Prairie State Wire

Citizens for Judicial Reform chair Jim Nowlan is hoping to see state Democrats' best laid plans go awry when it comes to their latest map redistricting efforts. 

“Both the new 3rd and the new 2nd are districts in which former Gov. Bruce Rauner came close to winning in 2012,” Nowlan said. “So the two new districts are certainly competitive districts in which both Republicans and Democrats have opportunities to win."

Nowlan has joined Republican lawmakers blasting the latest Democratic map redistricting efforts as yet another plan designed to keep them in power.

Long a fair-maps advocate, Nowlan, a former state legislator and Gov. Richard Ogilvie’s running mate in 1972, asserted in a recent editorial about the Illinois Supreme Court map that "one issue that sends shivers up the spines of Cook County Democrats is loss of their unbroken, six-decade long control of the partisan Illinois Supreme Court."

Back in 2016, state Supreme Court Justice Tom Kilbride authored the opinion for a 4-3 Democratic majority in a vote critics charge overlooked the will of the people by not sufficiently factoring in the results of a petition drive that netted 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 said in the Shaw Media editorial. “So, last year I was among those involved in the successful effort to reject Kilbride’s bid for retention on the court.”

In addition to blasting the governor for reneging on a pledge he made as a candidate to veto any maps drawn alone partisan lines, some Republicans are now even questioning if Democratic lawmakers 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.

In a suit now working its way through federal court that challenges the maps' overall legality, the plaintiffs are also seeking to have the task of map redistricting taken out of the hands of politicians and placed under the controls of either a bipartisan commission or for a court-appointed “special master.”