This Election is What Gerrymandering Looks Like
Senate President Don Harmon and House Speaker Chris Welch in 2023.
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OPINION
When Democrats redrew the legislative maps in 2021, good government advocates, observers, jamokes like me, and, of course, Republicans, complained the gerrymandered maps would reduce competition and provide worse representation for taxpayers in the General Assembly over the next decade.
In our second election cycle with the new maps, that prediction is, unfortunately, coming very true.
Democrats carved up counties, townships, communities, and precincts with a scalpel to give themselves a distinct advantage in the baseline demographics of many of the 118 House districts and 59 Senate districts in the state.
Look, Republicans are never going to be competitive on the west side of Chicago and have hurt their own lot in suburban precincts by leaning on statewide nominees like Donald Trump and Darren Bailey, who have polled about as well as the Bears do in central Wisconsin.
But in their dark mapmaking lab in the Stratton Building, Democrats did their best to eliminate any competitive districts in the state. They packed as many Republicans as they could into gigantic, sprawling, rural districts to avoid them coming anywhere near a more Democratic-friendly precinct.
Just 15 of the 118 House Districts finished within ten points in the 2020 Presidential election. That’s just 12.7% of House districts. Within ten points.
12 of the 15 districts that are considered competitive? Held by Republicans. Ouch.
The Senate is even more lopsided for Democrats. There are 23 Senate seats on the ballot this fall, and just one, the 40th District, represented by Sen. Patrick Joyce (D-Essex) could be considered competitive.
President Biden won Joyce’s district by six points in 2020. That’s why Republicans are pushing all of their chips into beating Joyce. It’s all they’ve got.
It has left tens of thousands of voters across the state without any meaningful choices, or even no choice at all, this November.
Shortly after we moved to the suburbs in 2019, we landed in a district represented by Rep. Brad Stephens (R-Rosemont) and Sen. Robert Martwick (D-Chicago). Both had competitive, nail biting races in 2020. I think we got something like 50 pieces of mail in the Stephens race.
Four years later, we’ve been redistricted into the districts of Rep. Marty Moylan (D-Des Plaines) and Sen. Laura Murphy (D-Des Plaines). They’re both unopposed next month in districts Republicans didn’t even bother to compete in because the numbers were stacked against them.
It surely doesn’t help the GOP cause that the party appears to be lost in the woods in fundraising, messaging, candidate recruitment, and general competence.
Voters should be reminded it doesn’t have to be this way. There was a referendum effort in 2016 to create a fair, independent process to draw maps in the state. Democrats killed it. When he was a candidate for Governor in 2018, JB Pritzker vowed to veto any partisan map. Well, as Governor, he flip flopped and signed this mess into law in 2021.
We can do better and we should do better. Voters in this state deserve better choices, better ideas, real campaigns, and competitive districts so the best ideas and the best candidates win.
We aren’t getting that today.