Prairie State Wire

Citizens for Judicial Reform chair Jim Nowlan points to the new 3rd District as an example of the way Democrats worked to stack the deck in their favor with the latest map redistricting. 

“It’s favorable to appellate justice Judge Mary Kay O'Brien, who is from the eastern part of the 3rd, which is a key part of the new 3rd,” Nowlan said. “They would be Iroquois, Kankakee, Grundy, LaSalle, Bureau and DuPage. Mary Kate O'Brien represented parts of all of those districts except for DuPage when she was a legislator and then elected to the appellate bench. She is familiar with the territory and I think they assume she would be familiar to the voters. It looks like a district that was basically created for her.”

For the last six decades, Democrats have controlled the state Supreme Court and Republicans see the new maps as another attempt to hang on to power.

Back in 2016, state Supreme Court Justice Tom Kilbride wrote the opinion in a 4-3 Democratic majority that overlooked a petition drive that garnered more than 700,000 signatures demanding that a proposal for an independent redistricting committee be placed on the ballot.  

“Some of my friends and I thought: If Kilbride and the Dem court majority can cynically subvert the will of 700,000 voters in a very public decision, which newspapers across the state lambasted, what might that court do behind the scenes on the hundreds of cases no one ever hears about?” Nowlan wrote in an editorial published by Shaw Media. “So, last year I was among those involved in the successful effort to reject Kilbride’s bid for retention on the court.”

Nowlan is convinced his side now has a chance.

“Both the new 3rd and the new 2nd are districts in which former Gov. Bruce Rauner came close to winning in 2018 when he was overall a very unpopular candidate across the state,” he said. “So the two new districts are certainly competitive. If these self-proclaimed reformers won’t slow this runaway court-packing train, they are no better than the rest of their Democratic colleagues. Indeed, then we can observe that the new regime is no better, maybe worse, than the old one.”

In addition to faulting the governor for reneging on a vow he made as a candidate to veto any maps drawn alone partisan lines, some Republicans are now even questioning if Democrats have the legal authority to redraw political maps the way they have.

“The official 2020 decennial counts released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week confirm that the Democrats’ redistricting plan violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law, as well as comparable provisions of the Illinois Constitution,” state Rep. Martin McLaughlin (R-Lake Barrington) posted on Facebook.

With House Republican Leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) also blasting the process, GOP leaders recently filed suit in federal court challenging the maps that will influence the next decade of elections across the state.

Along with seeking to have the maps declared unconstitutional, the plaintiffs are demanding that the job of map redistricting be completely taken out of the hands of politicians and handled by either a bipartisan commission or a court-appointed “special master.”

Over Republican objections, the governor signed the three maps forming new boundaries for districts for the General Assembly, the Illinois Supreme Court and the Cook County Board of Review into law.