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* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
Some Illinois House Democrats got a bit of a shock during a private caucus meeting held not long after the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed its proposed redistricting plan with a federal three-judge panel the other day.
MALDEF is claiming the legislature’s district remap plan unconstitutionally discriminates against Latinos and has filed suit. The group distributed a copy of its counter-proposal, and there was all sorts of bad news for incumbent Democrats.
The MALDEF proposal doesn’t take into account where members live, where their kids go to school, where their parents go to church. Its sole purpose is to maximize Latino representation in the two legislative chambers.
So, you wind up with a situation where Chicago Democratic Reps. Theresa Mah and Edgar Gonzales are drawn by MALDEF into the same district. Mah, an Asian-American, currently represents a Latino district with strong influence from Asian-American precincts. And that pairing is just one example.
The Republicans’ proposed remap is even worse for Democrats. The Republican proposal uses the redrawing of Latino districts to create ripple effects on more than a couple of dozen other districts, which allows them to make room for new Republican districts.
That’s basically the whole point of this exercise for the GOP: Use alleged Voting Rights Act violations as an opportunity to find ways to create new winnable districts for Republican candidates.
The Republican remap plan submitted to the federal panel also reportedly pairs Assistant House Majority Leader Jay Hoffman with fellow Democratic Rep. LaToya Greenwood in the Metro East. Democrats had dispersed Black voters among three different districts to make them all winnable by Democrats. That would make the non-East St. Louis district more winnable for the GOP.
The East St. Louis NAACP has also filed suit, and its map proposal takes Black residents away from Rep. Hoffman and Rep. Katie Stuart and creates a majority-Black district centered in East St. Louis. That would also mean bad electoral news for Hoffman and Stuart.
House Democrats were reminded during a private caucus meeting last week that MALDEF and the other plaintiffs still have to prove the new redistricting law the Democrats passed is unconstitutional before the plaintiffs can even claim that their proposals would remedy the situation.
There was no talk of Democratic leaders trying to negotiate a compromise. Instead, they’re confident their proposal will withstand judicial scrutiny. In the meantime, calm was urged.
“If that’s their position, they’re going to lose,” predicted one longtime Democratic participant in remap efforts. “What they ought to do is somewhat modify the MALDEF and Republican maps to do some damage control overall for themselves.”
MALDEF won a landmark remap case in Illinois that ended up creating two Latino Senate districts in 1981. Then-House Speaker Michael Madigan learned his lesson from that loss during his first-ever remap attempt and never poked the MALDEF bear again.
Fast forward 40 years. We have new legislative leaders, and MALDEF is making the same sorts of legal arguments it made in 1981, which is why some argue the Democrats need to work out a compromise that could save some districts here and there.
But why was there no legislative compromise when the maps were being drawn with groups like the Latino Policy Forum, which has been arguing forcefully for months that the remap plan is unconstitutional?
The simple answer is the Democrats firmly believe they have a winning legal strategy, and their prime objective was to help Democrats and attract Democratic votes to the remap bill, which meant catering to the remap demands and desires of individual Democratic members - making sure, for example, that their kids’ schools and their parents’ churches are in their new districts.
One way the leaders in both chambers were able to prevent outside influence was to warn their members that if they talked to an outsider about the remap process, they’d get hit with a subpoena.
From my own experience trying to pry loose information on the remap, I can tell you the warnings worked amazingly well. I and others I know all heard back the same basic thing: “I can’t talk to you, or I’ll get subpoenaed. And I don’t want to be dragged into this lawsuit.” The Latino groups simply didn’t know what was going down.
Members were also informed that, while many of the newly created Latino-“influenced” districts did not have adequate population to elect a Latino candidate, ongoing population shifts and the aging of people who are now too young to vote would combine to create majority Latino districts in the next three to five years or so.
That argument, I’m told, will be vigorously contested by MALDEF and others in court.
posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 8:29 am
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=== doesn’t take into account where members live, where their kids go to school, where their parents go to church. ===
Who cares about the voters? We just exist to give Democrats power and tax money to spend.
Comment by Just Me 2 Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 8:46 am
We had no map issues back when we drew the maps
Comment by Tom Keane Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 8:55 am
Kids schools, I get. Parent’s churches?
Why on EARTH would it matter whose district those are in?
Very cool if they lose though, drama to the max
Comment by Fav Human Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 8:57 am
So the ILGOP is trying to create more ILGOP districts from this? Color me shocked. /s
But, you know, the Democrats gerrymander.
Comment by JS Mill Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 9:04 am
=== the Democrats gerrymander. ===
Last I checked the Republicans weren’t in total power here, so blaming them doesn’t make much sense to me. But go ahead and defend a corrupt process, of which many Democrats (including the Governor) promised not to do.
Comment by Just Me 2 Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 9:11 am
@Just me 2: then move to Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas or some other state where no one cares about voters either.
Comment by Steve Rogers Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 9:13 am
If I was as miserable as some posters claim to be I would have beat feet years ago.
And don’t hand me some tripe about staying for family reasons. If you’re as discontent as you say, you’d get out.
Comment by Flyin' Elvis'-Utah Chapter Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 9:37 am
I reiterate for the millionth time: the gerrymandering by Dems is bad, but the real punch in the gut is their lying about being totally against it. Can anyone find a quote or anything where a Republican Governor promised to veto partisan maps or spent years supporting an independent commission all to flip flop at the first opportunity?
Again, it’s the lie more than the gerrymandering.
Comment by Hahaha Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 9:49 am
Good article in the Times on Sunday.
Not interested in moving as I really like so much about Chicago and Illinois.
What I don’t like is a political candidate like Pritzker misleading us on his position on gerrymandering and using a process that excludes reporters and groups like MALDEF from meaningful participation in the process.
While I am not moving out because of Pritzker I am planning to keep his misrepresentation in mind when I consider who to vote for Governor.
Comment by Back to the Future Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 10:11 am
I love hearing stories of pols getting together to solve the peoples’ problems like, what district does my parents’ church fall in? We have such a healthy democracy. I see now why voters have such a strong faith and trust in politicians to navigate our many crises.
Comment by SWSider Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 10:11 am
Does anyone have a link to detailed Google Map or Dave’s Redistricting App maps of the proposed MALDEF and GOP maps? All I’ve seen are sketches of what appears to be their proposed changes for the Chicago-area Hispanic districts and in East St. Louis.
Comment by NonAFSCMEStateEmployeeFromChatham Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 10:12 am
East St. Louis and MALDEF lawsuit good, ILGOP lawsuit bad. Dems got too greedy when carving up metro east
Comment by Lake Villa township Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 11:18 am
This would all be much less of an issue if we had more representatives in order to have smaller districts. We should have something close to double the number reps that we have based on the cube root rule. With districts half their current size, there would be less need for crazy district lines and better opportunity to match legislator demographics to the overall state demographics.
Comment by thechampaignlife Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 11:37 am
The probem is there are not enough Reps in Congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment
Comment by Publius Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 11:45 am
== more representatives==. Smaller districts.
Like New Hampshire? Im not sure voters would go for more politicians but I like the idea. Yes.
Comment by low level Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 11:57 am
We need more districts indeed, though I think this is a more pressing issue with the senate districts. I like the idea of going back to 177 districts (pre cutback amendment #) but keeping them single member districts
Comment by Lake Villa township Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 12:22 pm
- Lake Villa township - Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 11:18 am:
Please provide your bloc voting analysis that shows this.
Comment by Shield Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 1:54 pm
===Like New Hampshire?===
They went too far the other way. They should have 111 representatives per the cube root rule, so they have nearly 4x as many as they should.
===The probem is there are not enough Reps in Congress===
I wholeheartedly agree, although the 1789 proposal would have us with far too many US Reps. We should have about 60% more US Reps per the cube root rule. The ILGA is worse: we should have double the number of Reps in the House. We should lead the way.
https://kevinverhoff.com/index.php/2020/02/27/we-should-have-more-state-legislators/
Comment by thechampaignlife Monday, Nov 22, 21 @ 3:08 pm