Since the 1870s, the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant have symbolized the nation’s two major political parties, both the handiwork of Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast.
As the spring legislative session dragged on past its scheduled adjournment with Gov. Rod Blagojevich and legislative leaders unable to craft a budget, however, some analysts wondered whether a more fitting image for lawmakers might not be a chicken.
No, not necessarily that kind of chicken, but rather Tympanuchus cupido, the greater prairie chicken, an endangered species in Illinois. Finding the right mix of spending cuts and revenue increases to balance the budget was difficult, according to the theory, because this is an election year.
So lawmakers feeling threatened by stiff competition in November understandably were reluctant to antagonize voters, whether by paring back Blagojevich’s recommended spending increases for education and health care, or by embracing his proposed tax and fee hikes for business and consumers.
The sense of jeopardy was naturally greater in the House, with all 118 seats on the line, compared to just 23 of 59 in the Senate. (The other 36 senators won four-year terms in 2002.) So House Speaker Michael Madigan had to be more cautious than his fellow Chicago Democrat, Senate President Emil Jones Jr. At first glance, a plausible hypothesis, right? But, upon further review, as they say in the NFL, most lawmakers are hardly in the same endangered category as the prairie chicken. In fact, the overwhelming majority are about as threatened as the red-winged blackbirds that abound across the state.
Consider the Senate. Only 11 of the 23 seats are being contested; in the other 12 districts, the winner is foreordained, as six Democrats and a like number of Republicans face no opposition. Moreover, in 10 of the 11 districts with 2004 races, the victorious party’s plurality in 2002 was more than 55 percent, generally considered a landslide; indeed, five won with 100 percent of the vote. The lone exception was Rushville Democratic Sen. John Sullivan, who upset incumbent Republican Sen. Laura Kent Donahue of Quincy by 2,394 votes, a 52-48 margin, in the 47th District in western Illinois.
At first glance, the electoral apprehension might seem more justified in the House, where everyone serves two-year terms. But although all 118 seats are up in November, less than half of the positions are being contested by the two major parties. Republicans have no candidate in 33 districts, while Democrats are giving the GOP a pass in 28 districts. Voters will have at least a nominal choice between the two in 57 districts, 33 of them now held by Democrats and 24 by Republicans.
In reality, even that modest appearance of competition is misleading, for in just 10 of the contested districts was the winning candidate’s 2002 plurality less than 60 percent, with the two parties splitting the “cliff-hangers.” In fact, only two incumbents facing November challengers won by less than 1,000 votes in 2002.
Democratic Rep. Kathleen Ryg of Vernon Hills posted a 107-vote margin, while Rep. Elizabeth Coulson, a Glenview Republican, was a 666-vote victor.
That would seem to suggest a pretty substantial one-party dominance in the 47 districts in which the loser pulled less than 40 percent. One possible note of encouragement for dark-horse challengers: The 2002 winner is not seeking another term in 11 of the 47 lopsided districts, although appointed incumbents are running in nine of them.
Despite the general trend toward incumbent invulnerability, though, at least one Chicago lawmaker is a certain loser. The 20th District race on Chicago’s North Side and northwest suburbs matches two current members, Reps. Michael McAuliffe and Ralph Capparelli. The head-to-head confrontation stems from the 2001 redistricting, under which McAuliffe, a Republican, found himself living in the same new district as Capparelli and fellow Democrat Rep. Robert Bugielski. McAuliffe defeated Bugielski two years ago, while Capparelli ran and won in a neighboring district. But the 17-term Democrat chose not to move into the new district, as was required for him to run there this time, opting instead to challenge McAuliffe, an eight-year veteran.
While the remap fallout will claim either McAuliffe or Capparelli in November, the 2001 redistricting plan is one of the main reasons so many incumbents are getting a free ride into another term. Whether Democrats or Republicans draw legislative boundaries, the intent is not to encourage competition. Legislative races that are truly toss-ups are costly to bankroll and carry a real possibility of losing. So the object is to create “safe” districts — ones in which partisan leanings can be reliably predicted — with as many as possible skewed to favor the party crafting the map.
Following the 2000 federal census, Democrats won the right to draw new districts reflecting demographic changes of the previous decade, and party cartographers produced a plan that in 2002 strengthened the party’s House majority and restored its control of the Senate after a decade of minority status. While their handiwork might seem to contradict a civics-book notion of fair and open elections, it certainly was in keeping with past practice — Republicans did the same thing a decade earlier. In fact, the GOP cartographers were so successful that 55 of 59 Senate districts and 100 of 118 House districts didn’t change their partisan stripes during five elections under the 1991 map.
So blaming the budget impasse on ballot-box butterflies seems quite a stretch for now. Still, the Democratic governor and his party leaders might well consider how voter dissatisfaction at their inept performance this spring might play out two years hence.
Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Illinois Issues, July/August 2004
