Democrats hold an iron grip on Illinois state government, control both U.S. Senate seats and occupy 12 of the state’s 19-seat delegation in the House of Representatives.
Illinois, remains solidly in that Democrats’ column, said Christopher Mooney, a professor with the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Springfield. The state has a lot of union members who tend to vote Democratic and are bolstered by the party in return.
“The political culture here is not ideological. It’s all about where you are pouring concrete, providing services,” he said. Solidly Democrat Chicago still “dominates state politics.”
Given the political makeup of the state, minority Republicans won’t be able to make much headway on national issues like the Obama administration’s passage of health care reform, said Charles Wheeler, director of the Public Affairs Reporting graduate program at the university.
Mooney and Wheeler's comments were featured in a April 5, 2010, article in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier.
Download a PDF of the article:
20100405-JJC-What's-Illinois-voters'-mood.pdf
