(upbeat dramatic music) - Welcome to "Capital View," where we discuss the latest in state government and politics.

I'm Hannah Meisel with NPR Illinois.

Joining us this wee&k is Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political science at the University at of Illinois, Springfield.

Thanks for being here, Kent.

- Good to be here.

Thanks for having me.

- And also here is Peter Hancock of Capitol News Illinois.

Glad you're here, Peter.

- Hi, good to see you, Hannah.

- Well, somehow we've made it to December in another very long year, another pandemic year.

But, Peter, one thing that has dominated Springfield since March is, you know, the once in a decade redistricting process, of course the most hyper-partisan thing that could possibly happen, you know, in the capitol.

And, you know, this is a process that, you know, of course it was thrown off by COVID, but once it got going, you know...

This is my first redistricting process.

Kent, I'm sure you can speak to the history more, but it just, things just kept coming up and, you know, a lot of bumpy roads.

But, Peter, we are finally at the point where a court will finally weigh in on the legislative maps and determine whether or not they're gonna go forward exactly as the Democrats drew them, or, you know, they need some adjustments.

So tell us what's at stake next week?

- Well, there are three sets of plaintiffs, and mainly they're looking at Hispanic areas in Chicago and the Southwest suburbs, and African-American communities around East St. Louis, the Metro East region.

The Republican leadership, which was the first to jump in the game, is challenging both.

There's a Latino advocacy group called The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, they're focusing solely on Chicago.

And the East St. Louis Branch of the NAACP, along with a couple other groups, are focusing on the Metro East region.

Briefs have been going on really all summer and all through the fall, even through the second redistricting process.

And so we are tentatively scheduled to have oral arguments before a three judge federal panel in Chicago starting Tuesday.

Although earlier this week, two of the plaintiffs said they don't think they need oral arguments.

There are plenty of briefs and depositions of expert witnesses that they don't need to call, you know, oral testimony or in-person testimony.

The NAACP still wants to have oral arguments, but they don't necessarily need to call any witnesses.

The only question is whether the judges want to have oral arguments, because they may have some particular questions of their own that they wanna get some answers to.

So probably by the time this airs, we'll know the answer to that, but as of right now that's still up in the air.

- Right, and Kent, you know, this as Peter alluded to, you know, the main question, the main really legal force that the plaintiffs have are whether or not these districts that Democrats drew violate the Voting Rights Act, especially when it comes to Latino voting power.

You know, the NAACP and the other groups who filed pretty late in the game in the case of the East St. Louis districts that they claim are diluting the black community's votes there, they're not really the... You know, they have arguments and the judges said like, sure, we'll take your arguments under advisement, but really what's at stake here is what's always been at stake.

It's that the Latino communities have been growing in Illinois.

Latino population.

That was the whole story of the 2020 census, not just in Illinois but nationwide, and it's the culmination of a years long effort.

And MALDEF, like Peter mentioned, is one of the lead plaintiffs here.

They're the only group who, in Illinois history of redistricting, has ever had success at the courts.

- Yeah, and we should note that the congressional map, there was an agreement on the last revision to add an additional Hispanic, you know, Latino congressional district.

And at the moment, I don't know that there's any litigation in relation to that.

And clearly we are, you know, this is very narrow.

You know, we're in federal court and the whole question involves one particular section of the Voting Rights Act in terms of that you cannot diminish minority voting representation.

It gets very technical in terms of exactly what involves concepts like polarized and non-polarized, you know, voting in terms of on the basis of race.

And so, you know, there are a lot of technical arguments, but ultimately certainly in Chicago, it's a question of how many districts are gonna be represented by Hispanic members?

How many are gonna be represented by black members?

And that's, you know, there's no partisan aspect to that.

So it's fairly narrow, it's very technical, but it is a very, very contentious issue.

And, you know, the inability of the Chicago city council to draw new maps centers around this question of exactly how many districts, or is it likely to get either, you know, Latino or African-American members elected.

And it is complicated by the fact that you are looking at voting populations that tend particularly in terms of Hispanic voters may not have as high of a turnout.

And so when you just look at raw numbers, you know, that may be deceiving in terms of what you might expect on election day.

So very complicated, very contentious, probably, you know, it may not, you know, end up with much impact in terms of the overall number of Democrats and Republicans.

Unless the court were to accept the Republicans suggestions, which would essentially, you know, ripple out the effect of changing these districts in ways that would have advantaged the Republicans.

Same thing's true in terms of the different perspectives of what ought to be going on in the Metro East.

- Sure, and, you know, but Republicans all throughout this legal process, you know, it seems as if the judges who've been involved in this has not necessarily bought their arguments.

And after all, the US Supreme court has, you know, kind of been hands off of partisan gerrymandering.

The only thing that it seems like federal courts are gonna weigh in on is this Voting Rights Act challenge.

But, Peter, I wanted to bring up what Kent just mentioned, which is that this week at Chicago city council, we've seen the whole process blow up.

You know, there's kind of an arbitrary deadline, kind of like what we had in July with the constitutional deadline to avoid a appointed commission to do the remap process.

Anyway, it's really interesting though, you know, from the beginning of this process, obviously with the story that we knew of Latino voting power increasing and the census numbers were gonna bear that out, but also the increased power of the black caucus, especially in partnership hand-in-glove with former House Speaker Mike Madigan for decades, it was gonna be contentious because we know that Illinois is losing some of its black population and obviously gaining Latino and also Asian-American populations.

And so it was gonna be contentious, but purposefully, those redistricting committees in the House and Senate were chaired and co-chaired each by a Latino and a black caucus member.

And, you know, whatever fights that went on behind the scenes, they stayed purely behind closed doors.

It's kind of amazing there was, you know, pretty much no media leaks.

Unlike city council, where there is now all out public fights between the black caucus and Latino caucus.

How important is that cohesion as we move on from this remapping process finally?

- Well, I'll be the first to admit I do not understand all of the ethnic and racial divides inside the city of Chicago.

One thing I do find interesting is how you see Republicans and Latinos, who Latinos in Illinois at least are largely, largely democratic voters.

And they're kind of in the same corner on this, Latinos are trying to increase their representation in the general assembly.

And for purposes of this, the Republicans are fine with that because when you pack Latinos into Latino districts, it kind of frees things up for Republican candidates in the largely white middle-class suburban areas.

Those middle-class suburban areas in the collar counties and elsewhere, used to be considered safe Republican districts.

And the last few election cycles 2016, 2018, 2020, started leaning a lot more democratic.

At this point, Kent you can weigh in on this too, it's kinda hard to tell whether that was a true political shift, or if that was just kind of a unique reaction to Bruce Rauner and Donald Trump.

I think in 2022 we'll find out how permanent or how stable that shift has been.

The East St. Louis areas is interesting.

The city of East St. Louis itself lost more than 30% of its population since the last census.

African-Americans, especially middle-class African-Americans, have been leaving East St. Louis and going to the surrounding suburbs.

Suburban areas that used to be kind of highly competitive, but now are largely democratic and the Democrats are hoping to keep it that way.

But in doing so, they also sort of broke up the African-American population.

So oddly enough, you could have three house members from the Metro East region none of them being black.

- Yeah, and that would be a huge change.

And again, you know, that is what the NAACP intervened in this case for.

And obviously too, it's the power of the incumbency and folks like LaToya Greenwood and Chris Belt, you know, the folks who came before them and built those political organizations don't wanna see that happen.

Kent, you had mentioned the congressional map before, which the governor finally signed shortly before Thanksgiving.

And, you know, from what I'm hearing, there probably is not going to be a legal challenge or at least not a very serious one.

I mean, here we are filming on December 2nd and things really need to be wrapped up before early mid January so people can start circulating the petitions.

But, you know, finally after the Thanksgiving holiday, keeping us all in suspense for so many months, Congressman Rodney Davis finally revealed that big surprise he is going to instead of run for governor, you know, just run for his sixth term in Congress instead of in the 13th district House seat that he has held for, you know, since 2012.

He'll run in the newly drawn 15th House district.

Tell us a little bit about where Rodney was on the maps, and, you know, what this means for the rest of the delegation.

- Well, you know, the district that he had went along... You know, went from Champaign, picked up some of Bloomington-Normal, went down Springfield, went down close to the Metro East, but not into there, into that area.

And the new map creates a district that leans democratic that covers, you know, a lot of Bloomington-Normal, goes over to Champaign, runs down from Springfield and then runs into the Metro East.

Picking up areas that Representative Bost has been, or Congressman Bost has been been representing.

But those areas were in Bost's district because they assumed that then incumbent Congressman Costello, who is a Democrat, was going to run and get reelected and the Democrats would have a Metro East district and they would have a central Illinois district that, you know, was competitive.

And now we've got a district that's very democratic by downstate standards in the 13th.

There's also a district that Bustos used to represent, the 17th, that goes from Rockford to Quad cities, and then comes down and picks up urban Peoria and urban Bloomington-Normal, which leans democratic but it's very competitive and certainly a Republican could win in a Republican year depending on what the issues are.

So it's like making a five piece jigsaw puzzle where you've got two pieces that have very definite boundaries, and then you get to draw the boundaries to make the other three pieces.

You can make them any way they look.

Any boundaries as long as you've got equal population.

And so, you know, that's what you've got.

You've got three leftover districts.

You know, district that Bost is in, the 18th, you've got the district that Representative LaHood is running in, which is the 16th, I think.

No, one is Davis and one is LaHood.

And so, you know, Davis has a very safe district.

It is huge.

And we've left Congressman Miller sitting there having to choose between running against Congressman Bost or Congressman LaHood 'cause the Democrats conveniently moved the boundaries in the very last iteration of the map a mile to the north to stick her in Representative Bost's district, which is, you know, south of the Metro East.

So Davis did the right thing.

If he gets elected to Congress and gets elected, which he will, and the House goes Republican, he'll be chair of the transportation committee which is a very powerful position.

That's a much better bet than hoping that Ken Griffin might bankroll your governor's election to run against what is still a popular incumbent in Governor Pritzker.

- Right, and you know, this, again, this is not a surprise.

I was listening back to what Congressman Davis pulled us reporters at the state fair, and he said he would rather remain in Congress, but said that his political future depended on the quote-unquote cropped Democrats in Springfield who then, you know, drew him this nice safe district.

It's also, I mean, could Davis have won statewide?

You know, that's an open question.

We might never know.

Davis's voting record, certainly, you know, aligned with Trump and it has gotten a lot more conservative in the years that he's been in Washington, but he can certainly run a ground game.

So, you know, Peter, speaking of the governor's race, this of course still leaves the four Republicans who have declared in play.

And we don't know yet who might jump in with the backing of Ken Griffin, Dick Uihlein, these big conservative mega donors, but, you know, give us just briefly the state of play there.

- Well, right now you have four Republicans who are all very, very conservative Republicans.

And I think a lot of people are sitting back waiting to see if somebody a little more moderate might get in the race.

And here again, the key to winning especially for a Republican to win the governor's office, is going to be those collar county suburbs.

Are they going to stay democratic, or will they go for a more centrist kind of moderate Republican?

I think a lot of people were maybe hoping that, you know, Rodney Davis, you know, he votes very conservatively, but at least he's not scary to suburbanites.

There's also State Representative Tom Demmer from Dixon who has said that he's maybe eyeing a statewide race, but he hasn't said yet.

Last we heard was he's going to announce pretty soon.

Unsure whether he would try for governor or secretary of state.

So that's kind of the state of play right now is they're sitting back waiting to see if some more centrist moderate Republicans who can play well in the suburbs, will get into any of the statewide races.

- Right, and we should mention also in the mix is State Senator Darren Bailey, who made a name for himself last year when he very loudly and repeatedly defied the governors COVID orders, and then hired attorney Tom DeVore, who turned into something of a political star himself, to represent him in all of these anti COVID restriction lawsuits.

And of course, Tom DeVore is now running for a seat on the state's fourth district appellate court.

Anyway, in some breaking news yesterday Wednesday evening, a friend, a political ally, someone that the campaign had definitely had in tow for a while this year, Lawrence Ligas, he was arrested for his role in the January 6th insurrection.

And, you know, it's interesting.

I don't know.

Kent, do you think that the Republican party is going to have to contend with that at some point?

'Cause, you know, I was listening back again to audio from the state fair when Ligas was weirdly trying to get into our reporters forum and was yelling at newish state GOP chair, Don Tracy.

And then I asked Don Tracy, you know, does the Republican party have a role to play in owning up to this?

And he said, no, we're moving on.

I don't know.

Kent, Do you think that there's any amount of owning up that needs to be done?

- Well, you know, his involvement and the person that got arrested has been charged.

You know, he's been active in doing things for Bailey's campaign and clearly is a supporter.

That's good for Bailey's brand in terms of the way he wants to present himself.

That's great for Republican primary, that's terrible for a general election.

And, you know, I agree.

The race is going...

These contests statewide are usually settled in the suburbs and, you know, you've got the suburbs have become much more racially diverse over the last 20 years.

You know, less so in the last decade than the decade before.

There's been a huge cultural shift.

And so issues like gay marriage, like, you know, gay rights, like abortion have been, you know, have hurt Republicans in more moderate suburban districts.

You know, no one knows what will happen with the Supreme Court's dealing with overturning Roe, but that could be a significant issue with suburban voters.

I assume the governor would make it a very significant issue and, you know, Bailey would clearly or any of the other three announced Republicans would be on the wrong side of that in terms of, you know... And would, you know, you use the word scary and that's what the Democrats will try to do is demonize whoever the Republican nominee is, if at all possible to be a scary Trump, you know, right wing, anti woman, anti-gay kind of a candidate.

But that profile still has a lot of currency in winning a Republican primary.

And so it's a dilemma for the Republicans.

And, you know, I don't know whether is COVID gonna dominate the election?

Is inflation gonna dominate the election?

You know, is abortion?

And so it's really hard to say exactly how the electorate is is going to coalesce around statewide races.

And the Republicans, you know, I mean, they finally have a candidate to run for secretary of state that everybody seems to be comfortable with, but there's not much of an organization.

And they're really dependent on the good graces of mega donors coming in and deciding this is a good place to spend their money.

And they might very well, the mega donors, may very well decide that state Supreme Court races, of which there'll be two very competitive races, may be a better place to put their money than trying to go one-on-one with Governor Pritzker.

So very hard to tell at this point, but you know, the Democrats, I mean, the Republicans definitely need a bigger, more unified ticket and a coherent message that is a general election message.

And getting there from here looks difficult at this point, but this is a lifetime before we actually get people voting less than a year from now.

- Well, we are almost out of time, but I did wanna mention here at the end, we had two resignations, or at least one immediate resignation, one announcement of won't be running again in the house this week.

Majority leader, Greg Harris, Democrat from Chicago's Northwest side.

Best-known, of course, for sponsoring the same-sex marriage bill in 2013 and civil unions before that, announced that he will not be seeking another term, but he'll be staying probably 'til the end of his term in early 2023.

And then of course right here in Springfield, Mike Murphy, a Republican who has served for the last three years, kind of a casualty of the Democrat's maps.

And he announced that he will be stepping down, not unexpected, he'll be leading the greater Springfield chamber of commerce.

And he, of course, he didn't wanna have to run against Representative Avery Bourne, a friend of his, of course a rising star in the Republican party.

You know, it just didn't make sense for him.

So he stepped down effective immediately this week.

But, we are out of time.

Again, thank you so much for watching.

I'm Hannah Meisel.

I'd like to thank our guests Kent Redfield, Peter Hancock.

We'll catch you again next week on "Capitol View."

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