(cheerful music) (dramatic music) - Welcome to "Capitol View" on WSIU.

I'm Jeff Williams sitting in this week as we take a look at what is making news in Illinois politics around the state.

Well, at the top of the newsfeed this week, Operation Midway Blitz is officially underway in Chicago as hundreds of ICE and ATF agents are taking part in an immigration enforcement surge.

We'll take a closer look at that.

Plus we'll check in on the latest updates in Illinois' upcoming primary election.

And of course, we'll probably do some other topics as well.

This week on "Capitol View."

To help guide our discussion are John Jackson, visiting professor with the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute and Kent Redfield, emeritus political science professor at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Gentlemen, welcome back to the program.

- Good to be here.

- Glad to join you, Jeff.

- Thank you.

So, as we speak, an estimated 200 plus ICE and ATF agents are in Chicago as part of a 30 day immigration enforcement surge that the Department of Homeland Security says is in honor of a young Illinois woman who was killed by a drunk driver that according to Homeland Security, is a criminal illegal alien.

DHS says that they're targeting, in their words, "The worst of the worst."

Deployment of National Guard troops is still apparently an option that's on the table according to President Trump.

As we tape this program that has not occurred yet.

John, we've talked about this before with federal agents and National Guard when they were deployed to California.

You've been watching what's unfolding currently in Chicago.

What's your initial reaction?

- Well, the background is Chicago's been in the news now for weeks, and partly stimulated by what happened in Los Angeles.

And just for a brief review, the questions on the legal justification of all of this are still up in the air, although they're somewhat settling down now.

Just what authority is the president acting under?

And it stems from the fact that the Posse Comitatus law, which is well over 100 years old, says that federal troops, the military cannot be used as a sort of a national polICE corps.

They cannot be used for local law enforcement duties.

But the president's been trying to get around that.

He's occasionally referred to the Insurrection Act where he does have some limited abilities.

He's at times talked about the fact that he's commander in chief, and sometimes he just says, "I'm the president, I can do what I want to."

But it's clear that coming off of LA and coming off the DC situation, both of which are not totally solved, that he's had his eye on Chicago.

And I wanna read you this quote that sets the stage regarding Chicago.

He's been opposed to Chicago and on us for, ever since he's been running for president in the first term.

But this is a September 7th quote.

He said, "There's no place, no place in the world, including you can go to Afghanistan, you can go to any of the places that you might think of.

They don't even come close to this.

Chicago is a hell hole right now."

Well, that's pretty provocative.

And it provoked the governor, JB Pritzker, to say "The president of the United States has declared war on a state."

We've been going from there downhill in the rhetoric, but not sure what all the problems he's had with Chicago.

Some think it's because of Trump Tower.

And he did have a couple of cases where the city made him, number one, reduce the size of the sign on the side of Trump Tower, and number two stop polluting the Chicago River.

But he's certainly taken an interest here.

And the possibilities ranged from bringing in the National Guard and federalizing the National Guard as he did in California, and then again, as he did in DC.

DC's a little different because he's clearly got way more leeway, being that it's a federal city and only he can mobilize the National Guard there.

But we've had National Guardsmen from West Virginia, Ohio, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee, all pounding the beat around the monuments in downtown Washington.

And of course he's claimed great results from that, including last night going out to eat just to demonstrate how safe Washington's gotten since he's done this.

So all of that is the background.

The governor said, "We do not need federal troops.

We do not need an intercession here by the president."

The mayor said the same thing.

All the prominent Democrats in office said the same thing.

And we're finally beginning to get this play out.

And it seems to me that sending in, and specifically designating that they're going to concentrate on just the illegals or the undocumented, is a narrowing of the mission.

And so this may be more practical actually, if you think about it, the Loop would've been the most likely place to send them.

And yet Chicago is three times geographically bigger than DC and it's 12 times bigger by population.

So you're gonna send them to the Loop, or you're going to send them out to the east or to the west side or the south side where most of the crime is.

All of that's totally unclear, but if it's just ICE, and if it's just rounding up the undocumented, then I think maybe the mission has narrowed some, but we will see whether it also expands.

I will conclude by saying I think this is really fraught with problems, because particularly if you've had federal troops, downtown Chicago, or even out in the areas where the most people live, you've got the possibility for a real tragedy happening and things get out of hand in a hurry, it seems to me.

- Yeah, the governor has reiterated that he's not going to ask the president to send the National Guard in.

Just to play devil's advocate a little bit here, there are Illinoisans that are supportive of these ICE enforcement sweeps, and say they're supportive of it in terms of whatever it might take, including the president sending in the National Guard.

What do you say to those individuals who hold this opinion?

I know we've talked about federalism before in the past.

- Well, I, you know, part of it has to do with, you know, what's effective and what are people's expectations.

You know, when the president talks about, you know, rounding up the worst of the worst, going after people who have committed crimes, have outstanding warrants, you find, you know, pretty wide acceptance.

No one's in favor, no one's pro-violent crime.

I mean that's, you know, that's not a surprising result.

On the other hand, you know, you drill down into this and when we're talking about enforcement actions that involve, you know, picking up Grandma who's been here for 30 years and has children that are, you know, born in the United States and are citizens, then the support for this, you know, wanes quite a bit and you know, very quickly.

And so it's a matter of how it's done doing the criminal investigations, the enforcement actions, people that are, you know, fleeing arrest warrants, that takes time, energy, resources, that's not flashy, that doesn't give the president's key advisor on this, Stephen Miller, the kind of numbers that he would like, you know, 30,000 or 3000 a day and you know, a million a year.

And so, you know, you've got people within the administration definitely working at cross purposes.

The person, you know, the person leading the effort for ICE is, you know, he'll do whatever is appropriate in terms of, you know, whatever he is told to do in terms of the role.

He's not particularly, you know, doesn't seem to have any concern about whether, you know, this is a gang member or again, you know, Grandma, but you know, the overall optics are better if you are either, you know, doing high profile cases like the one that they were mentioning that were doing this enforcement, you know, he would like, you know, there are certainly people within the administration that would like to see a replay of Los Angeles where you saw a surge of immigration enforcement, demonstrations that at least partially turn violent.

And then, you know, that's a justification for bringing in the National Guard.

And so, you know, I don't wanna make this look like, you know, this is, you know, all planned out in terms of, you know, there's a lot more serendipity going on in terms of how these things unfold, than there are careful "We're gonna do step one, step two, step three."

So, and you know, the other factor is the president continues to spread himself very thin.

He's talking about Baltimore, he's talking about New York City, and the more that you are, you know, raising the specter of the National Guard, the more it looks like, you know, just kind of crying wolf.

And so it's a pretty, you know, fluid situation.

I would be surprised absent any kind of, you know, a demonstration that turns violent, some type of something that would threaten a federal facility, you know, that you're really likely to get the, you know, activating the National Guard.

And, you know, for his base, he gets about as much mileage out of talking about it as he does actually doing it.

So, you know, this is wait and see, we'll see whether, you know, that we get out into the communities and what kind of presence we have.

And again, you know, the optics can be mixed.

I mean, you know, you're arresting, you know, a fellow, person that has multiple felony warrants.

That's, you know, that's good that, you know, that makes for good TV.

If you're hauling away the father with the crying children in the background, not so much in terms of the effective TV.

So, you know, this may end up being a lot of to do about nothing and, you know, Gaza or Ukraine may pull all of the attention away.

You know, it's really hard to tell.

- Yeah.

Well, we'll certainly wait and see.

And a lot of eyes are certainly on Chicago.

As we're waiting and seeing the calendar keeps advancing.

The March primary is just around the corner, many races up and down the ticket are continuing to take shape, obviously, Senator Dick Durban's open senate seat, the race for governor, race for controller, among those that are generating a good deal of movement and maneuvering.

Kent, as you watch the various races taking shape, is there anything in particular that stands out to you?

- Well, it is a very fluid situation at this point because you have these opportunities that have not been there.

I mean, you know, Durban stepping down triggers congressional incumbents to throw their hat in the ring, that does, has a moldable impact on legislative races.

The comptroller deciding, we assume, she's going to run for mayor, opens up a statewide office that again, when you're stuck with, you know, all of these Democrats at the top, and a lot of them have been there for a while, there's a lot of pent up ambition among politicians to, you know, see whether or not they can play on a larger stage.

I think someone was mentioning there were like 19 possible candidates for the 9th District, I think they were talking about.

And you know, all of those are not gonna last all the way through, you know, a serious effort.

It puts pressure on the funding base because you're spending money all, you know, and the parties are not nearly as powerful.

The state parties, the county parties, local parties.

I mean, the object used to be that you go in, you sew up the primary, you get, you know, your base activated, you control the primaries, in the safe areas.

And so, you know, open active primaries in Democratic regions or in Republican regions, downstate, you know, the parties are not able to manage conflict the way that they used to do.

And so this is a, you know, much more volatile.

The governor's race is apparently picking up some, you know, some noise on the other side.

Darren Bailey, who lost four years ago, has indicated he's ready for another run.

A new candidate, Dabrowski, who I think is the president of Wirepoints and is associated with, or has been with the only policy institute, you know, self-funded $250,000 to blow the caps, has a big contribution from a donor that gave money to Bailey last time.

And, you know, this is high profile stuff.

The governor has spent in excess of 100 million dollars twice to be elected governor.

Darren Bailey with independent expenditures, and what he was donated, you know, was upwards to, you know, 40, 50 million dollars last time around.

These are really high ticket kinds of, you know, when you get to the governor's race.

So with interesting demographics, because almost 60% of the Republican primary vote comes from downstate, and yet you cannot win with downstate votes.

You've got to win or reclaim some of the Republican base in the suburbs.

And, you know, Bailey was not able to do that.

A candidate that appeals to the suburban base may not appeal to the southern base.

So pretty fluid situation right now.

- Yeah, you mentioned, I think it was in Capital Facts this morning, the Dabrowski is reporting like $785,000 in campaign contributions this week.

And as you mentioned, one of those from, there was a major backer of Bailey during the last election.

You noted the fact that a lot of the, in the Republican primaries a lot of those votes come from downstate.

Does Darren Bailey have any advantage having, even though unsuccessfully, treaded this ground before?

- Well, everybody knows who he is, and that's the good news and the bad news in terms of the Illinois electorate, I think that's pretty clear.

He doesn't have to spend the money for name recognition that he did before, but he got a huge assist from JB Pritzker by running ads complaining about how conservative he was before the Republican primary.

And so Richard Griffin's $50 million, you know, for the mayor of Aurora turned out not to be a good investment.

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, as a backdrop to all of this, obviously the midterm congressional redistricting efforts kind of continue in many states.

Republican led efforts in Texas and Missouri I think have already pretty much taken the necessary legislative action to begin that process.

I think Indiana potentially is looking at doing the same thing.

Democratic leaning states like California, I think Massachusetts are looking at taking similar actions.

Governor Pritzker has threatened to initiate similar actions in Illinois.

John, what is the end game of this redistricting dance that seems to be going on leading up to the midterm congressional actions?

- Most directly it's control of the House of Representatives.

And just a little backdrop here, the Constitution requires redistricting every 10 years after the federal census, and that's when it's always done.

I wanna stress, this is unprecedented for trying to change the rules of the game.

Particularly halfway through the decade.

It was all set off apparently by a phone call from President Trump to Governor Greg Abbott in Texas, and Trump and his people said, "We want five more Republicans out of Texas."

Well, Republicans just about have all of the representative seats in Texas already.

But Greg Abbott agreed, as he always does with president, and they set out and they redistricted Texas, and they did it with real possibility now, flipping five more seats, and this is important, just background midterm elections since the turn of the century have produced plus 25 on average for the out party.

Now, there's lots of reasons we could go into why that is almost a law, but it's certainly a probability.

So the Democrats only need five seats, and 25 is the average.

So it doesn't have to be a blue wave, it has to be only sort of an average, less than average kind of outcome.

And that five seats right there could do it.

But now our neighbors to the west of us, Missouri, did the same thing.

They're trying to reduce the two Democrats out of eight in the House from Missouri down to one, and they spent this week doing that.

And apparently there's only going to be one in one of the urban areas, either St. Louis or Kansas City, and that one will be a predominantly Black, and there won't be any more Democrats out of an eight person.

Now, Missouri Republicans are stronger than Democratic representatives are, but they're not that much different.

And the same's true with Texas.

There are some Democrats in Texas and Missouri, and now Indiana's looking the same thing.

Vice president went over there and visited and urged them to do that.

I will say the Court could have settled this long ago, and they've refused to do so.

The Court is supposed to be the referee on things like equal protection and this is clearly an equal protection kind of situation.

And the Court has consistently said, "We're not going to look at partisan redistricting.

You'll just have to sort that out between you, the governor, legislative branches, and whatever you do, it is all right with us."

I think the US Supreme Court has been completely derelict in not taking that issue on because there are ways you can ensure or at least come closer to ensure equal protection for the minority party and for minorities often, as it turns out.

Illinois has threatened to do the same thing, but it's not a realistic threat in Illinois, we're already 14 outta 17 Democratic in this state.

You start tinkering around trying to get two more, three more, whatever, you start jeopardizing three incumbents who are not totally in absolute lead pipe blue districts already.

And so I think it's not going anywhere in Illinois.

I think it has gone somewhere in California, but what California did is much different from what Texas did.

And it's not at all clear that people will do what the governor asked them to do.

So California's not a realistic possibility.

So anyway, the rules of the game are being played with for very partisan purposes, and president instigated it to try to change the outcome.

- Yeah.

This week the Illinois League of Women Voters endorsed the Fair State Maps Initiative in Illinois.

Now that wouldn't have any impact on congressional redistricting, but would potentially change the shape of the maps in future state races.

That effort ran into some legal hurdles the last time it was tried.

John or Kent, either one of you, is there an interest you think in having an independent commission draw lines in the maps in Illinois?

- Yeah, there, you know, because of what the Illinois State Supreme Court said, and this is a, you know, this is a limited initiative under the Constitution.

It has to deal with structure and process of the general assembly.

They've been very strict in terms of how you have to make this work, and that it has to ultimately be, you know, within the legislative article, that limits what you can do.

What you have is, you know, in order to say, "We don't want partisan politics, we don't want the legislature or the governor having a vote on what this map looks like."

You have to come up with criteria that are essentially negative.

They're very sterile and negative criteria.

It's not about "This is how we get good representation," this is how we take the legislature and the governor out of it.

And so it's looking at, you know, minimizing the number of county lines or municipal boundaries as a major criteria.

And not saying, don't talk about, you know, partisan control, which of course is like, don't talk about a pink elephant.

I mean, everybody focuses on that.

And so, you know, it's not, you know, you have no criteria in there that says "This is what you need to look at to maximize representation."

And so there's no particular logic that says you should put Champaign and Urbana in one House district or two House districts, which we've done it both ways for partisan advantage.

But you can't look at that initiative and say, "Here's the logical reason why X or Y is better."

So do you flip a coin to decide whether, you know, how you're gonna divide up, you know, the territory in Champaign County?

It's, you know, that's why this is just a cul-de-sac that everything is pushed into, makes no sense.

John is exactly right.

The Supreme Court needs to go in, clarify, make this positive rather than, you know, just a negative exercise.

- All right.

Well, gentlemen, as we often do, we run out of time before we run out of things to talk about.

So thank you both for being with us this week.

John Jackson with the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute and Kent Redfield, political scientist emeritus from the University of Illinois, Springfield.

I'm Jeff Williams.

Thank you for joining us this week on "Capitol View."

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