While Gerrymandering Congressional districts to benefit incumbents and the dominant party in the state legislature is an old game, they play it with especial intensity in Illinois.
During debate this week on Democrats’ remapping of Illinois congressional districts, criticized as heavily weighted against Republicans, Senate President John J. Cullerton hoisted a newspaper from 2001.
An article in that paper detailed state lawmakers’ discontent with that year’s redistricting map, which was drawn by incumbent congressmen from both parties. They were allowed to design their own districts with Democrats and Republicans striking handshake deals.
Mr. Cullerton, Democrat of Chicago, used the newspaper story to further a point. The process this time, he said, was more transparent than in 2001. Members of Congress did not sketch their own boundaries.
“I was here 10 years ago when we had one hour to vote on a map drawn by all the incumbents,” Mr. Cullerton said. “The map we passed this year is so much more compact and splits fewer counties.”
Still, their incumbent status and their party’s control in Springfield enabled Democrats to customize a map that jeopardizes five freshman Republicans. No matter their repeated attempts to justify the jigsaw puzzle based on census changes, Democrats took a razor to their colleagues’ domain. They activated every switch at their disposal: clout, secrecy and spools of electronic data that guided block-by-block precision.
The Democratic mapmakers — House and Senate staff members in Springfield whom party leaders declined to name — took into account such factors as incumbents’ home addresses, district offices, favorite churches and potential opponents, according to those familiar with the process, who asked not to be named. Lawmakers and staff members were warned not to talk publicly about redistricting because their comments could harm the map’s survival, as it is certain to land in court.
Aides to Representative Bobby Rush, Democrat of Chicago, studied vote totals precinct by precinct to ensure that his new district maintained his strongest pockets of support and dumped those areas in which he was less popular, the sources said. Mr. Rush also wanted certain churches to remain in his district, spawning juts and curves on the new map.
Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., Democrat of Chicago, picked up eastern Will County, which is hostile territory for him. The rationale was to add the site of a proposed airport outside Peotone that Mr. Jackson supports because it would provide jobs for his South Side core constituents. By shifting him into the farming communities fighting the airport, Mr. Jackson is immune from being chastised for ignoring protocol and engaging on an issue outside his district.
This is shamefully undemocratic. But it’s perfectly legal and, if anyone minds, they’ll be hard pressed to vote out the people behind it under these lines.
