During a news conference Tuesday in Aurora, Gov. JB Pritzker said “everything is on the table” when it comes to further gerrymandering Illinois’ congressional districts to benefit Democrats.
AP
While Gov. JB Pritzker last week repeatedly said he and his allies in the General Assembly might pursue gerrymandering Illinois’ congressional districts to benefit Democratic candidates even more than they already are, legislators on both sides of the aisle doubt it’ll happen.
They don’t question Pritzker’s desire to wrest congressional power from Republicans to counter the GOP’s effort to build its House majority by redrawing district maps in Texas. They just don’t think it’s possible to widen the Democrat’s 14-3 majority in Illinois’ congressional delegation through mapmaking.
“Illinois is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country,” said Republican state Rep. Martin McLaughlin of Barrington Hills. “What more could the governor do?”
State Rep. Martin McLaughlin
Democratic state Sen. Laura Murphy of Des Plaines expects Illinois’ congressional map will be redrawn in six years as scheduled — not before.
“Our maps were redrawn four years ago and will be again after the next census,” she said.
State Sen. Laura Murphy
‘Everything is on the table’
Pritzker spoke about redrawing Illinois’ congressional district boundaries during news conferences with some of the Democratic Texas legislators who fled their state to block a vote on the Republican redistricting plan. That proposal could give the GOP five more seats in the House as the party seeks to maintain its majority in Congress.
If the Texas Legislature redraws its state’s congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm election, Pritzker said, Illinois lawmakers might have to take a similar step.
“As far as I’m concerned, everything is on the table,” Pritzker said.
Congressional maps traditionally are drawn near the start of each decade based on population data from the decennial U.S. census. While no federal law prevents states from redrawing maps more frequently, the Illinois Constitution requires the General Assembly to draw legislative boundaries “in the year following each federal decennial census year.”
Pritzker, who opposed partisan mapmaking when running for governor in 2018 but approved just such a map in 2021, called the redistricting maneuver from President Donald Trump and Texas Republicans “cheating” and criticized the effort as “unconstitutional.”
But he also expressed willingness to pursue similar action in Illinois.
“It’s not something that I want to do. It’s not something that any of us want to have to do,” Pritzker said Tuesday in Aurora. “But we’re fighting for democracy. There are no rules anymore, apparently. And so we’re going to have to play by a set of rules that are being set out in front of us.”
When asked later in the week if Pritzker was sincere, a spokesperson said he had nothing to add to the governor’s comments.
Senate Republican Leader John Curran of Downers Grove accused Pritzker of “meddling in other states’ redistricting issues for national press coverage.”
“He should be working to increase voter choice here in Illinois by calling for fair maps like he pledged when running for office,” Curran said.
State Sen. John Curran
A Democrat-heavy delegation
Under federal law, the U.S. is divided into 435 congressional districts, each with roughly the same population — an average 761,169 people as of the last redistricting effort in 2021.
Illinois’ current congressional map was drawn to give Democrats an edge in nearly all of the state’s 17 districts, even though roughly 41% of the state’s voters supported Trump in the 2020 election and 44% of voters did so in 2024. Likewise, Trump carried 88 of Illinois’ 102 counties in 2020 and again in 2024.
The gerrymandering is particularly obvious in the West and Northwest suburbs, where some districts curl through a dozen or more communities in multiple counties like ribbons in the wind.
Curran said it’d be “impossible” to gerrymander the map more than it already has been.
“Gerrymandering weakens our democracy and removes choice from voters,” Curran said. “It should be ended throughout the country — starting here in Illinois.”
Support exists for fair maps
Kathy Cortez, vice president of the League of Women Voters of Illinois, agrees with that sentiment.
The nonpartisan, pro-democracy group advocates for fair political maps nationwide and opposes any effort to “usurp the voice of the voter by attempting to use redistricting to predetermine the outcome of an election,” Cortez said.
The U.S. is a representative democracy, she said, and politicians should represent the people electing them. Allowing elected officials to draw legislative maps that benefit themselves and their partisan allies “is thwarting the people,” Cortez said.
Suburban legislators McLaughlin and Murphy also support a nonpartisan mapping process.
District lines should follow logical boundaries and be easy for the public to understand, McLaughlin said.
“What we have now looks more like something Salvador Dalí would have drawn,” he said, referring to the surrealist artist.
Murphy called for a national solution “where everyone is playing by the same rules.”
State Rep. Daniel Didech
Democratic state Rep. Daniel Didech of Buffalo Grove believes partisan gerrymandering should be banned nationally, too. But with Texas Republicans trying to secure power through redistricting, Didech said states controlled by Democrats must act “to ensure that the Congress elected in 2026 accurately reflects the will of the voters.”
As Democrats already have a significant margin in Illinois’ congressional delegation, Didech thinks partisan, unscheduled redistricting efforts could be more effective in California and New York. Shifting more districts to Democrats in those states “would be most likely to fairly rebalance the national map,” he said.
At least one Republican in Congress is concerned about how California might respond to the Texas plan.
U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley of California last week introduced legislation that would prohibit congressional districts from being redrawn more than once after each decennial census. In a news release announcing the bill, Kiley accused Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom of “trying to subvert the will of voters.”
Kiley’s release made no mention of what’s happening in Texas, but the legislation reportedly would nullify any new maps adopted by states before the 2030 census, including any enacted this year. The proposal has been sent to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration.
· Daily Herald staff writer Susan Sarkauskas contributed to this report.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
