Illinois Democrats are turning the spring legislative session into a partisan tour de force, using their majority to push legislation aimed at helping their party maintain control of Springfield, reward their allies and advance social policies.
With supermajorities in the House and Senate under two new Democratic leaders, the moves in the General Assembly bring home to Illinois the hyperpartisan divides of Washington as both parties move further toward catering to their extremes.
For Republicans who looked at the January departure of Michael Madigan — the embattled state Democratic Party chair and the nation’s longest-serving House speaker — as an opportunity for a fresh start, the session has been a rude awakening.
“We have been completely locked out of every important issue of the day that we have in this state,” said House Republican leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs. “They have turned what was a pretty partisan operation that we’ve seen here under Mike Madigan to a new level.”
State Rep. Jay Hoffman of Swansea, a member of Democratic leadership with 18 years in the House, acknowledged that times, as well as personalities, have changed the nature of politics in Springfield.
“I can tell you that it certainly is different from when I first got elected, but I think that the certain members in both of the parties have not necessarily been in the middle. And I think that leads to some of this hyperpartisanship,” Hoffman said.
With the General Assembly scheduled to adjourn its spring session on Monday, the top Democratic priorities are steadily advancing: legislation to redraw Illinois’ legislative districts to the party’s favor for the next decade; redoing state Supreme Court boundaries for the first time nearly 60 years in an effort to keep their majority; and placing a 2022 ballot question asking voters to enshrine a “fundamental right” to collective bargaining in the state constitution, a move that rewards union allies and will help drive midterm turnout.
Meanwhile, Republicans have been largely shut out of negotiations over a new state budget and on how to spend federal pandemic relief funds. They also have been unsuccessful in pushing stronger ethics proposals in the wake of a ComEd scandal that ensnared Madigan and led to his departure from Springfield.
Notably silent in the final rush to adjournment has been the state’s top Democrat, Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Pritzker, who has backed off a campaign pledge to veto a partisan-drawn remap, has not held a public event since May 19.
State Sen. Melinda Bush, a Grayslake Democrat in her eighth year in the General Assembly, said if there’s a more partisan tone to the legislature this session, it’s coming from Republicans.
“I think maybe there’s been more politics than we usually see … from the other side this year,” Bush said of the GOP. “I do understand when you’re in a minority it’s certainly more difficult, but I really have seen them kind of increasing the politics.”
The partisanship of the legislative session is magnified by the most political of actions that lawmakers must undertake — the once-a-decade redrawing of the legislature’s political boundaries to reflect changes in population.
“Those every 10 years, they’re always particularly difficult times,” Hoffman said, adding that the redistricting comes as “we just are coming off a pandemic and face historic budget issues — all that kind of rolls into a very, very tense difficult session.”
The stage for partisan redistricting was set in 2018, when voters elected Pritzker, creating a one-party trifecta of governor, House and Senate for Democrats to control drawing the map without any input from Republicans.
Democrats hold advantages of 73-45 in the House under Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, and 41-18 in the Senate under President Don Harmon, and the new legislative maps presented by Democrats could make those majorities over Republicans even larger after the 2022 election. The proposed new House districts pit 14 incumbent GOP House members against each other in seven districts based on their home addresses.
The Senate map is less disadvantageous to Republicans, pitting only one GOP head-to-head matchup. That has put many Republican senators in a comfort zone, relieved that they will keep largely GOP-friendly districts safe from a primary or general election challenge.
But Democratic pledges of transparency in the mapmaking process went largely by the wayside as the party plowed ahead without detailed census data in an effort to finish by June 30 and avoid setting the stage for a lottery that would give the GOP a 50-50 chance to draw the maps that will decide legislative control for the next decade.
Democrats are using data based on survey estimates that are a product of the U.S. Census Bureau but less detailed than census results that won’t be available until August in part because of pandemic-induced delays. After rebuffing repeated requests about the use of any other data, Democrats on Thursday night acknowledged using “public election data.” Files showing voters’ party preference in casting ballots at partisan primaries are public record.
In addition to the legislature, Democrats doubled-down on their cartography skills, proposing the first redrawing of Illinois Supreme Court boundaries in nearly 60 years due to fear that their 4-3 advantage on the high court could evaporate under the current boundaries in the 2022 election.
Democrats said their work was an attempt to equalize population among districts that had grown wildly disparate over the decades, with a district that covers much of the collar counties holding more than 3.1 million people, while two Downstate districts each hold populations of less than 1.3 million.
For decades, the current court boundaries were allowed to stand with Democrats holding a majority, helped by a constitutional requirement that three of the seven justices come from Cook County.
Last year, Democrat Thomas Kilbride of Rock Island became the first justice to lose retention as his central Illinois district turned more Republican and opponents highlighted his ties to Madigan. The new map alters the boundaries of the four court districts outside Cook County to make it easier for a Democrat to win at least one seat.
Democrats this session also served up a reply to former one-term GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner’s anti-unionism by putting a question on the November 2022 general election asking if unionism and collective bargaining should be part of the state constitution, along with a ban on right-to-work laws or ordinances that bar employer-employee agreements from requiring a worker to join a union.
Organized labor is one of the Democrats chief allies and became a target of Rauner’s term in office as he sought to weaken the rights particularly of public-sector union employees. The battle between Rauner, who lost to Pritzker, and Democratic legislators led to a record two-year budget stalemate.
The proposed amendment could help drive turnout among union workers in the November 2022 election, a midterm contest that often sees a drop in support for the party in power at the national level.
Republicans called the proposal an effort by Democrats to reward a fundraising ally.
“Constitutionally codifying the political agenda of a special interest group is totally inappropriate and will do more harm than good for the very people this legislation is supposedly intended to help,” warned state Rep. Blaine Wilhour, a Republican from Downstate Beecher City.
Republicans largely have been sidelined in negotiations over how to close an estimated $1.3 billion hole in a roughly $42 billion state spending plan for the budget year that begins July 1 and how to spend $8.1 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds.
Sen. Chapin Rose of Downstate Mahomet, a longtime GOP budget negotiator, said there have been only token efforts to engage the minority party, and few of the closed-door bipartisan discussions that have characterized budget talks under both Democratic and Republican governors in the past.
Republicans have been part of the negotiations on some marquee issues facing lawmakers before their scheduled Monday adjournment.
Negotiations over a package of new state government ethics and lobbying laws appeared to be progressing slowly, but there was a new sense of urgency with the indictment Wednesday of Tim Mapes, Madigan’s former chief of staff, for allegedly lying to federal authorities investigating the ComEd bribery scandal. Mapes pleaded not guilty Friday.
It’s still questionable whether GOP ideas, including tougher revolving-door provisions from people moving from government to lobbying and strict prohibitions against public officials lobbying other governmental bodies, will make it into any final bill.
Republican lawmakers also are involved in negotiations over an overhaul of state energy policy that could result in another state bailout for ComEd parent Exelon’s nuclear power plants. Part of the political calculus in those discussions is how much help the state should give the plants, which are in Republican districts but employ thousands of union workers who are a core Democratic constituency.
“There are still a lot of instances that (issues) are done bipartisanly. I would say that this year — and every 10 years — because of the constitutional mandate to draw maps, sometimes that gets highlighted as opposed to some of the other things we’re doing,” Hoffman said.
But Republican state Rep. Dan Brady of Bloomington, who has spent his 20 years in Springfield as a member of the House minority, lamented times past when politics seemed like less of a winner-take-all blood sport.
“Politics, pressures of this place, personalities, politics by personal destruction, has been something that unfortunately is becoming more prevalent than I’d like to see it around this place,” Brady said.
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