ILLINOIS TRIBAL POLITICS, ROUND DOS.

No sooner do I call attention to the ridiculous Illinois congressional redistricting than the politicians come up with another pooling of voters.  "Illinois Democratic mapmakers in Springfield carved a second Hispanic district and, in a surprise, threw Democratic incumbent Reps. Marie Newman and Sean Casten together, setting up a potential divisive primary."  It's the same game Republican gerrymanderers have played, creating ethnic districts that come close to Democrat pocket boroughs, the better to concentrate the Republican voters.

The current Hispanic congressional district, the Illinois 4th, was created only after a federal court fight in the wake of the 1990 Census. In order to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, the courts allowed Chicago’s two Hispanic communities — on the North and South Sides — to be connected by adding a thin bit of suburban turf to link them together. The district was contorted into an “earmuff” or “C” shape in order to also preserve the 7^th as a Black district, also mandated under the VRA.

The Springfield mapmakers on this second try drew a heavily Democratic district designed to send a second Hispanic to Washington by essentially dissolving the current 3^rd congressional district represented by the freshman Newman.

It’s recognition that the current 3^rd is a remnant of the Mike Madigan era, drawn specifically to protect and preserve former Rep. Bill Lipinski and his son, Dan, whom Newman defeated in the 2020 Illinois Democratic primary.

Under the proposal, the earmuffs are decoupled and a new 3^rd district is now anchored on the North Side, heading west to DuPage County.

Ah, yes, the old Grand Duchy of Mount Prospect, now a latifunda.  But where are the non-Democrat politicians who will contest the ethnic voting blocs so created?  And for all the efforts by Democrats to create majority-black safe districts, Illinois is sufficiently riddled with crime, corruption, and taxes that "The loss of Black population in Illinois means fewer Black residents in the three districts — all Democratic — created to yield Black lawmakers."