17 Jan 2022

For State House Speakers Past and Present, “Normal” Lies Just Beyond the Vanishing Point

By Rich Miller

House Speaker Chris Welch marked his one-year anniversary as his chamber’s top leader with a series of news media interviews last week. One of the questions I asked was what his legislative district’s constituents were talking to him about the most. “The number-one issue in my district, and this is across the state, is crime,” Speaker Welch said.

10 Jan 2022

State Democrats Shoulder Through Redistricting Bill in Less-Than-Graceful Fashion

By Rich Miller

The Illinois Senate’s COVID-mitigation protocols (testing, masks, and limited remote-voting) didn’t anticipate a partisan attempt to use a record-breaking virus-surge to shut the chamber down, but that’s what almost happened last week.

20 Dec 2021

Lightfoot’s Disharmonious/Codependent Style of Leadership Revealed in Texts

By Rich Miller

Matt Chapman, a self-described data nerd who runs a not-for-profit group called “Free Our Data,” recently filed Freedom of Information Act requests with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office. He wanted everything received by the Chicago Tribune this year via their FOIA requests.

13 Dec 2021

Representative Jonathan Carroll’s Political Play the Most Obscene Act of the Political Uproar

By Rich Miller

Just a couple of months ago, more than 50,000 electronic witness-slips were filed in opposition to a proposed legislative change to the state’s Health Care Right of Conscience Act.

06 Dec 2021

Chris Welch, Don Harmon Slapped with Claims of Racially Biased Gerrymandering

By Rich Miller

One of the things that I most certainly did not have on my 2021 legislative Bingo card last January was that an Oak Park liberal Democratic Senate President and the state’s first Black House Speaker would be fighting multiple legal claims that their new state legislative district maps deprive protected minorities of their constitutional rights.

22 Nov 2021

Can an Ad Hoc Coalition of Converging Interests Emerge from the Remap Process?

By Rich Miller

Some Illinois House Democrats got a bit of a shock during a private caucus meeting held not long after the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) filed its proposed redistricting plan with a federal three-judge panel the other day.

15 Nov 2021

After Seasons of Curveballs, Will COVID-19 Finally Start Pitching Straights?

By Rich Miller

Governor JB Pritzker told reporters not long ago that he was worried about the plateauing COVID-19 hospitalization rate and said he wouldn’t yet lift his statewide mask-mandate. But the governor told me something around the same time during an interview that he hasn’t yet said publicly: He’s most concerned about what may happen in January and February and upbeat about the spring and summer.

08 Nov 2021

The Parental Notification of Abortion Act Repeal Has Left Pollable Ambivalence in Its Place

By Rich Miller

California Governor Gavin Newsom soundly beat back a recall effort in September partly by trumpeting his proud record battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Virginia’s Democratic governor also ran on his robust anti-COVID program and lost last week to a Republican who opposed mask- and vaccine-mandates. That same Republican ran as unabashedly pro-life and blasted the incumbent pro-choice Democrat for being against “parents’ rights.”

01 Nov 2021

State GOP Super-Minority Proves It’s Easier to Obstruct Than Legislate

By Rich Miller

The current topsy-turvy political landscape was on full display in the Illinois House and the Senate last week as the chamber debated and passed a bill to slightly narrow the scope of the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act.

25 Oct 2021

Despite Fumbling the Play Initially, the Democratic Super-Majority Could Still Push Their Map Through

By Rich Miller

It has been a foregone conclusion since the official US Census numbers were released in August that the first state legislative-redistricting plan passed back in May would be ruled unconstitutional. And the inevitable happened last week when a federal court tossed out the General Assembly’s spring plan.

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