Predictably, Republicans howled, perceiving that they were in for multiple short ends of sticks. No such howling was heard from central Lake County, however, where one Republican was the lucky recipient of his own gerrymander. Call it a Sulli-mander.
The original gerrymander got its name for the elongated district created to help a candidate favored by Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry way back in 1812.
The Sulli-mander, a mirror image of the original, features a swath of Ed Sullivan's District 51 Democrats (all of downtown Mundelein) herded into a narrow peninsula and given to next-door Rep. Carol Sente in District 59. The loss of those Democrats makes it almost impossible for Rep. Ed Sullivan to ever lose his seat, except in a primary to a fellow Republican or when he retires 75 years from now.
Hmmm. We wonder what Eddie Sullivan did to earn such a wet, sloppy kiss from King Madigan. Luck o' the Irish?
9 comments:
To answer your question as to why one particular district in Lake County seems to have gotten more Republican you need to know what the intent of the map drawer was. In the end there was an election whose outcome gave Illinois Democrats exclusive power to draw State Rep., State Senate, and Congressional Districts. Their first order of business was to ensure a majority in all the chambers. That’s obvious. The second order was to preserve as many Chicago seats as possible. This is a difficult task when Chicago lost so much population, almost exclusively Democrat votes. So they need to finger out from the city into the suburbs to keep the City legislators intact. Eventually they run out of Democrat voters.
So you see in Lake County Rep. Mathias lose his district. You see the Senate 31 district seemingly get more Democratic presumably to accommodate a run for Michael Bond. Rep. Sente needs to be accommodated so a strange little finger goes into downtown Mundelein. Eventually there are no more places to go to get your Democrat voters. So what’s left? District 51. (Assuming this is the final map)
Rep. Ed Sullivan
What you see in the Sullivan district is called packing. Concentrating as many Republican voters into as few districts as possible. The Democrats don't care who the Republicans elect. In the end game, there will be too few Republicans to matter.
None of that contradicts our original assertion that Rep. Sullivan got a big fat gift of an utterly safe district. Other Republicans (oh, say, Mark Beaubien) did not receive such gifts when they could have been given lots more Republicans easily. Beaubien, in fact, lost lots of Republican McHenry County and got part of Carpentersville. Carpentersville? Not very full of Republicans.
And Sandy Cole seems to have gotten a lot more Democrats, too. (Out of District 51 in fact). If we were her, we'd harken to the distant hoofbeats and just become a Democrat now. She only won the seat by 500 votes in 2006 after all.
Redtail:
I don’t believe there is anyone following Illinois politics that will deny the partisan outcome of the remap for District 51. The disagreement of your blog post by all mainstream followers of Illinois politics is whether there was a quid pro quo in shaping the district. And by the way, the district changed overnight. We will probably be voting on the state map today.
Rep. Ed Sullivan
Did we imply a quid pro quo? We did not. Just a real gift, apparenly freely given, from Madigan to Sullivan. To wit: which would you prefer, Mr. Sullivan? Madigan's map or Cross's map, which seems to strip you of your district entirely?
“We wonder what Eddie Sullivan did to earn such a wet, sloppy kiss from King Madigan. Luck o' the Irish?”
If this statement does not imply a quid pro quo took place then evidently I need to find Mr. Webster. As for the competing maps it is obvious that the partisan make-up is different. I for one believe that the state is much better served by taking the map making decisions away from politicians. Adopting an Iowa model for map making would put integrity back into the process. The Fair Map process that was mirrored in the Republican map at the very least is a much fairer process even if District 51 becomes more neutral in its’ partisan make-up.
Rep. Ed Sullivan
Mr. Sullivan, at the time of this blog post, we really, truly only had in mind that Mr. Madigan seems to like you a lot, for some unknown reason. But your continued obsession with the subject of quid pro quo makes us feel there must be some fire under all this smoke. Care to tell us what Madigan may think you promised to do for him?
And, oh, BTW, we believe in the Fair Map, too. Were you out there collecting signatures for it like we were?
Red tail: read your comment about Sandy Cole & since she's my rep I checked the County Clerk for election results. In 2010 she won by 10,000 votes. Recent history.
Well, let's not get all gaga about Sandy Cole. She hasn't had a real opponent in two cycles and in 07/08 she did all that "the sky is falling!" fundraising thinking she'd have a real opponent. But she barely beat Sharon Ellman twice and with a serious opponent, Cole could finally feel the pressure.
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