By PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois
phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com
Gov. JB Pritzker welcomed a contingent of Texas House Democrats to Chicago Sunday night as part of a strategy to delay a vote in Austin on a mid-decade redistricting plan designed to give Republicans an additional five congressional seats in next year’s midterm elections.
The Texas Legislature is currently meeting in a special session originally called to deal with several issues including massive floods in the central part of the state that left more than 100 people dead last month. The subject of congressional redistricting was added to the agenda at the urging of President Donald Trump, according to the Texas Tribune.
Republicans control the Texas House by an 88-62 margin, but Texas requires at least two-thirds of the members be present for the House to conduct business. By fleeing the state, Democrats have effectively shut down business in the House and made it impossible for Texas law enforcement officials to compel them to return to the Statehouse.
“We’re not here because this is easy,” Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu said at a news conference Sunday night with Pritzker at the DuPage County Democratic headquarters in Carol Stream. “And we did not make a decision to come here today – we did not make a decision lightly. But we come here today with absolute moral clarity that this is absolutely the right thing to do to protect the people of the state of Texas.”
The U.S. Constitution requires states to redraw congressional district lines following each decennial census to ensure equal representation. But it does not specifically prohibit states from drawing new maps more frequently.
In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering – drawing district lines with the intent of giving one party an advantage over another – is a political issue that is beyond the power of courts to resolve and can only be addressed through state or federal legislation.
Nonetheless, Pritzker accused Trump and Texas Republicans of “cheating” by attempting to redraw maps halfway through a census cycle.
“The cheating here is the fact that we are midstream in 2025 and they want to rewrite the map, and for only one reason,” he said. “The cult leader of their party tells them to do it because he knows he’s going to lose control of the House of Representatives” after the midterm elections.
‘Height of hypocrisy’
Pritzker has made similar comments in recent weeks as Texas Republicans moved forward with their plans, prompting sharp replies from Illinois Republicans who argue that Illinois has some of the most partisan gerrymandered maps in the country.
“Texas Democratic legislators walking out to come to the most rigged state in the country at the invitation of a governor who broke his promise to voters not once, but twice, to create the most gerrymandered maps in the nation is the height of hypocrisy,” Senate Minority Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove, said in a statement. “Governor Pritzker and his legislative allies have already rigged Illinois with a 14-3 Congressional map that is shameless in its attempt to remove choice from voters.”
Illinois’ map divides the state’s 17-member congressional delegation into 14 Democrat-leaning districts and three Republican-leaning districts. The three districts currently held by Republicans are mostly large, meandering rural areas.
Pritzker, however, defended the maps that the Democratic-controlled Illinois General Assembly pushed through in 2021.
“Let me be clear, we passed a map in Illinois that follows the Constitution, and that is not what Gov. Abbott is trying to do in Texas,” he said. “We believe that the people of Texas deserve to have fair representation and not to have the game changed in the middle of the decade.”
In a social media statement Sunday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton suggested the absent House Democrats should be arrested and returned to the Lone Star State.
“Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately,” he said on X, formerly Twitter. “We should use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
Capitol News Illinois can be reached at News@WJBC.com.
