Legislative redistricting of 1991: demographics and politics

Michael J. Madigan (D-30, Chicago) is king of the hill. The speaker of the House and his fellow Democrats enjoy a 16-seat margin over Republicans in the General Assembly's lower chamber. Just six years ago Madigan was minority leader battling, as Rep. Lee A. Daniels (R-46, Elmhurst) battles today with him, for minority interests. The speaker's enhanced stature comes in part from his role in the legislative redistricting of 1981. Madigan drew the maps that have provided Democratic majorities ever since.

It is time again to think of redistricting. In two years the federal government will conduct the decennial nose count of its citizens. When that is done, it will be time to adjust legislative district lines to reflect 10 years of population changes. Republicans and Democrats will try to draw boundaries to favor their parties. Already the GOP is bending its efforts toward taking control of the Senate, to protect itself from the possibility of having Democratic maps imposed upon it.

It is unlikely that anyone will do as well as the speaker did in 1981, because the federal courts have ruled political gerrymandering illegal. When the General Assembly sits down to try to draw maps for legislative districts it will have to consider the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Davis v. Bandemer, extending to political parties the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment. Panelists at a one-day conference on legislative redistricting offered by Sangamon State University in March, traced the involvement of the federal courts in redistricting from the one-man, one-vote cases a quarter century before through the Bandemer case.

Robert X Browning, professor of political science at Purdue University, outlined the Indiana redistricting case that opened the door to judicial review of partisan gerrymandering. After the 1980 elections the Republican party controlled the governor's office and the Indiana House and Senate. They drew the maps creating equal size House and Senate districts and passed them by a party vote. In the 1982 election Democratic House candidates received 51.9 percent of all votes cast, but won only 43 of the 100 seats. In the Senate races Democratic candidates received 51.9 percent of the votes and won 13 of 25 seats (52 percent). The Democrats challenged the redistricting in federal district court, using the House election results as evidence. A three-judge panel ruled the redistricting unconstitutional, but the Republicans appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court agreed that the Democrats' complaint was justiciable, voting six to three that partisan gerrymandering was an issue that the court could consider. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in a sharp dissent argued against taking such cases: "The step taken today is a momentous one, that if followed in the future can only lead to political instability and judicial malaise. '' But Indiana Democrats did not win. The court found that they had not proven their case, and reversed the district court. That tells would-be gerrymanderers that the Supreme Court is watching, but leaves it to future court cases to establish what must be done to prove unconstitutional political gerrymandering.

The last Illinois exercise in redistricting in 1981 was a decidedly partisan fracas that began with all hope of success for Republicans but ended in victory for the Democrats. Demography appeared to be on the side of Republicans. Chicago, the Democrats' stronghold, was losing population, while Republican bastions in the suburbs were the state's fastest growing regions. The Republicans held the governor's office. They had a 91 to 86 margin in the House and fell a single seat short of a majority in the Senate. By enticing a single senator to switch parties, Republicans could have passed into law their own maps. They tried to do so, offering six black senators maps that offered advantages to blacks over white ethnic Democrats. But the General Assembly was unable to tackle the question. Defections doomed a House Republican effort to pass its maps. Senate President Philip J. Rock held his Democratic majority together in the Senate, but the Democratic maps that emerged were killed in the House.

The resolution would come from the Legislative Redistricting Commission provided for in the state's 1970 Constitution. Each of the four legislative leaders appointed two members, and the eight-member group tried to craft a compromise. They failed. That set in motion the final step. The Supreme Court nominated two tiebreakers for membership: former Republican Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie and former Democratic Gov. Samuel H. Shapiro. Their names were put in Abraham Lincoln's stovepipe hat, and Secy. of State Jim Edgar pulled out Shapiro's. With some modifications that Shapiro insisted upon, the Democratic maps were approved.

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Atlas of Illinois election data There are relatively few close election contests in Illinois. The winner's margin was less than 10 percent in only 6.7 percent of House races and 8.5 percent of Senate contests since 1982. At the same time, the winner's margin was more than 30 percent in 67.8 percent of House races and 62.7 percent of Senate contests. The information on the non-competitiveness of state legislative races is contained in the Political Atlas of Illinois, newly published by Northern Illinois University. The guts of the Atlas is a series of 59 maps showing each legislative (Senate) district and the two representative (House) districts within its boundaries. The NIU cartographers detail racial composition, age, education, family income, urban population and housing units for each district. The maps also give election results for the 1982, 1984 and 1986 general elections. Other maps display competitiveness for House and Senate races and an assortment of demographic, economic and election information by county and Chicago city ward. Paul Kleppner, director of the NIU Social Science Research Institute, says legislators have told him the maps are the best they have seen of their districts. Kleppner says that lobbyists have also been interested in the Atlas because of the picture it gives of lawmakers' constituencies. It is an atlas with lots of maps and little text. The data is from the 1980 federal census. There is not enough detail to redistrict the state; there is more than enough detail to give insight into the reasons that legislators vote the way they do. Michael D. Klemens House District 35 contains all of Calumet Heights, South Deering, East Side, and Hegewich, along with 70 percent of South Chicago. Burnside and major portions of Chatham and Washington Heights, as well as smaller parts of Auburn Gresham, Pullman, and Roseland are in House District 36. House District 36 has a higher proportion of its work force employed by the federal government (9.8%) and by local government (17.0%) than any other district in Illinois.

H.D. 35 H.D. 36 H.D. 18 Voting Age Population White Black Hispanic Asian 70,887 49.4% 30.9% 19.7% 1% 63,052 1.3% 98.4% 3% 0% 133,939 26.8% 62.7% 10.5% 1% Age (Total Population) Under 6 6 to 18 65 and Over 96,064 8.7% 23.9% 8.7% 95,936 7.7% 23.0% 8.4% 192,000 8.2% 23.4% 8.5% Education (Age 25 and over) Less than 12 years 16 years or more 53,744 46.6% 8.0% 55,550 33.4% 11.8% 109,294 39.9% 9.9% Urban Population 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% Family Income (Total Families) Median Income Below Poverty Level With Children Under 6 With Children 6 to 17 Headed by Females 24,051 $23,044 4.1% 1.7% 3.6% 1.1% 23,643 $21,714 4.3% 1.4% 4.0% 1.8% 47,694 $22,381 4.2% 1.6% 3.8% 1.4% Industry (Total Employed) Professional Public Admin Manufacturing Retail Transportation Communication Finance Insurance Real Estate Other Service 39,458 24.7% 33.8% 12.3% 10.2% 6.4% 5.7% 40,852 32.4% 21.0% 12.8% 15.3% 7.1% 6.3% 80,310 28.6% 27.3% 12.5% 12.8% 6.8% 6.0% Housing Unit (Total) Median Value Owner Occupied 32,149 $37,609 60.2% 31,585 $39,523 57.8% 63,734 $38,566 59.0% Election Results 1982 Turnout         Winner 1984 Turnout         Winner 1986 Turnout         Winner 47.1% 88.5% D 43.5% 100.0% D 40.4% 89.8% D 47.1% 97.1% D 63.3% 100.0% D 50.1% 97.5% D 50.8% 100.0% D NE NE 45.0% 91.3% D

The maps were challenged in court by Republicans, blacks and Hispanics. The blacks and Hispanics won some additional seats. The Republicans did not. A three-judge federal district court panel held that it would be absurd to try to take the politics out of legislative redistricting.

So the elections were run with the Democratic maps. What difference has it made in the House?

• In 1982 Democratic candidates got 56.9 percent of the votes cast in those races. They won 70 seats, or 59.3 percent of the seats.
• In 1984 Democratic candidates for state representative got 50.7 percent of the votes. The 67 seats they won were 56.8 percent of the seats.
• In 1986 Democratic candidates got 51.5 percent of all votes and again won 67 seats (before the recount ousted Republican Jerry Weller and then-Democrat Sam Panayotovich switched parties).

It is too simple to say that if a party wins 55 percent of the vote it should have 55 percent of the seats, and the Supreme Court rejected that notion in the Bandemer case. "What the decision does do is to say that if you can prove gerrymandering which consistently degrades a party's chance to win seats and effectively assigns a party to permanent minority status, the court will grant relief," Browning said. It will fall to subsequent court decisions to set the standards to evaluate political gerrymandering.

The demography confronting the 1991 redistricters will be similar to that in 1981. Illinois' population growth is modest, but the areas that are growing are the Republican suburbs. According to 1986 estimates by the Census Bureau, the population of Chicago was up 5,000 since 1980. Over the same period, Illinois had as a whole gained about 125,000 in population, and the suburban counties accounted for all that growth and then some. Suburban Cook County and DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties had seen population growth of 200,000 at the same time that the other 96 counties in Illinois had lost 80,000 residents.

The politics will be a little different from 1981. It will be the Democrats who control the Illinois House, and unless the GOP can pick up two Senate seats in the next two elections the Democrats will hold an edge there too. Should a Democrat win the governor's race in 1990, the party would have a "triple" and be able to draw its maps without resort to compromise or a commission.

The Bandemer case will prompt changes, however. James Morphew, Madigan's legal counsel, says the case adds another factor besides population and race that mapmakers must consider. "When you sit down and prepare a map, you'd be foolish not to recognize the legal principles the court is going to apply," says Morphew.

After the redistricting commission had passed the new maps on a party line vote in 1981, Sen. James Donnewald (D-55, Breese) observed that, "All's fair in love, war and politics." Donnewald was right, but there are likely to be no such comments until after the last court challenge to the 1991 maps is resolved. As Browning put it, "Each legislative party will be concerned that until the standards for evaluating gerrymanders are established, one should at least provide the appearance of fairness."□

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