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* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
While all eyes last week turned to the Republicans’ lawsuit against the new district map for U.S. congressmen, a similar GOP lawsuit against the legislative district map for Springfield’s state senators and state representatives may be teetering on the brink of collapse.
Many of the same arguments are being used by the Republicans in both the congressional and state legislative cases. Both lawsuits have a partisan angle. The Republicans claim that the majority Democrats so intensely used political gerrymandering to draw their maps that the end result illegally deprived Republicans of their constitutional rights.
The court that is hearing the congressional map case has yet to rule on the political angle, but the court that heard the state legislative remap case dismissed the Republicans’ political charge last week. The political gerrymandering strategy was never considered all that solid because nobody has ever won a case using that argument. The strategy is given about the same chance of success — slim to none — in the congressional case.
As with the congressional map, the Republicans also challenged several Democratic-drawn state legislative districts for being racially gerrymandered. All but two of those challenges to the state legislative map have been dismissed. Actually, all of them were tossed, but the Republicans were told they could replead their case on two of the districts on Dec. 12.
One of those two is an Illinois House district that runs from Springfield to Decatur. The district takes in Springfield’s predominantly African-American East Side and then heads over to black neighborhoods in Decatur. The district has a black voting age population of 25 percent. The Republicans claim that the Democratic mapmakers’ predominant intent was to pack as many black voters as possible into the district, which they claim is illegal.
The other district was drawn for state Rep. Mike Zalewski (D-Riverside). That district, in and around Chicago’s Southwest Side, is about 46 percent Latino, and the Republicans claim it should be majority Latino.
Needless to say, even if the Republicans win their argument on these two districts, the state legislative map as a whole may not change all that much. However, changing just one boundary can have a wide-ranging ripple effect.
For instance, pulling enough people into Zalewski’s district to make it majority Latino would cause the Democrats to scramble to figure out what they’re going to do with the rest of Chicago’s Southwest Side, which was precariously balanced to give everybody what they wanted.
The end result there could be that some majority black districts lose Latino voters in order to make sure that current Latino districts remain Latino districts. That means the Democrats will have to find other places to take voters from, which could cause some suburban white Democratic legislators to lose black voters, which means the Republicans might have a better chance of winning one or two of those districts.
Got all that? Like I said, wide-ranging ripple effects.
A Republican win on the Springfield/Decatur district charge could take away a possible House Democratic pickup opportunity. That area now is represented by a Republican, who announced he was running in an adjacent district, mainly because it’s much better to sell a house in this horrible real estate market and find a new residence than possibly lose one’s job if one stood and fought an uphill battle. A court win there also could endanger Illinois Senate Democratic Chief of Staff Andy Manar’s bid to join the chamber, because the House district makes up half of Manar’s new Senate district.
The Republicans never have been all that confident about their lawsuit against the state legislative map. Legislative Democratic leaders worked extra hard to ensure their state map would withstand a court challenge.
But state Democrats don’t care nearly as much about the congressional map, and some Republicans still have hope they can prevail on at least some points in that case. Besides the probably doomed political angle, the Republicans say Congressman Luis Gutierrez’s Chicago-area district has too many Latino voters and want some of those voters parceled out to two neighboring districts, which are currently less than 50 percent Latino.
Stay tuned.
* Meanwhile…
While a panel of federal judges weighs a Republican challenge to Illinois’ new U.S. House district boundaries, lawyers for the state and the GOP said Friday they will discuss whether to push back the deadline for congressional candidates to file their nominating petitions.
The three-judge panel in U.S. District Court heard closing arguments Friday after a two-day trial on the GOP’s lawsuit contending the Democratic-drawn map violates the law because it doesn’t protect the rights of Latino voters and contorts districts with the aim of creating areas that are friendly to Democrats and hard or impossible for Republicans to win.
“The only purpose of drawing the district boundaries is to corral Latinos,” said Republican Party attorney Joshua Yount, arguing the map excessively packs Latinos into an earmuffs shaped 4th District linking the Northwest and Southwest sides of Chicago. The district map was first approved by the courts 20 years ago and has been held by Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago since 1993.
Attorney Michael Kasper, who serves as legal counsel to the state Democratic Party led by House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago and who successfully defended Mayor Rahm Emanuel against a residency challenge, argued on the state’s behalf that the map did not violate minority voting rights or the U.S. Constitution.
posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Nov 21, 11 @ 5:16 am
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If by some crazy miracle the GOP did get some friendly judges to rule their way in Illinois, it would give a huge boost to the lawsuits filed by the Democrats in states like Texas where the Republican gerrymandering makes what the Dems drew in Illinois look fair and balanced in comparison.
But of course Republicans in Illinois don’t care about anyone else. They only care about saving their own selfish skins.
Comment by too obvious Monday, Nov 21, 11 @ 9:26 am
too obvious, or at least put additional pressure on all parties to appeal this up, to the Supreme Court. Agreed, if the map in Illinois is overturned, then I’d like to see any rationale the federal courts adopt to keep the Texas map in place the way it is.
Comment by ZC Monday, Nov 21, 11 @ 10:45 am
The time for the legislators to implement complete reform of the redistricting process, is now.
The impact would be 10 years away, making it less frightful for a lot of the current incumbents, and most of the current leaders would also likely be gone by then. If we wait to do this until the redistricting is imminent, real reform will fail again.
Comment by walkinfool Monday, Nov 21, 11 @ 11:20 am
It’s catch 22. If the District courts rule on behalf of the TX congressional maps, the same will have to apply to ILlinois. What’s the net impact at that point? Zero sum?
Comment by Statesman Monday, Nov 21, 11 @ 12:27 pm
The sooner the better so we know what we’re dealing with. The GOP was just fulfilling their fiduciary duties.
Comment by robo Monday, Nov 21, 11 @ 4:11 pm