THE ILLINOIZE: The Latino district conundrum...Dems slam GOP on redistricting racial claims...Mendoza whacks former legislators who want more cash...Davis clarifies on Gov race...

April 13, 2021

Good morning.

The House and Senate are back in Springfield starting today. We’re not expecting much movement on some of the major issues out there, but we’ll keep our ear to the train track. (Do they actually do that, or is it just in cartoons?)

Springfield types- what are you hearing? Drop me a note at patrick@theillinoize.com. We won’t use your name and will never get state employees in trouble.

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Let’s get to it.

MORE LATINO DISTRICTS?

According to a 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimate, 17.5% of the state population is of Hispanic descent, making it the largest racial minority in the state. (It was in the 2010 census, as well, but it appears that gap will be growing.

So, will there be more Hispanic-majority districts in the new redistricting plan?

Maybe.

Steven Monroy of the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund, based in Chicago, has been lobbying for more Hispanic representation.

Speaking to a House redistricting committee Monday, Monroy said the new maps need to protect and expand majority-Hispanic districts.

“We urge this committee to protect existing Latino majority and plurality districts and, where there are sufficient increases in Latino populations, to then create new Latino majority districts. We expect the 2020 census results will show an increase in Latino population statewide, but in particular, in the Chicagoland area.”

Republicans say there likely should be more Hispanic representation, but Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield), the top GOP member on the House Redistricting Committee says if Democrats use American Community Survey data instead of census data, they are more likely to under-represent Hispanic voters.

“If the Democrats use [ACS] data, [they] will undercount the Latinx population. I’ve made that point in hearings and they seem to not be paying attention to it,” Butler said. “There’s a growing Latinx population in the state, out into the suburbs, into Kane County and DuPage County and these areas, yet the maps don’t reflect that. I doubt the maps will reflect that if what they pass at the end of June [continues with this data].”

Butler also argues there should be a second Hispanic-majority congressional district in the state. That may just be to stop the overt gerrymandering in the 4th district.

It’s also worth mentioning, numerous groups want majority districts, Arab Americans, Orthodox Jews, corn fields (kidding). It’s going to be hard to fit them all in.

Here’s our story on the subject.

DEMS THINK GOP COMPLAINTS ARE RACE-BASED

Two House Republicans and a GOP Congressman lodged additional complaints yesterday on the seeming insistence of legislative Democrats to pass a redistricting plan without accurate census data.

Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield), Rep. Avery Bourne (R-Morrisonville), and Congressman Rodney Davis (R-Taylorville) spoke to media yesterday and repeated many of the same talking points the GOP has spouted in recent weeks about the process.

This time, though, they attempted to use Governor JB Pritzker’s comments from 2018 that he would oppose a partisan map against him.

“If the Governor holds to his promise to veto any partisanly drawn map, then he needs to come out and say that now so that the legislature knows that this is a fool’s errand to keep going with this redistricting process in a partisan way,” said Bourne. “We can set up an independent an independent process. Today, we have a real opportunity to set forth a new path for redistricting and provide a fair map for Illinoisans.”

The Governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment from The Illinoize (they haven’t responded to us since December), but the Governor’s spokesperson told WCIA-TV Pritzker “believes legislative maps should reflect Illinois’ gender, racial, and geographic diversity, along with preserving the Voting Rights Act decisions that help ensure racial and language minorities are fully represented in the electoral process.”

Her statement left out the first half of Pritzker’s quote on vetoing partisan maps.

“Yes, I will pledge to veto. We should amend the constitution to create an independent commission to draw legislative maps, but in the meantime, I would urge Democrats and Republicans to agree to an independent commission to handle creating a new legislative map,” Pritzker responded to Capitol Fax during the 2018 campaign.

But the top Senate Democrats in charge of redistricting brought race into the mix.

“As Republicans nationwide seek to silence Black and Brown communities, Democrats in Illinois remain committed to the creation of a fair map that reflects the great diversity of our state,” Sens. Omar Aquino (D-Chicago) and Elgie Sims (D-Chicago) said in a joint statement.

Here’s more in our story on yesterday’s fireworks.

MENDOZA SWINGS FOR THE FENCES

You may remember Friday morning we told you how two former Democratic State Senators, Mike Noland and James Clayborne, had won a suit trying to get back pay and a pension boost when they voted to cut their pay.

State Comptroller Susana Mendoza has a new Op-Ed piece in the Chicago Tribune that, well, takes them to task.

State taxpayers paid former state Sen. Mike Noland $738,000 during his 10 years as a state legislator. Now we pay him $207,000 a year to be a Kane County judge. He filed a lawsuit against my office four years ago, asking the courts to force me to pay him even more money for his part-time gig as a legislator.

Why? Well, every few years, in a great show of selflessness, Noland, then a Democrat from Elgin, voted to decline cost-of-living raises for himself, which are considered automatic for lawmakers under state law. He would pat himself on the back and ask voters to reelect him because of his great self-sacrifice in voting to decline the raise. He was a chief co-sponsor of one of the resolutions to refuse the raise.

Then, after he left the legislature, he shamelessly filed a lawsuit asking the court to save him from himself. The lawyer-senator apparently did not know what he was doing when he voted to decline the pay raises. He did not know he was violating the Illinois Constitution, which says lawmaker pay cannot be changed during a two-year period — even though the provision in the constitution was debated thoroughly. So he asked the court to reverse all his votes and pay him back all those raises.

Because he started under the “Tier 1” pension system that gives a compounded 3% cost-of-living adjustment every year, some back-of-the-envelope math shows that in 20 years of retirement, he’ll be paid $6.5 million by taxpayers on top of the hundreds of thousands in salary we have already paid him. That makes him the “Six Million Dollar Man.”

Judge Noland, isn’t that enough?

Drop this self-enriching crusade.

Boom. Go read the whole thing.

DAVIS WOULD RATHER RUN FOR CONGRESS

In the aforementioned story talking about redistricting, the great Dave Dahl of WTAX asked Congressman Rodney Davis about our story (we assume) last week, that Davis is “serious” about running for Governor in 2022.

Here’s what Davis had to say:

“My first choice is to run for re-election in Washington, DC. I’ve been open and transparent about that,” said Davis. “But, my future, Avery’s future, Tim’s political future, it all hinges right now on the supermajority Democrats being able to have a fair process.”

(“Avery” is Rep. Avery Bourne and “Tim” is Rep. Tim Butler.) They were part of the news conference with Davis and are, as you might expect, just as susceptible to being drawn out of their districts as Davis is.

No real shock, but from the horse’s mouth, I suppose.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Happy Birthday today to freshman Congresswoman Marie Newman. Rep. Joe Sosnowski celebrates today, too.

Sen. Neil Anderson turns 39 tomorrow. Former Speaker Lee Daniels, and former Reps. Ron Wait and Sheri Jeisel celebrate a birthday Thursday.

THANK YOU

We’ll keep monitoring what is happening in Springfield this week, so keep an eye on the website at www.theillinoize.com.

Thanks so much for all of your support. Your comments and critiques mean the world to us. (Seriously, we only get better with your input.)

Have a great week.