Though Democrats can be pretty brazen sometimes with some of the wildly hypocritical claims they make, one can sort of understand why they feel like they can do it, because by and large, the mainstream media aren’t going to call them out on it.
Further, even when they do manage to get around to covering it, it’s usually a “Republicans pounce and seize” type of story.
However, in the case of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), his positioning himself as a staunch defender of democracy amid the Texas redistricting battle may be backfiring in part, thanks to some of the left’s media allies.
Illinois is one of three Democrat-run states that the Texas Democrats ran to after fleeing the Lone Star state in the aftermath of their Republican colleagues introducing a new map during a special session that, if enacted, potentially could net the GOP four or five more seats in the 2026 midterms.
In addition to the heavily gerrymandered Illinois, some of them went to another bastion of Democrat gerrymandering: New York, while others went to the blue state of Massachusetts, which has no Republican representation in the House of Representatives at all (nor the Senate, just for the record).
Back to Pritzker, he’s rumored to be mulling a possible 2028 presidential run. Naturally, standing shoulder to shoulder with Texas Democrats and presenting himself as a key Resistance figure is elevating his national profile.
But it’s also raising questions about Illinois’ own wildly gerrymandered maps, something even leftist late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert mocked during a recent “interview” with Pritzker.
Here’s a clip shared by Rep. Mary Miller, one of only three Republican House members from Illinois:
Pritzker’s response was to make jokes about how they “handed it over to a kindergarten class and let them decide” where the districts would be. He also went along with Colbert’s banter about how that kindergarten class was Illinois’ “independent commission.”
Still, it brought the Illinois maps some national attention and invited further scrutiny of the calculated role the state has played for decades in attempting to limit Republican representation in Congress.
Similarly, at a state fair event earlier this week, Pritzker was asked by a reporter about the gerrymandered districts. Pritzker’s defense was that a couple of them had been “competitive,” which, in his view, was supposedly proof they weren’t gerrymandered:
It’s nonsense, because even a severely gerrymandered district can be ripe for competitiveness and even an upset if the conditions are right. For instance, Republicans here in North Carolina finally wrested control of the General Assembly from deeply corrupt Democrats in 2010, under Democrat-drawn gerrymandered maps, after over 100 years of being the minority party.
On the issue of the Illinois maps, something Pritzker doesn’t bring up when questioned about them is the fact that the Princeton Gerrymander Project’s report card for Illinois on the Congressional maps that were enacted in 2021 earned the state an “F” across the board on “partisan fairness,” “competitiveness,” and “geographic features”:
There was also this:
Absolutely, positively 100 percent correct.
– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –
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