Lake County Gazette

Senate Republican Leader Dan McConchie (R-Lake Zurich) wants to see voters hold Gov. J.B. Pritzker accountable for changing his position on map redistricting.

“In 2018, candidate Pritzker was clear and unmistakable when he told the people of Illinois that, yes, he pledged a veto as governor of  'any state legislative redistricting map proposal that is in any way drafted or created by legislators, political party leaders, their staffs or allies,' McConchie said in a video posted to YouTube. “Today, Gov. Pritzker proved that is unequivocal. Words means nothing. More than 75 percent of the public clearly supports independently drawing legislative maps.”

McConchie argues the governor’s motivations for signing off on the new maps should be clear to all.

“Gov. Pritzker signed a partisan map drawn by politicians with one goal and one goal only, and that's to maximize power over the people of this state,” he said. “It appears candidate Pritzker was only saying what he thought he needed to do to get elected. This is a blatant effort to kill democracy in Illinois and it will not go unanswered. We will use every tool at our disposal to return power to the people once again and make sure that the governor pays a political price for lying to the people of Illinois.”

“He can pretend that he reviewed the maps, but we all know that the promise was to veto a map drawn by politicians,” McConchie said. “So any review that he was doing was clearly for show. He said a lot about the Voting Rights Act, but using inaccurate, flawed data clearly deviates from the practice of one person, one vote. He pretended to be a reformer, but he's just proved these more-of-the-same politicians will do anything to get elected, get power and get your money.”

McConchie is far from alone in taking the governor to task over his actions. Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski recently appeared on an episode of Chicago's Morning Answer to blast Pritzker for reneging on his word.