(calm music) (dramatic music) - Welcome to "Capitol View" on WSIU.

I'm Jeff Williams, sitting in this week as we take a look at what's making news around the state in Illinois politics.

It has been another busy week in Illinois.

We'll examine some of the political highlights, as well as a little later in the program, we'll talk with Northern Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi about his bid for the Democratic nomination for US Senate.

To help guide the discussion this week are Andrew Adams, State House and Chicago reporter for Capitol News Illinois, and Kent Redfield, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Gentlemen, welcome back to the program.

- Good to be here.

- Thanks for having us.

- Sure.

Well, this past week, Governor JB Pritzker signed two gun control bills into law.

One, a Senate bill that will require gun owners to maintain safe storage of their weapons.

And another House bill that requires law enforcement to track ownership of any firearm recovered at a crime scene.

Instances of violence involving guns are pretty much a regular segment on the newscast.

In fact, this week we only have to look to Southern Illinois where we had seven people were shot at a gathering in Mount Vernon.

Two young adults tragically lost their lives in that.

Andrew or Kent, what is the impetus of these two newest pieces of gun control legislation that are now in law?

- Well, you know, for the state, you know, Illinois has been very aggressive in laying down a set of laws that they think are necessary to balance, I'm sure that's the way they would talk, you know, public safety versus the rights of gun owners.

And so these bills look pretty innocuous.

You know, safe guns, gun storage, you know, who could disagree with that?

But the reality is that since you had the Bruen decision that came down where the Supreme Court pretty much shifted the way that they said we need to look at gun legislation away from kind of a balancing of public safety with the burdens placed on gun owners to a perspective that said we need to look at kind of, you know, what was the historical case in terms of when the Second Amendment was written.

And so that it provided a new frame, but it was just in relation to kind of how you permitting and concealed carry.

So we've had a lot of conflicting laws passed since the new decision came down, trying to interpret exactly what that historical test means.

And so there's just a lot that the court has basically just been, you know, kind of not taking up conflicting interpretations from different jurisdictions.

And so, you know, the list is pretty long.

I mean, you know, sensitive places, exactly when can you, you know, churches, football games, you know, what's the context in which you can say this is a gun free area?

You know, the licensing regimes between kind of shell carry, you know, that you apply, you get a permit, versus where there's some kind of scrutiny that's applied.

The major one for Illinois will be assault weapons.

You know, we have a ban that defines assault weapons and prohibits their sale and possession.

And you've got, again, different lower courts, appellate courts throughout the country that have conflicting, you know, looked at similar fact situations and come to different conclusions.

Then, you know, we have red flag laws, which preemptively go in and say, under certain circumstances, you can essentially take the right to possess a weapon away from an individual.

California has now tried to regulate ammunition in terms of their regime, again, which is something that, you know, we really haven't had in the past.

And even to the point of, well, if you ban felons from possessing weapons, is there a difference between a nonviolent felony and a felony that involves some kind of violence?

So we expect the court is going to gather up some of these cases and try to come up with a standard protocol that would guide the courts, the lower courts, in terms of interpreting these state laws.

So, you know, this is kind of the lull before the storm, and we're going to get, you know, a pretty significant, I think, Second Amendment case sometime in the next session of the Supreme Court because we've, you know, they basically have just been turning things away rather than engaging it.

And obviously their plate's been pretty full with all of the constitutional questions en route, you know, that have come up in terms of the new administration.

And so you kind of forget, well, we did assault weapons and the court upheld it and the Supreme Court didn't review it.

So, you know, we must be in pretty good shape.

And that's really not true at all.

I mean, I think there's a pretty strong split in the Supreme Court about how this issue ought to be handled.

And so it's just, you know, it's a wait and see at this point.

- And the state continues to, and the governor, this administration continues to be fairly proactive and aggressive on these issues.

And like you say, we still have, is there some point where you think that the Supreme Court is going to have to come up with some sort of unifying structure, or is this gonna continue to be a states' rights issue?

- Well, obvious, the court does not want to be in a situation where you've got a jurisdiction that involves the West Coast and another appellate jurisdiction that involves a bunch of southern states with radically different interpretations of exactly what the Second Amendment means.

And, you know, that creates confusion.

And so they will, you know, they historically they've tried to gather up cases and when you make a significant change like we did with overturning Roe v. Wade, you know, they want to put something out there that is a guide.

But in a case like Roe v. Wade, you know, there's no constitutional right to abortion and so they said, "Well, the states can work this out."

And then they're working more on the fine print.

With the Second Amendment, you have a fundamental amendment in the Bill of Rights and a pretty significant change in terms of the way that was interpreted on the narrow issue of concealed carry.

So they have to resolve it.

But it is, you know, it's gonna be one of those things where there's gonna be a lot of negotiation behind the scenes about what they're gonna take up, how broadly they want to make a pronouncement, and then finding a formula that makes sense.

How do you deal with this idea that it should have some connection to the historical way we've treated restricting people's rights that are granted under the Second Amendment.

So it's unfinished business.

And so I think a major case sometime in the next session of the court is almost a certainty.

- Also in the past week, the state made an announcement that it's continuing to build its high tech infrastructure, and in the past week saw the announcement of a new quantum computing company that'll be locating in the state's quantum and microelectronics park in Chicago.

Andrew, I know this is a story that you've been following.

Bring us up to speed on it.

- Sure.

So, for folks who may not know anything about quantum computing or this project, it's basically a high tech computing technology, right?

It's a cutting edge way of producing new computers, new technologies for GPS, for navigation, all that, all that kind of thing.

And the state has put a lot of money into this project in Chicago to build out a kind of a home for companies in this field.

Now, how much money?

We're talking a billion dollars, $700 million so far, just for kind of the main anchor tenant at this park, and then building out the park itself.

And then, you know, incentives along the way for other companies.

And you might be asking, "Why is the state spending so much money on, you know, attracting these kind of startups to the city and the state?"

It's because it's currently a kind of quiet arms race between several cities in the country, kinda Chicago, Denver, and Boston, to become kind of the hub for quantum computing.

People who work in this industry say that it's going to be revolutionary, right?

It will be similar to Silicon Valley in scale of kind of innovation and money that will flow through this industry, because Silicon Valley was kind of based around where all the silicon manufacturing was.

So the idea here is that these states are competing to have, you know, the hub of where all the quantum manufacturing is.

So this week, we got a new company in that park, which has a technology that they say will basically replace GPS, that's their goal, using kind of the nature of quantum mechanics to calculate where something is in space.

It's all very high tech, very cool.

But whether or not Illinois' bet will pay off, that is something only time will tell.

- Yeah.

That leads to something else I wanted to mention.

High tech typically involves energy consumption.

And something that you'd mentioned, that looks like that energy prices, at least in the Chicago area, may be going up, which may also trigger kind of a wider ranging potential package of energy reform bills that may pop up in the fall veto session.

What's up with that?

- Exactly.

So Illinois has two electrical grids, one for northern Illinois and one for southern Illinois.

The grid in northern Illinois held kinda internal auction to set electricity prices for next year.

And that auction hit the cap.

The federal government kind of imposed a limit after last year when there was a kind of 10X, a 10 times increase in the price of electricity, at least for this portion of kind of the electricity market.

They said, "Okay, we're gonna put a cap.

It's gonna be quite a bit more expensive than it already is, but there's a limit and we hit that limit up here."

Then that's basically going to increase prices.

Now, similar thing happened last year and then was quickly followed by a very similar increase in southern Illinois.

So this is going to be a statewide issue.

There's been talk in Springfield of energy legislation, basically a big effort, big huge push to keep prices down in various ways, including new requirements potentially for data centers, which use a lot of electricity, new requirements for energy efficiency programs, which ideally would mean everyone's using less electricity so it's costing less.

And other kind of programs like that.

There was a big effort in the spring to get a package like this through, although it failed due to some fairly tense negotiations behind the scenes.

But the people in those negotiations have been telling me that it's likely to come back, probably in October for the fall session, but potentially in the spring.

- All right.

Well, we're getting ready to move into another election season and midterms are gonna be coming up.

The state of Texas has already taken an active look at redrawing its maps.

Obviously that's something that usually happens only every 10 years with the census.

Of course, the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, that raised some concerns with him.

He suggested that maybe state of Illinois should look at redrawing its map.

Kent, is there a valid reason to undergo this process now rather than traditionally when it would occur?

- Well, we normally think of, you know, reapportionment is about fairness and equity.

It's one person, one vote.

We need to have, you know, every 10 years, we redraw the districts to try to provide good representation that we don't have districts that are of vastly different populations.

Historically, the idea has been that you're trying to represent areas, communities of interest.

The problem has been that as we have gotten better and better at our technology, of being able understand voting patterns, track them, that when political parties control redistricting, then it becomes, you know, how can we get the best map for our party?

And that becomes the driving force.

The Supreme Court wrestled with this for a long time and finally essentially threw up their hands.

They said, you know, if you draw a map that advantages one party over the other, and it doesn't violate any other provisions of the Voting Rights Act and the US Constitution, then it's not unconstitutional.

I mean, that's about the, you know, how they phrased it.

And so there you get partisan gerrymanders.

And while Governor Pritzker is very active talking about how the Democrats nationally need to respond, that's not gonna be the action in the state of Illinois.

We have 17 districts.

Three of them are held by Republicans, and the other 14 are held by Democrats.

That's it.

82%.

It is not clear how you can wring any more partisan advantage out of those districts.

In fact, if you look at the three Republicans downstate, you know, the districts that, say, Congressman LaHood, Mary Miller, you know, run from, those are crazy shapes.

And because the Democrats took all of the Democrats downstate and connected all of those spots of strength up into two different districts, and then particularly LaHood's district, Mary Miller's district, are basically the leftovers.

It's whatever you didn't need to build those Democratic districts.

And so those two Democratic districts, Budzinski and Sorensen, there are no Democrats to spare.

Those are competitive districts.

So it's not gonna happen in Illinois, but it very well could happen in California.

If your memory's long enough, back in the early, you know, I think 2023, we ended up with Texas redrawing the maps for the 2000 and maybe 14 election stuff.

So it's, you know, it's a fact of how redistricting has played out in its current state.

- Mm-hmm.

And you think, is there any desire in the general assembly to try to change the map now, given that they have a Democratic majority (laughs) everywhere?

- I would say that most people are keeping those cards very close to their chest.

No one wants to be the one to say, "Oh yeah, we're going to do the most partisan gerrymander we can think of," 'cause it's not exactly a great look.

I will note however, that speaking of Representative LaHood, Representative LaHood and one of the Daley family, I think today or yesterday, announced that they're trying to put an initiative out there to get a kind of independent map drawing commission and preempt this, at least in Illinois, for you know, now until the next time that we have to do this in 2030-ish.

Which, you know, there have been attempts there in the past in Illinois as well.

All of them have failed, some of them in quite spectacular ways.

So we'll see if this one has any better luck of making any change here.

- All right.

Well, Andrew, I'm gonna let you have the last word.

Andrew Adams, Kent Redfield, thank you very much, both of you, for joining us this week.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Staying with the election theme, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi brought his US Senate campaign to southern Illinois this week.

He visited the Metro East and Mount Vernon.

On Monday, he met with supporters at the home of former Lieutenant Governor Sheila Simon.

On Tuesday, our Brian Sapp talked with Krishnamoorthi as he was working to introduce himself to voters who may not be familiar with the Chicago area Congressman.

- I'm Raja Krishnamoorthi.

I'm a US Congressman for the Eighth District of Illinois.

I'm from Peoria originally, and I was born in India.

I came to this country when I was three months old and things were going great until suddenly the recession of 1973 hit us hard.

My father lost his income, but thanks to the generosity of the American people, we were allowed to move into public housing and food stamps.

So I spent about half of my childhood in those two vital programs, and then my father was able to get on his feet, get a great job in, of all places, Peoria, Illinois, move here, and then we entered the middle class.

And pretty much every night at the dinner table, my father would say, "Think of the greatness of this country, and whatever you do, make sure it's there for the next families who need it."

That became the north star of my personal compass, and indeed the mission statement of my life and the purpose of my campaign for the US Senate now.

- [Brian] Let's talk about that a little bit.

You're jumping into the race to replace Senator Dick Durbin.

Why did you decide that and what are a couple of your priorities?

- Well, I don't think Dick Durbin is replaceable.

He's a lion of the Senate.

He's an incredible public servant.

But what I would aspire to do is to build on the foundation of excellent constituent services he delivered, plus all the resources that he delivered over the years to help Illinois become a better place.

I'd like to focus on certain other issues in addition to the ones that he did.

One of them is skills based and career technical education.

I authored the law that has modernized that system for the 60% of Americans that don't have a four year college degree.

But although it's very successful, it's terribly under-resourced.

And so I'd like to spend a lot more time resourcing those initiatives because although maybe not everyone is gonna go to college, I think everyone deserves a chance at getting into the middle class.

- [Brian] Okay.

We're here at the home of former Lieutenant Governor Sheila Simon, the daughter of Senator Paul Simon, six hours away from Chicago, from your district.

I've heard, I don't wanna bring it up, but I heard lots of talk about, "So glad to see a statewide office holder, somebody seeking statewide office, to come down here."

Why is, how are you planning to introduce yourself or make that connection with people statewide?

- Well, one of the ways is through people like you and having an opportunity to speak to people like you because you just do such a great job of sharing information with others.

But I'm also traveling throughout the state and you might've seen a TV commercial or two.

So we're gonna be doing that as well, in addition to digital media.

So it's gonna take a lot of different routes, but we hope to kinda raise awareness and ultimately win.

- [Brian] And you think you can make that connection with the people of southern Illinois?

- Oh, absolutely.

Look, I think that, you know, hailing from downstate Illinois and central Illinois, I think the way that we just think about problems and challenges is slightly different than in other places.

I think we're practical.

We're willing to embrace change and work with people even on the other side of the aisle, however you define it.

And at the end of the day, I think people are open to folks with non-traditional backgrounds and upbringings and the more letters, the better sometimes.

- [Brian] The recent budget bill cut Medicaid by a trillion over the next 10 years.

There's nine hospitals that could be at risk of closure because of some of these cuts to Medicaid.

What did you find when you went to Benton and what are your thoughts on how do we move forward?

- Well, I think that, you know, this particular community hospital is very similar to other community hospitals throughout the state.

It delivers healthcare at a low cost to many people who don't have healthcare options otherwise.

And unfortunately, this large lousy law, which some people call a big beautiful bill, is going to cut 1.2 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade.

And that's gonna risk closing hospitals like the one in Franklin County.

But here's the thing which I want everyone to pay attention to.

It's not gonna just hurt the people who are on Medicaid.

It's gonna hurt everybody because whether you get insurance through your employer or whether you have Medicare, you're gonna use those same hospitals.

So if they close, it's gonna hurt everyone and there are gonna be layoffs and that's gonna further hurt the economy.

- [Brian] Congress recently passed this recession bill earlier this month, pulled back $9 billion.

It hit, you know, public broadcasting and other government funded programs.

What's your thoughts on what could be done to fix this?

- We have to restore the funding in another Congress.

I think that this was, to me, like going after "Sesame Street" doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem legal, and it doesn't seem consistent with the values of Americans, which is what I think ultimately people want.

They want a government that acts in accordance with their values and certainly the laws.

And unfortunately, we have a situation now where I think this particular president is acting outside of those boundaries with impunity.

So we have to hold him accountable and we have to architect a new set of reforms to prevent the next Trump and the Trump after that.

We can't go through this again.

So as a Democrat, but really as a patriot, as a citizen, I'm thinking about, okay, how do we prevent this from ever happening again at the same time that we constrain this particular president?

- [Brian] Okay, Congressman, thank you for your time.

- Thank you.

- That's Raja Krishnamoorthi, Democratic candidate for US Senate.

He talked with WSIU's Brian Sapp as part of an ongoing segment in the coming weeks on "Capitol View" with the candidates seeking Illinois' US Senate seat.

For Andrew Adams and Kent Redfield, I'm Jeff Williams.

Thank you for joining us this week on "Capitol View."

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