 Tim Mapes, House Speaker Mike Madigan’s chief of staff, embarked on an
interesting challenge last week.
Mapes spoke in Chicago as part of a panel the National Council of State
Legislatures, or NCSL, sponsored. He was slated to speak not about Illinois’
staggering debt or tepid jobs growth. Not stagnant incomes or its out-migration
problem. Not property taxes.
Mapes talked political maps.
Defending his boss’ record on that subject is an impossible task, but kudos to
the NCSL for making Mapes try.
Despite overwhelming demand for political-mapmaking reform in Illinois, Madigan
has snuffed it out at every turn. And controversy surrounding Madigan’s maps
stretch back more than 30 years.
This year, more than 500,000 Illinoisans signed a petition to put a
mapmaking-reform referendum on the November ballot. If successful, it would
shrink the speaker’s influence in legislative map drawing by putting that
process in the hands of a broad coalition, rather than the winner-take-all
system that has followed the census each decade since 1970.
But Madigan’s top lawyer, Michael Kasper, sued to strike the referendum from the
ballot earlier this year. A district court ruled in his favor. The case now sits
before the Illinois Supreme Court.
It was Mapes’ job to defend that action at the summit. He failed.
“Legislators like to be involved in this state on how they frame their
districts. Whether they like all of it is another thing,” Mapes said. “But they
like to be involved, and it’s still a big part of what we do.”
He’s right. Illinois politicians love to be involved in choosing their voters,
especially Madigan. In fact, political mapmaking is how Madigan became speaker
in the first place.
His first map lead to a Democratic rout in the 1982 elections, even though
Illinois’ population trends shown in the 1980 census spelled disaster for the
party. Madigan gifted Chicago six more House seats and three more Senate seats
than its population dictated. And, after voters ratified a constitutional
cutback amendment that pared the ranks of the Illinois House, Madigan’s map made
sure 43 of the 59 eliminated seats belonged to Republicans.
That political wizardry made Madigan a shoo-in for the speakership.
State lawmakers bowed to the king.
“Many of them know they wouldn’t even be in the General Assembly if it weren’t
for the heavily Democratic map of legislative districts that Madigan crafted in
1981…,” wrote the Chicago Tribune in a 1989 retrospective.
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 But not everyone was so delighted with Madigan’s map.
A three-member panel of federal judges found the map
unconstitutionally diluted the voting strength of black Illinoisans
on Chicago’s south and west sides. In order to save Democrat seats,
Madigan had extended certain city districts into predominantly white
areas.
It was the first time a northern state had found the Democratic
Party guilty of intentional discrimination against minorities.
In 1982, the Tribune called it a “painful victory.”
“No defeat in court could have left the Democrats with such an
inglorious black eye…”
A year later, those legislative boundaries in question were still up
for grabs, and Madigan was worried. Reportedly at his request, the
U.S. District Court removed a requirement for the map to be
published, because Madigan didn’t want his name on the court battle.
He was considering a run for governor. And he was scared of being
labeled a racist.
“It’s a travesty,” state Rep. Carol Mosley-Braun told the Tribune in
1983. “Mike did draw the map, and he’s got to live with that. It’s
just that simple.”
Madigan has drawn the state’s legislative map twice more since then,
after the 2000 and 2010 censuses.
Most recently, Madigan’s cartographical cunning came into play when
he created a new district to splinter Decatur and Springfield by
race, connecting areas of the two cities containing more black
voters.
It worked. Madigan’s tinkering gave Democrats a Senate seat and a
House seat they wouldn’t have had otherwise in the 2012 elections.
Due to a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting drawing borders
“primarily” to create minority districts, House Democrats had to
argue in federal court that they drew the district this way for
partisan reasons.
As if there was any question.
Alongside Mapes on the mapmaking panel was Iowa Senate President Pam
Jochum. In Iowa, an independent commission draws the maps every 10
years. They have not been challenged in court since 1970.
“The legislature has absolutely nothing to say about how these lines
are drawn. Just ‘yay’ or ‘nay,’” Jochum said.
Mapes’ response encapsulates so much of what’s wrong with politics
in the Land of Lincoln.
“Senator, great ideas for Iowa,” he said. “But they’re a little
different in Illinois.”
They sure are.
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