Kane County Redistricting: Map Sent Back to Drawing Board

While the Kane County Redistricting Task Force had hoped to complete its work Wednesday night on a 24-seat map it instead sent the map back to the drawing board when changes made since the last meeting proved too extensive to support without further review and input from affected stakeholders.

As I reported yesterday, several changes had been made to the map to achieve political party and minority population parity in the Elgin and Aurora areas. However, the final changes to the map were not available for Task Force members to review until late in the day, making it very difficult to assess their impact within the confines of the meeting. 

Creating political party parity became a central topic of discussion when it became clear that alterations in the Elgin and Aurora areas were intended to maintain the existing apportionment of Republicans and Democrats on the board.  Currently, the board is comprised of 15 Republicans (58 percent), 12 Democrats and one independent (42 percent).  According to Kane County Republican Chairman, Mike Kenyon, the first draft of the map would have created a 50/50 split between Republicans and Democrats/Independents, which, Kenyon said "is not a realistic representation of the county."

One alteration in the north would return Republican Cathy Hurlbut to the relative safety of her own District 19, while Democrats Jeanette Mihalec and Deborah Allen would find themselves squaring off against each other in Allen's District 17 next March.

A second alteration in the south would add two predominately Republican precincts to Democrat Bonnie Kunkel's District 4, which would not guarantee the loss of a Democrat member, but would give Republicans a better chance of winning the seat.

The proposed change in Elgin, combined with the retirement of Republican Jim Mitchell in North Aurora, assures the reduction of one Democrat and one Republican in a 24-seat scenario, which many board members perceive as fair.  Assuming each party retained possession of the remainder of their seats in the next election cycle, including Kunkel, the apportionment between Republicans and Democrats would remain the same — 14 Republicans (58 percent), 9 Democrats and one Independent (42 percent).

Finally, in regard to minority representation, the Task Force would like to receive an opinion from the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund regarding the adequacy of seven districts created to represent the County's Latino population before making its final recommendation.

The Task Force will meet again on Monday, May 9 at 5:00 p.m. at the Kane County Government Center to continue its deliberations on the map and receive comments from the public.