* I’ve been reading former Senate President Phil Rock’s autobiography, and one of the things I learned was that 1983 was the first time in all of Illinois history that the House Speaker and the Senate President were both from Cook County.

Here’s another factoid from Wikipedia: Since 1901, twelve out of twenty-one Illinois governors were Republicans. The GOP ratio is much higher if you go back to 1860 and Lincoln’s presidential campaign.

* History shows us that the Republican Party, Downstate and the suburbs have historically done quite well in Illinois. Bill Clinton was enormously popular in Illinois, yet we had Downstate Republican governors throughout his two terms. Back in 1990, both Democratic US Senators were Downstaters.

The main reason for the Democrats’ failure to win the governor’s mansion is that Democrats ran poor candidates and the Republicans didn’t freak out moderate suburban women, who, as i’ve pointed out countless times, have decided the outcome of gubernatorial elections since at least 1990. George Ryan’s troubles ended that streak when the GOP nominated a staunchly conservative candidate (who turned off suburban women) with the same last name as the humiliated Ryan. The hangover was still in effect four years later, amplified by this state’s intensive dislike for George W. Bush in his second midterm election.

Downstate Republican primary voters had their best chance in eight years to pick a winnable candidate last year, but they chose the guy most likely to freak out those aforementioned moderate suburban women.

The Republicans drew the state legislative map in 1991, but they didn’t draw it well enough to maintain control of the House longer than two years. The Republicans even came within a few votes of losing the Senate in 1996. Democrats did much better ten years later when they won the lottery and drew the new maps. Not only did they maintain control throughout the decade, the Senate ended up with a veto-proof majority (plus one) and the House Democrats were just one vote away from a similar majority.

* Yet, just nine years out of power, and here we have a couple of media hound Downstate Republicans deciding to get some more publicity for themselves by demanding secession…

State Rep. Bill Mitchell said he’s sick of how Cook County politicians run Springfield. So he wants to kick Cook County out of Illinois.

The Forsyth Republican introduced a resolution in Springfield on Tuesday that would ask Illinois voters on a referendum whether Cook County should secede and become the 51st U.S. state. Congress would then have to approve the far-fetched plan.

“They just don’t know how to govern,” Mitchell said Tuesday. “So am I serious? Yes, I’m serious about it. Do I expect this to be adopted? I think it’s an uphill battle.”

“Uphill battle”? More like “impossible battle.”

Read the resolution by clicking here.

* Even Sen. Bill Brady thinks this is silly…

If anyone knows the effect Chicago has on Illinois politics, it is Bill Brady. If not for the voters in Cook County during the 2010 gubernatorial election, the Bloomington Republican would be governor and Democrat Pat Quinn would be bumbling around somewhere else.

“There’s no arguing that, but for Chicago, I would have won the gubernatorial election and Republicans would be in control. I understand their frustration,” Brady said last week when asked about his neighboring representative’s proposal.

But Brady pooh-poohed the whole idea of separating Chicago from Illinois saying it’s just “impractical.”

“Chicago has a lot of economic opportunities that we can’t forget about,” said Brady.

* Downstaters don’t seem to understand that their region is a net tax eater. There just isn’t enough wealth Downstate to fund anything of substance. That’s one reason why Mitchell and his co-sponsor Rep. Adam Brown couldn’t lump the non-Cook suburban counties into a new state with Cook. They’re still gonna need a sugar daddy to pay their bills. But to Brown, it’s all about social issues…

“Our downstate values are being overshadowed by Chicago’s influence over the legislative process,” Brown said. “The 2010 election swept a number of downstate Republicans into office, but the lame-duck Democrats passed a 67% income tax increase, along with civil unions and the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois. These liberal policies are an insult to the traditional values of downstate families.”

Plenty of Downstaters voted for that tax hike, too, and a whole lot of Downstate and suburban Republicans have voted for tax hikes in the past, when the GOP was not so engrossed in its own super-rigid ideology. Heck, Pate Philip even sponsored the 1983 tax hike bill. During Reagan’s presidency. But that was when Reagan was a real, living, breathing person, not the reinvented icon of the current era.

* For Mitchell, it’s about some not-so-subtle code words…

“They want what they want, and what I’m staying as a downstater, ‘OK, go and do what you want to do,’” Mitchell said. “Increase your debt. Spend more money. Add more people on public assistance.”

Considering all the other not-so-subtle campaigning that Mitchell and Brown have done in the past, I suppose this should be no surprise. From last year…

Brown, a Decatur city council member, said illegal immigration is an important issue for him and his constituents, especially because it has an impact on family incomes.

“They’re criminals,” Brown said. “This is based on a fundamental issue that has been ignored by the federal and state governments.”

Mitchell said the issue is especially important to people in Decatur, because of its high unemployment.

Illegal immigration is not a criminal issue. They’re deported, not imprisoned. Also, the Decatur metro area has so few Latinos that it was obvious last year the twosome were merely tossing racially tainted red meat to their electoral base. It’s no different this time, either.

* I’ve been writing about Illinois politics for almost 22 years now, and not once during the Democrats’ long exile do I ever remember hearing a Chicagoan say the city should secede. But the issue has come up in the past, and if Mitchell and Brown think Downstaters are getting the shaft, they ought to read a little history…

In the 1920s, lawmakers in Springfield refused to redraw legislative districts to take into account the city’s fast-growing population.

The City Council approved a resolution by Ald. John Toman calling for the city to secede from Illinois, and aldermen said they would give the state two years before they started moving toward secession, Erwin recalls.

* I couldn’t agree more with the Pantagraph…

There already is too much of an “us” vs. “them” mentality when it comes to “downstate” Illinois and Chicago, Cook County and/or the collar counties — on both sides. We need politicians who can bridge that gap, not ones who fan the flames and feed the divisions.

Exactly.