When the decade`s most important election year finally draws to an end in November and the two political parties tally their wins and losses, Republicans can look back and wince at how they booted away three big opportunities.
The significance of this year`s election is in redistricting, a decennial exercise that results in Republicans or Democrats getting to draw themselves favorable boundaries for congressional and legislative districts.
Members of both parties were obsessed by the redistricting task last year, to the point that the making of other laws took a back seat in Springfield. Little thought was given to presidential or U.S. Senate politics; the action was in legislative and congressional contests.
A majority delegation in Springfield or Washington means more political clout for that party. It means one partisan agenda, or philosophy, is apt to prevail over the other. One side gets more, the other less.
As inept as Democrats are when it comes to winning the White House and the governorship, they have been extremely adept at increasing their numbers in Congress, where they have held a 100-plus majority for seemingly an eternity, and in the legislature for the last decade.
But the GOP was delighted by its prospects for 1992. Republicans not only won a luck-of-the-draw upper hand in remapping the General Assembly last fall, but a court victory also awarded them the pen to redraw congressional districts.
Illinois Republicans had been catching it in the neck during successive decades when it came to congressional redistricting.
Reapportionment meant that Illinois lost two congressional seats to faster-growing states in the 1970s and 1980s, and each time the losses came at the expense of Republicans in Democratic remaps. Moreover, Democratic Reps. Richard Durbin, Lane Evans and John Cox won elections in what had been GOP Downstate districts.
The GOP was clicking its collective heels last fall, though. Its congressional delegation had lapsed from parity to a 15-7 deficit in two short decades, but the Republicans` map for the `90s saw to it that Democrats would absorb the loss of two more seats to reapportionment.
And their map was crafted to give Republicans a better than even chance to win back three seats held by Democrats: Bill Lipinski`s Southwest Side-suburban 3rd District; George Sangmeister`s far south suburban-exurban 11th District; and Cox`s 16th District in the northwest corner of the state.
The GOP`s worst-case scenario under the new 20-member map appeared to be a 13-7 Democratic edge in the state`s congressional delegation; if things broke their way in the November general election, Republicans could be back to parity at 10 members apiece.
Republicans here were hailed as heroes.
The Illinois congressional remap was the first to be upheld by a federal court, an early test of the Republican Party`s strategy of strict adherence to minority voting rights and equal representation guidelines that effectively dilute Democratic voting strength.
Top congressional GOP leaders such as House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Republican Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan swept into Illinois amid fanfare about candidate recruiting and fundraising. With 1992 representing the best chance in memory to cut into congressional Democrats` supermajority, the GOP looked for Illinois to help lead the way.
But the follow-through was lacking, and now Democrats may well hold their losses to just the two seats given up to reapportionment.
– Lipinski survived an expensive and bloody primary fight against fellow Democratic Rep. Martin Russo in the new, heavily suburban 3rd District. But the 23rd Ward Democratic committeeman will face little-known, conservative Republican Harry Lepinske, the Lyons Township supervisor. The district was drawn to accommodate state Sen. Judy Baar Topinka (R-Riverside), but she did not run. Tom Walsh, the Proviso Township GOP committeeman, dropped out of the running in order to win a legislative nomination, and two unknowns named O`Connor split the Irish vote in the St. Patrick`s Day election.
– Sangmeister dodged a few bullets. His district was spared from becoming one of the two erased by reapportionment. Democrats ganged up on Downstate colleague Glenn Poshard instead and Russo opted to run against Lipinski. On the Republican side, absentee resident Robert Herbolsheimer of New Lenox, who had been making a living as a Capitol Hill lawyer-lobbyist, narrowly prevailed for the right to challenge Sangmeister in a year when being a Washington insider is not politically in vogue. Primary runner-up Sam Panayotovich of Chicago, however, has undertaken a recount.
– Freshman Cox of Galena saw his district, the ancestral home of two Republican presidents in an area where the GOP hoarded the congressional franchise, redrawn to become even more heavily Republican. The district picked up McHenry County and the political aspirations of highly regarded state Sen. Jack Schaffer (R-Cary). But Schaffer did not carry all-important Winnebago County in the primary and lost the nomination to conservative activist Donald Manzullo, a lawyer from Egan. Voters in the district tend to be more moderate than Manzullo, giving Cox some breathing room for the fall.
If the three Democrats get re-elected in the new districts and become as successful in constituent services as Durbin and Evans have proven to be in their Republican-oriented districts, it will be hard to dislodge them in the next decade.
