With Illinois losing a congressional seat in 2020 Census, the 16th appears the most geographically likeliest to be scratched
Note from John Lopez: I know the calendar day for today’s story, and while the suggestion floated may seem like an April Fool’s joke, the suggestion was made on March 12 and published in Illinois in separate stories on March 15.
Last month, Cook Political Report‘s U.S. House Editor Dave Wasserman published on social media his 2nd cut at what Illinois’ congressional district map could look like after the Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly redraw the lines with 17 congressional districts.
Illinois is expected to lose a congressional seat based on the 2020 Census.
After Wasserman published his maps for Illinois on March 12, both POLITICO and Capitol Fax ran stories with the main maps being discussed.
The Capitol Fax story, which includes link to relevant portion of POLITICO can be viewed here.
One map not covered last month by both Capitol Fax or POLITICO impacts McHenry County, and introduces a term – “semi-swapping districts”, with significant portions of McHenry County being removed from IL-14 Congresswoman Lauren Underwood (D, Naperville) and being represented by IL-11 Congressman Bill Foster (D, Naperville).
Here is the map associated with the semi-swapping between the 11th and 14th Districts:
Wasserman tweeted the following with the above map:
“One other IL rumor I’ve heard: Reps. Bill Foster (D) IL-11 and Lauren Underwood (D) IL-14 semi-swapping districts, with Foster picking up FermiLab’s particle accelerator (Batavia) and DeKalb (NIU), and Underwood taking Bolingbrook & Joliet.
“Both would get Biden 10%+ districts.”
Dave Wasserman tweet 3/12/21
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The conventional wisdom the current 16th Congressional District will be eliminated was consistent across all maps presented by Wasserman last month. In spite of Kinzinger’s 6-terms seniority, since he’s a Republican, it’s his district most likely to be eliminated due to geography.
Kinzinger lives in the Grundy County portion of Channahon, which, according to the map above, falls into the 2nd Congressional District represented by Congresswoman (and State Democratic Chair) Robin Kelly (Matteson).
The 11th Congressional District would include 7 McHenry County townships, including the city of Woodstock (Dorr and Seneca townships), plus Chemung, Hartland, Marengo, Riley and portion of Greenwood townships.
It should be noted, in this proposed map, McHenry County’s and current 16th Congressional District candidate Catalina Lauf would be in the 11th District.
Of the other 6 Republicans who ran in the 14th Congressional District primary last year, the 11th District would include 2020 IL-14 nominee Jim Oberweis, along with James Marter and Jerry Evans. Matt Quigley of Aurora, who had to drop out of the 14th District field in April of 2019, would also be part of the 11th.
In addition to the 11th District picking up the DeKalb/NIU campus area and the Kane County portion of the city of Elgin, the district would still include the bulk of the city of Aurora (Kane and DuPage counties portion), so the new 11th in this map would be significantly Democratic.
Per this semi-swapping map, the remainder of McHenry County would be in the 8th Congressional District of Raja Krishnamoorthi (Coral, Grafton and western 2/3 of Algonquin townships) and the 9th Congressional District of Jan Schakowsky.
Between the 8th, 9th and 11th, the latter would be the more competitive to contest with Foster.
During his 2 terms representing the 14th District from 2008-2010, Foster represented all of Kane County, and he was a physicist at FermiLab.
As far as Democratic succession planning for the 65 years old Foster, state Senators Cristina Castro (Elgin, finalist for state Democrat chair), Karina Villa (West Chicago) and state Representative Barbara Hernandez (Aurora) would be early favorites.
Not ‘could be’ eliminated, will be!
Musical chairs for chumps.
No matter as Kinzstinker himself will be eliminated – problem solved.
No the problem won’t be solved, Honest Abe.
We’ll still be stuck with a surrender GOP statewide organization of cuckservatives like Durkin, Reick, McConchie, Weber, etc.
It’s your guys’ blog, but I wouldn’t beat myself up analyzing these hypothetical maps made by nerds on Twitter.
There’s a million ways to draw a map.
Correcting, as you can infer from article, I waited 2 1/2 weeks before I wrote something about this map, opposed to Capitol Fax and POLITICO who treated it like breaking news on March 15 (Wasserman tweeted publicly on morning of Friday, March 12).
And I only did the oddity not covered by the more seasoned Rich Miller or Shia Kapos.
One thing that was interesting is Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report is not one of the many “nerds on Twitter”, particularly would-be vendors trying to sell their wares. He’s well-respected as an “expert” on elections, especially U.S. House races and his Twitter handle of @Redistrict says what he knows (not to mention it’s original).
But given the coverage last month, particularly by Rich Miller at Capitol Fax who doesn’t hesitate sarcasm/snark of anyone outside of his paid subscribers to his Capitol Fax universe, the fact Miller took Wasserman seriously alone says some of things Wasserman said are true, or at least concur to what Miller has been hearing, in spite of no census detailed data.
We have a full 6-months before September 30 census data release, and will the state senate legislation pass the Senate on April 13 for an independent redistricting commission in Illinois that includes Congressional Districts (as we’ve discussed in the Wilcox article) remains to be seen.
of course keep the Cheat moving….
** will the state senate legislation pass the Senate on April 13 for an independent redistricting commission in Illinois that includes Congressional Districts (as we’ve discussed in the Wilcox article) remains to be seen.**
LOL
Shake, laugh all you want, but seeing that bill get out of Cristina Castro’s Senate Executive Committee unanimously was a surprise to me, even if that is routine, even on Republican bills.