Not 100% Strange Bedfellows

Your LakeCountyEye, like most political bloggers, wakes up no later than 1pm every day to a hot cup of Red Bull (with a Mountain Dew chaser), and a copy of the latest news from the CapitolFaxBlog. One item in particular caught the LakeCountyEye eye this past morning:

A Lake County blogger wonders aloud why Rep. Ed Sullivan got such a sweet new map...
Republicans "leaning against" filing their own remap proposal as Dem map tweaked for Latinos and congressional map release date still uncertain

Hmm, your bleary-eyed LakeCountyEye wondered, which Lake County blogger could that be? Perhaps because your LakeCountyEye was of yet insufficiently caffeinated, it took a while to comprehend that the clicky-click-link goes directly to this blog, right here -- the LakeCountyEye. Just how dope is that anyways?

Suffice it to say, the trenchant post in question in the work of esteemed colleague, the Mr Redtail ...

Madigan ♥s Sullivan

where it is revealed that Lake County may be seeing a lot more of one legislator who hails from south-of-the-border, Sid Mathias. With the new legislative remap, a safe Democratic District 59 is being crafted for the benefit of State Rep Carol Sente. As a necessary consequence, all of those yucky & gross Republican precincts in Sente's district will be dumped without ceremony into the more-than-accommodating Rep Ed Sullivan's commodious 51st District. While nearby warm & fuzzy Democratic precincts will be drawn-in from unguarded turf, like from Sid Mathias's 53rd District.

But if the proposed new legislative map becomes law, Sente's district will not only pick up a bunch of Mathias's Democratic precincts, it will scoop up Mathias -- who lives in one of those precincts -- as well. All of which leaves the door open to the real possibility of a Sente (D) vs Mathias (R) contest in 2012, for District 59.

And Lake County may be facing the unlikely but real prospect of seeing one of its central Representative districts held by a legislator from Cook County. Sure, District 59 is being carved out for a Democrat, with the goal of securing a (W) for Sente in 2012. But, um, who doesn't know that Mathias is a Democrat as well -- one that because of some typographic mixup happens to have an (R) after his name? Your LakeCountyEye thinks the law of unintended consequences might come to haunt District 59. Mathias, a 12-year legislator, is highly regarded throughout the area. There's even a train station named for him in Buffalo Grove. There may be no truth to the rumor that Mathias gets to ride his Metra train for free. But this particular Machiavellian plan to derail Mathias's long string of election-day free-rides may just backfire. Springfield Democrats, be careful what you wish for.