democrats’ keeping control of the legislature and pushing the fumbling Gov. Pat Quinn to a full term: They will control the once-a-decade shaping of districts for 59 State Senate seats, 118 State House seats and all the Congressional seats.
In recent decades, there have been split governments, dueling Democratic and Republican maps, a state commission, the picking of the winner out of a hat and, then, a court appeal.
“This is not a good thing for Republicans,” Walsh said of Tuesday’s results. He’s a Tea Party supporter who leads Melissa Bean, a three-term Democratic incumbent in the Chicago suburbs, in an unresolved race, despite being dramatically outspent and getting no money from the Republican Party’s national campaign organization.
Unlike the number of State Senate and House seats mandated in the Illinois Constitution, United States Congressional districts are determined by population. Other states have gained more population in the past decade, so Illinois will surely drop a seat, to 18, after final census data arrive.
The process has many permutations. But if you’re in Las Vegas, place a wager that one of the ebullient newbie Republican representatives — Robert Dold, Randy Hultgren, Adam Kinzinger, Robert Schilling or Mr. Walsh — sees his district vanish before the 2012 election.
The key figure in redistricting is Speaker Michael J. Madigan, the state’s most influential politician. John J. Cullerton, the Senate president, will ride shotgun, and Quinn will sign off on their handiwork after it is passed by the majority Democrats, whose real concern will be that their individual state districts are made as secure as possible.
Mr. Madigan will analyze data from recent elections and population shifts. He must be sensitive to issues of minority representation as he perhaps places a block of mostly black Democrats into one district and a block of Republicans a half-mile away, into another.
His aim is to craft, or gerrymander, as many safe Democratic districts as possible. He could easily force two or more incumbent Republican representatives to face off in the 2012 primary in a new district.
Downstate has lost population. So there’s logic in melding into two districts the three now represented by Republicans Timothy V. Johnson of Urbana, Aaron Schock of Peoria and, soon, Mr. Schilling of Rock Island, who probably shouldn’t buy a home yet in Washington, because he also has 10 children.
And perhaps Madigan fills one of the two new districts with Democratic partisans by hooking up union strongholds Champaign-Urbana, Peoria and Decatur with the mostly Democratic college towns found in each of the existing three districts.
At the same time, Madigan could also tweak districts in the Chicago suburbs where Republican victories were narrow to make those more Democrat-friendly.
He could even conclude that Hispanic population growth justifies a second de facto Hispanic district. He might group heavily Hispanic areas, including in the western suburbs, in a manner that excludes somebody in a suburban Republican cadre of Walsh, Dold, Hultgren, Representative Judy Biggert or Representative Peter Roskam.
And Madigan can cut and paste to help Democratic chums. He might take Jewish Democratic strongholds in Glencoe, Northbrook and Highland Park, now in Dold’s district, and connect them to Representative Jan Schakowsky’s Ninth District.
At hearings and individual sessions, Madigan will listen to parties plead their case on state and Congressional districts, in some instances as a parole board listens to a plaintive prison inmate. And he’ll mull how to help favored state legislators who might want to run for Congress, like State Representative John E. Bradley of Marion, State Senator Michael W. Frerichs of Gifford and State Senator Susan Garrett of Lake Forest.
All in all, this is about assuring a lack of competition. “We choose our constituents, not the other way around,” said State Representative Jack D. Franks, Democrat of Woodstock. “I don’t think it’s good for democracy.”
Let the drawing begin.
Mr. Madigan is a sore loser. This is the same tactics used by some of the International Unions. Here come play the game but when you start to win we will change the rules. And just like a child he pouts and ponders with the idea “I can win if I cheat.” Here lets redistric the map so we can win in 2012. Well guess what the Republicans & Tea Party are growing in leaps and bounds and because of people like Madigan & Cullerton that say & do some of the stupidest things they are driving democrats away. I thought Washington didn’t get it I now see Springfield doesn’t get it either.
somehow, somewhere, someone should make all the districts fish shaped, (like the original salamander shape) because the whole thing is….well, you know
Lori,
You may want to check out Texas and Florida, the two most gerrymandered states in the country. Both are Republican-controlle obviously. You can also look at Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, all of which were gerrymandered to favor Republicans until it blew up on them in 2006 and 2008. The pendulum swung the other direction in 2010, however. Still, the point is that this is not some partisan thing. In a perfect world, districts would be made in a non-partisan way. But since Republicans aren’t going redistrict in a non-partisan way, why should Democrats? Illinois is one of the few states in the country where they can actually pull a Democratically-favored gerrymander.