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Nidus Weaver Company
The state Legislature and Gov, Ryan should have rejected the work of the congressmen, whose only goal was to make their own districts unassailable. The process worked like this:
Illinois' population grew during the past decade, yet more slowly than in the South and Southwest. Districts thus have to be shifted from the Midwest to the sunbelt, including one of our state's twenty seats. This seat could as readily have come from Chicago as Downstate, both of which trailed the suburbs in population growth.
The collaborating congressmen decided it would be less upsetting to the status quo to slice southern Illinois, which had always been represented by one of its own, into parts of three other districts that need more population.
Southern Illinois (basically south of a line running from Vincennes, Indiana to East St. Louis) is closer in miles and culture to the gothic characters of Faulkner's fictionalized Oxford, Mississippi, than it is to Chicago. "Little Egypt" is the southernmost part of the region, with its towns of Cairo, Thebes and Karnak. A Bonnie & Clyde remake could be filmed in dirt-poor "Egypt" without touching a storefront or casting about for a Burma Shave sign. The region is older, poorer and more conservative than the rest of the state. Folks down there are different from you and me.
A metro-East St. Louis and two central-Illinois congressmen were awarded parts of the region's district to satisfy population needs.
They replace two-term, gospel-singing congressman David Phelps (D-Eldorado), who has been assured a spot on the state ticket as a consolation prize.
If instead, mapmakers had taken the district out of Chicago, Mayor Daley and state Democratic chair, Speaker Mike Madigan, would have lost one of their own. In additon, one or more Downstate incumbents would have been thrown together. So we eliminate southern Illinois, so to speak, which is little more than an afterthought anyway in today's politics.
The rest of the congressional remap represents classic concentration of like voters in like districts. Democrat Lane Evans (D-Rock Island) has withstood endless assaults by GOP challengers. His reward is an incredible district of two lobster claws that reach hook-like all the way down and across the state to Decatur to grab good union voters. In the process, he absorbs voters who could otherwise bedevil adjacent Republican incumbents Tim Johnson (Urbana), John Shimkus (Collinsville) and Ray LaHood (Peoria) in the coming decade.
Evans and his Downstate GOP colleagues are now so safe that Christ would have trouble knocking any of them out. Congressmen should not be allowed to redistrict themselves. But they were, and they did Southern Illinois&emdash;and the public--wrong.
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Nidus Weaver Company