Illinois Democrats are turning the spring session into a partisan tour de force, wielding their power to push legislation aimed at maintaining their control of Springfield, rewarding their allies and advancing social policies.
With supermajorities in the House and Senate under two new Democratic leaders, the moves 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.”
Despite Madigan’s absence, Republicans continually raised his specter to criticize Democrats. On Friday, Durkin said the federal Commonwealth Edison bribery investigation that ensnarled the former speaker is a result of Madigan’s “absolute power and control over the Illinois legislature.”
But Democratic Rep. Lisa Hernandez of Cicero countered, “The former speaker is no longer here, so I don’t even know why you bring him up.” The line drew applause from her Democratic colleagues and a sign of a new era for the House majority.
Rep. Jay Hoffman of Swansea, a member of Democratic leadership with more than 27 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 Monday, top Democratic priorities are steadily advancing.
On Friday, lawmakers sent Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker legislation to redraw Illinois’ legislative districts to the party’s favor for the next decade and redo state Supreme Court boundaries for the first time in nearly 60 years to try to keep their majority. Democrats also placed on the November 2022 ballot a 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 largely have been shut out of negotiations over a new state budget and how to spend federal pandemic relief funds. They also have been unsuccessful in pushing stronger ethics proposals in the wake of the ComEd scandal that led to Madigan’s departure from Springfield.
Notably silent in the final rush has been Pritzker, the state’s top Democrat, who has backed off a campaign pledge to veto a partisan-drawn remap. He has not held a public event since May 19.
Democratic Sen. Melinda Bush of Grayslake 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,” said Bush, an eight-year veteran. “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 session’s partisanship 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 nationalizing of local politics was evident Friday on both sides of the debate over the Democratic-drawn legislative district map.
Republican Rep. Avery Bourne of Morrisonville chastised Democrats for bucking their own party nationally by supporting a gerrymandered map. She noted that then-President Barack Obama voiced his support for independent redistricting commissions in a 2016 speech to the Illinois General Assembly and that President Joe Biden has railed against GOP efforts to pass gerrymandered maps in a number of states.
“We want it to be the independent commission that you have promised in your editorial boards, promised to your voters. It’s in alignment with what Barack Obama said on that pedestal. It’s in alignment with what your own president right now says,” said Bourne as she pointed across the chamber at Democrats. “He says that elections are being rigged through gerrymandering. It’s pretty rich to hear how you all are justifying this map.”
But new House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch defended the majority party’s brazenly partisan move by both noting the diversity of his caucus while contending Republicans across the country are working to limit minority voting rights.
“Republicans at all levels of government have historically done everything possible to stifle voting rights. And they want us to think they’re the voice of the voiceless?” Hillside’s Welch said, citing GOP efforts to restrict voting laws in Texas, Georgia, Missouri and Alabama.
“We are not going to violate the Voting Rights Act. We are not going to abandon our constitutional responsibility, period. We are not going to let Republicans gridlock the process, solely for political gain. It’s not going to happen. Not here. Period,” said Welch, Illinois’ first Black House speaker.
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 Welch, and 41-18 in the Senate under President Don Harmon of Oak Park, and the new maps presented by Democrats could make those majorities even larger after the 2022 election. The proposed new House districts pit 14 Republican House members against each other in seven districts, based on their home addresses.
The Senate map is less disadvantageous to Republicans, with 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 largely went by the wayside as the party plowed ahead without detailed census data 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, passing 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 of those seats.
Senate Republican leader Dan McConchie of Hawthorn Woods said the public doesn’t view the courts as creatures of a partisan political system but would do so now as a result of the Democratic redistricting.
“This, frankly, ladies and gentlemen, is the pursuit of power at all costs,” McConchie said.
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 a chief Democratic ally and became a target under Rauner, who sought to weaken the rights of public-sector union employees in particular. 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 Republican Rep. Blaine Wilhour of Downstate Beecher City.
Republicans mostly 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.
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 governments, 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 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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