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player ready...A truck rolled up Monday to the Northwest Side legislative office of Rep. Alfred Ronan, and aides loaded his belongings onto it for a move to a different part of town.
By Tuesday morning, Ronan will have severed his longtime ties with Ald. Richard Mell and the Democratic organization they ran jointly in the gritty 33rd Ward.
Ronan`s nominating petitions for re-election will be circulating farther north in a new district that touches the lakefront.
The two men, their relations strained in recent years, couldn`t agree on who should run in new legislative districts that include parts of the 33rd Ward.
Mell hoped that Ronan would run in the 20th District. Then Mell`s son-in- law, attorney Rod Blagojewevick, could have become the favored candidate in the 33rd District.
But Ronan decided to run in the 34th District, leaving the 33rd available to his ally, Rep. Myron Kulas, who would give Blagojewevick a very tough race. The Ronan-Mell breakup was one of the more gossipy results of the legislative redistricting that was nearly completed Friday, but the aftershock of remapping was being felt by lawmakers across the state who faced similarly tough decisions about their futures.
One prominent legislator, Sen. Ted Lechowicz (D-Chicago), an assistant majority leader, decided to retire after 22 years in the General Assembly, and others are expected to follow suit in the next several weeks.
Lechowicz, however, is also a Cook County commissioner and has a new political career ahead of him. Others, especially Democrats who came up on the short end of the partisan redistricting process, are not as fortunate.
Many must decide whether to run against another incumbent in either the March 17 primary or the November general election, move into another district, or retire-hopeful of getting rewarded with politics` equivalent of a gold watch: a patronage appointment.
”I`m going to have to move three blocks to the north,” said Rep. Terry Steczo (D-Tinley Park), who traveled to the printer Monday to pick up nominating petitions for his new district.
The candidate filing period was set for Jan. 21-28 by the Illinois Supreme Court, which ruled 4-3 Friday in favor of the Republican redistricting plan that is playing such havoc with the lives of Democrats, especially those in Cook County.
In the House, for example, the GOP map brackets 22 Democratic incumbents together in 10 districts. It puts four others into districts with Republican incumbents and carves out 33 open districts.
Steczo`s district became majority black under the GOP plan, and his move will put him in a 65 percent Republican district with Rep. Jane Barnes (R-Palos Park).
”If I didn`t think I had a chance to win it, I wouldn`t do it,” Steczo said. ”But I always do better with a gun to my head. All I can say is that it`s going to be a bruiser of a campaign.”
Republicans were gleeful with the fallout of last week`s ruling. Under the new map, the GOP hopes to reverse a 31-28 Democratic majority in the Senate and reduce the 72-46 Democratic advantage in the House.
Despite Friday`s ruling, some Democrats vowed to continue their legal challenges to the redistricting plan both in federal court and before the state Supreme Court.
William Harte, one of the lawyers who has challenged the GOP remap efforts and an attorney who has long represented Democratic interests, told a federal judge Monday that he intends to contest the plan in District Court.
Harte contends that the new map violates the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits any redistricting plan that would minimize the voting strength of minorities. He also said the map was politically unfair.
District Judge Charles Norgle gave Democrats until Friday to file a federal challenge. Norgle has been handling a case first brought to federal court by Republicans, who were seeking to gain approval of a map adopted last year by the GOP majority on the Legislative Redistricting Commission.
Harte also said he intends to file a petition for rehearing with the state Supreme Court as soon as he receives the court`s opinion.
Veteran observers gave little chance for a reversal, and Illinois Democratic Party Chairman Gary LaPaille, the chief of staff to House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), said most incumbents and other candidates had begun the election process ”believing this is the map they`ll have to work with.”
”A lot of incumbents are still trying to decide what district to run in. I spent the weekend circulating my nomination petitions,” said Judith Erwin, press secretary to Senate President Philip Rock (D-Oak Park) and a candidate for state representative in the 11th District.
Incumbents can run in any district that contains portions of the area they now represent. Therefore some can move in any of three or four directions.
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Sen. Jerome Joyce (D-Reddick), for example, is paired with Sen. Patrick Welch (D-Peru) in a 38th District that probably favors Welch. Joyce also could run against Sen. Thomas Dunn (D-Joliet) in the 43rd District or try to move to the House by running against Republican Rep. Gerald Weller of Morris.
”I`ve represented these people for 18 years. I like these people,” said a frustrated Joyce.
The Ronan decision to run in the 34th District was just one part of a scenario that will affect several districts.
Rep. Bruce Farley lives in the 33rd District, but with Kulas running there, Farley will run for the Senate in the 17th District, where Sen. William Marovitz (D-Chicago) might also be a candidate.
And Lechowicz said he had reached a turf treaty with two other ward committeemen, Ald. William Banks (36th) and former Ald. Joseph Kotlarz (35th), that will make Kotlarz the leading candidate in the 20th District.
In exchange, Rep. Robert Bugielski (D-Chicago), a member of Lechowicz`s 30th Ward organization, will run in the 19th District and Rep. James DeLeo (D- Chicago), a protege of Banks, was anointed to succeed Lechowicz in the Senate.
Freshman Rep. Jeffrey Schoenberg (D-Skokie), whose home was placed in the district represented by freshman Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston), said he will move from his apartment to a home a few blocks away in the 58th District, which has no incumbent.
To his delight, the new district includes portions of Wilmette and Skokie, which served as his politcal base in his old district, he said.
”I consider myself more fortunate than other candidates on the Democratic side,” Schoenberg said.