By Madeline Makoul
Every ten years, the Chicago City Council works to remap Chicago’s 50 wards based on data from the U.S. census, and even with a shortened timeline, aldermen hope to improve the ward boundaries and keep various ethnic and racial groups represented.
With delays in the U.S. census due to the pandemic, the City has only about a month left to remap the wards, using new population data to divide them evenly. Aldermen have a deadline of Dec. 1 to reach an agreement.
Eleventh Ward Alderman Patrick D. Thompson explained that, while some areas of the city have seen population growth in the last ten years, particularly downtown and in the Near South and Near North sides, other areas have seen a population loss, requiring redistribution to make each ward even.
“Aldermen are looking at their individual wards and the surrounding wards to see if there need to be modifications and how you accommodate that,” Thompson said. “I’m talking to my neighboring aldermen to hear what their concerns and needs are.”
While the ward remap happens routinely every ten years, it is no easy process. According to 12th Ward Alderman George Cardenas, conversations around remapping involve nuances related to ward boundaries that not only make sense in terms of location but allow aldermen to keep the constituents in their ward who voted them in and support them.
“So you look at who most likes you, where do you poll well; that’s your base,” Cardenas said. “When you start mapping and you look at the demographics of it, if [the new boundaries] are not really your base, I’m afraid that if I map them in, they will vote me out! So that’s part of what this is about—staying relevant and keeping your job.”
Cardenas and Thompson explained the process involves back-and-forth negotiation between wards as aldermen work to divide the city in a way that makes sense and allows communities to thrive.
“No one knows their community better than the alderman,” Thompson said. “We are out there every day seeing this, so we know what would be in the best interest of the community.”
The importance of representation
While the remapping aims to distribute the population among wards (and their aldermen) better to provide equal representation for communities, the map’s fairness often comes into question.
“For the last 50 years, nearly every decade there has been a lawsuit saying that the remap was gerrymandered, usually to the disadvantage of, first, African Americans, and now Latinos,” explained Dick Simpson, University of Illinois Chicago political science professor and former 44th Ward alderman. “In addition, some communities are cut into many parts, so there’s no one alderman that has an effect on the community.”
The Near West Side/Taylor Street and Chinatown areas fall among those communities cut up among several aldermen.
According to Simpson, the City of Chicago is roughly a third African American, a third Latinx, a third White, and about 6 to 7% Asian American.
“Having representation in the City Council of roughly that racial balance means that no one group is dominant,” Simpson said. “Obviously, for many years, Whites were dominant in the City of Chicago, and that only as of recently has changed.”
To improve representation for diverse communities across Chicago, Cardenas explained how the Latino and African American caucuses provide their ideal ward boundaries first, focusing on creating wards where certain races dominate so they can have the representation they need.
“It’s about representation,” Cardenas said. “The idea is that Hispanics would represent their folks, you would think, better. In certain areas, it tends to be discriminatory in representation, meaning that they found areas where people aren’t being represented by their own like, the neighborhood tends to be rundown, or there are signs of disrepair.”
Thompson’s opinion differs slightly. He advocates for diversity within wards instead of separating groups by ward.
“You look at some of these maps, and you need to have X number of African American, Hispanic, and Asian wards,” Thompson said. “We should have wards that are communities, and communities are made up of Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian residents, and we should have that diversity.”
Simpson explained that condensing representation into wards can pose challenges, especially when considering one consolidated, contiguous ward versus one divided and spread out across the city. He noted aldermen must consider not only race but natural, sensible boundaries based on neighborhoods.
For instance, map makers divided the Taylor Street, Near West Side, and Little Italy area among Aldermen Thompson, Jason Ervin (28th Ward), and Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) for years. A small portion of this area falls within Thompson’s jurisdiction, which Simpson said makes it confusing for residents when issues arise in the neighborhood.
“If you have to get four or five aldermen to agree to make something like a play lot, you’re never going to get it done because you’ll never get them all pushing the same way or caring much about the interest of your community,” Simpson said.
Thompson is not looking for change, however.
“I have a certain affection with the boundaries I have and the residents I represent, and in an ideal world, I would keep everything the same,” he said. “We have a lot of good things going on in the ward, and I think there’s a certain comfort of the constituents in what we are doing here and we are representing them to the best of our ability.”
Ultimately, remapping remains a balancing act, accounting for representation and logical distribution of City residents among the 50 wards.
“I hope that we get to a point where both minorities are growing in influence and Hispanics get to grow in the city and county,” Cardenas said. “We have to come to terms with the fact that we have to work together and make sure stuff happens, and that’s really what this exercise is about and if we are mature enough to come up with a way to do that.”
Remap Impact
With aldermanic elections coming up in 2023, understanding ward boundaries is essential as aldermen communicate with their constituents in seeking reelection, and constituents in turn contact their aldermen to obtain the best service they can.
Alderman Cardenas, who said “I’ll take any map,” promised he will focus on doing the best he can, no matter how his ward boundaries change.
“I hope that we continue to grow and continue to get resources,” Cardenas said. “At the end of the day, it’s basic stuff. It’s quality of life, it’s development so people can live nice lives full of opportunities, so that’s what I do. I try to think that I’m here to provide a great neighborhood and great opportunities, and I work towards that every day.”
As both aldermen consider how the remap will change their wards, Simpson said a compact, contiguous, map that represents communities well, not dividing them into many parts, will allow for balance in the city. He believes the Chicago Advisory Redistricting Commission has created just such document with its community led map.
Change Illinois, a political reform group, launched the independent Chicago Advisory Redistricting Commission to draw a ward map by and for the people, without ties to City government or aldermen.
Its efforts resulted in a map that would unite better the Near West Side, and Chinatown as well, with 15 majority Black and 14 majority Latino wards.
“You need some reasonable racial balance so that everyone can see that the City Council looks more or less like the city demographics themselves,” Simpson said. “If it gets badly out of balance, and some group gets cheated—as Latinos are or Asian Americans, who have no representative who is Asian American in City Council currently—then it gives citizens less faith in their government because they don’t think it reflects them. It’s even more important that you have good aldermen who make good laws, but that isn’t determined by the map, although starting with a fair map is a good beginning.”
To contact Cardenas’s office, visit www.12thwardchicago.com/. To contact Simpson, email [email protected]. To reach Thompson’s office, visit www.ward11.org/.
To check out the Chicago Advisory Redistricting Commission’s remap, visit https://chicagoswards.org/.