The two most intense state legislative pressure campaigns I’ve witnessed both ended in failure.
Back in 2017, Gov. Bruce Rauner tried everything he could think of to stop legislative Republicans from voting to increase the income tax to about where it was right before he took office for his one and only term.
Both political and personal threats were made against a large number of Republicans. They’d be primaried out of office if they crossed Rauner, they were warned. At least one was told that some details about their after-hours behavior might somehow find its way back to their district.
The political atmosphere was ginned up against the Republicans to the point where one Republican House member revealed that someone had come to his home’s front door to leave a threatening written message.
They mostly stuck to their guns and Rauner lost. But quite a few of those “traitors” decided not to run again. Rauner ended up losing his reelection in a landslide.
A few years later, Rauner’s former nemesis House Speaker Michael Madigan turned his allies loose on a group of 19 Democratic House members who refused to vote for his reelection.
Members were threatened in all sorts of ways. Some felt physically intimidated. Many were promised nasty and well-funded primary races if they didn’t reverse course.
That didn’t work either and Madigan had to step aside after 50 years in the House, 36 years as House speaker and 23 years as the state Democratic Party chair. He’s now in prison.
But as crazy as those two fights were, they didn’t come close to what just happened in the Indiana state Senate.
As you likely know by now, a majority of the Senate’s Republican super-majority sided with Democrats and overwhelmingly voted down a bill that would have redrawn the state’s congressional maps to give the Republicans every U.S. House seat in the state.
The bill had been pushed hard by President Donald Trump and the White House. The idea is their way of protecting against what’s expected to be a very good electoral year for Democrats in 2026.
Trump threatened to field primary opponents against any Republican who dared cross him. Several members received anonymous threats of violence. And the remap bill’s sponsor and the state’s Republican lieutenant governor both said that the president had threatened to pull all federal funding from Indiana if he didn’t get his way.
An elderly senator claimed her grandson and his basketball team each received negative text messages about her.
Yeah, things got weirdly creepy. Illinois has nothing on that.
Gov. JB Pritzker had vowed that if Indiana passed a redistricting bill, Illinois would follow suit and redraw its own maps to give the Democrats at least one more seat. It was unclear whether he could gather the votes for such a ploy, but it was pretty good political rhetoric. And, who knows, it might’ve worked. But the point is now moot.
But I’ve been saying for a long time that I didn’t think a mid-decade congressional remap bill could pass here. The Black Caucus didn’t want it, and their members have enough votes to stop it.
And even though Pritzker refused to take the idea off the table after the Indiana vote, I still don’t see it happening here.
The Indiana Republicans’ arguments against the bill were sound, not only because they were under so much pressure from D.C., but because it just wasn’t the right thing to do.
Indiana’s map is already quite gerrymandered, and some complained a new map would’ve expanded the influence of wealthy Indianapolis over rural counties.
Illinois’ current congressional map is even more heavily gerrymandered than Indiana’s, and a new map would further expand the influence of urban and suburban areas over rural areas. Plus, there’s also that fairness thing. When is enough enough?
I seriously doubt Pritzker will be calling a reluctant legislature into special session if another “red” state steps up because he has bigger fish to fry in the coming spring. And no way will he ever risk alienating legislative Democrats anywhere close to the way Indiana Gov. Mike Braun has declared open war on his own Republican Senators.
Maybe Pritzker should just use some of his vast wealth to contribute heavily to the under-funded grassroots Missouri campaign to place a measure on their ballot that would reverse its Republican remap, which could, under Missouri law, pause the new map until the public votes. More than enough petitions were already submitted, but they’ll need help with legal fees to counter the coming pushback.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.