Forget Congress. Forget the state legislature. The 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. Not even Mike Madigan can claim that record.
And now that their control is threatened, Democrats in Springfield this week displayed a breathtakingly cynical effort to retain that control, when they unveiled, as if “in the dark of night,” a new gerrymandering of Illinois Supreme Court districts.
If this map, long rumored in the back alleys of Springfield Democratic circles, goes through this coming week, indeed this year, it will strongly suggest the new Democratic regime in the state capitol may be worse than the old one.
Some background: Because of gerrymandering of the state high court districts in 1962, led by Mayor Richard J. Daley and his new governor Otto Kerner, the Illinois Supreme Court has had a Democratic majority ever since. This court has slavishly protected former Illinois House speaker Mike Madigan and Democrats on such matters as public pensions, term limits and legislative redistricting.
Fast forward: In 2016, state supreme court justice Tom Kilbride sullied his robes. He wrote a terribly contrived opinion for a 4-3 Democratic majority that rejected a petition drive, signed by 700,000 citizens, to put on the ballot a proposal for an independent redistricting commission. The proposal had been crafted to pass state constitutional muster by a team of top lawyers, which included Lori Lightfoot (now Chicago mayor), at the prestigious law firm Mayer Brown.
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?
So, last year I was among those involved in the successful effort to reject Kilbride’s bid for retention on the court, which startled Democrats. It helped that Kilbride’s district has become Republican—Trump carried it by 16 percentage points.
So, there are now three elected Democrats and three elected Republicans on the court, with two new members to be elected to the seven-member panel in 2022.
Democrats obviously believe they might be able to carve one or two new districts for their party, by eliminating the Kilbride district. Now that Democrats are making inroads in the suburbs, in part because of disdain there for Trump, they see some opportunity.
Their rationale for the totally secret court remapping effort is that the present Supreme Court districts are no longer substantially equal in population, as required by the Illinois Constitution. For example, the 2nd District comprises most of the Chicago area’s large suburban counties. The 2nd has been — for three decades — top heavy with population.
The manifest irony is that, until their rather desperate situation of the present, Democratic leaders had been delighted to keep the 2nd overpopulated, as it has been heavily Republican. The oldest tactic in political redistricting is to keep voters of the opposing party concentrated in as few districts as possible.
If this were such a “good government” move, why hasn’t there been, over the past five months, a clean bill, or any committee considerations whatever, or public hearings around the state, as with legislative redistricting?
No, this reeks of cynicism toward the democratic process. The Dems obviously feel their insider political baseball scheme will fly over the heads of the public, busy with making a buck and rearing families during a pandemic.
And yet, the mantra of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and 14 female House members, who this spring emasculated now former House speaker Mike Madigan, has been openness and transparency. They can stop this, provide time for open, thoughtful discussion. What’s the hurry? Hundreds of good bills will be put off until next year.
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.
A former Illinois legislator and Gov. Richard Ogilvie’s running mate in 1972, Jim Nowlan is chair of Citizens for Judicial Fairness, a campaign committee.