Rep. Dave Severin | File photo
Rep. Dave Severin | File photo
Veteran state Rep. Dave Severin (R-Marion) is accusing Democratic lawmakers of turning to misdirection as part of their strategy in the fight over fair maps.
“After what I saw on Friday night, I truly believe the map released by Democrats is a head-fake, an old basketball move, to throw even more confusion and chaos into the process,” Severin said in a video posted to YouTube. “We’ve seen this show before. Ten years ago, the Democrats released a legislative map that caused chaos and confusion and backstabbing and backroom deals. That’s what they’re trying to do here as well.”
Severin says that Democrats have all but ignored the wishes of residents and made transparency no more than an afterthought.
“As candidate for governor, J.B. Pritzker pledged to veto an unfair map drawn by politicians,” he added. “He’s now signaling that he’ll break that promise and sign a map drawn for the politicians by the politicians. I was a member of the House Republican Redistricting Committee and it was clear to me in the more-than two dozen hearings I participated in that the Democrats weren’t interested in the public input at all.”
Severin argues it’s just another example of the bait-and-switch tactics Democrats have made such a big part of their strategy.
“Democrats point to those hearings as some kind of ... kindness and transparency, but we would sit through the same kind of PowerPoint presentations every meeting, get a chance to ask a few questions and the Democrats would go back to making their map behind closed doors,” he said.
Republican lawmakers continue to push for what they see as a fair process, with much of their approach centered on creating an independent citizens' commission to draw the state’s legislative boundaries instead of the General Assembly.
Severin said he doesn’t see how Democrats can continue to move forward given the current state of things.
"We are really missing two key components,” he said. “Politicians need to be taken out of the process and we don’t have the census data that we need to draw the accurate maps yet.”
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