Illinois Governor Faces Accusations Of Hypocrisy Over Gerrymandering Defense

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is facing accusations of blatant hypocrisy after blasting Republican-led efforts to redraw congressional maps in Texas and other states while simultaneously defending his own state’s partisan gerrymandering — a process widely regarded as among the most aggressive in the nation.

During a Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press, Pritzker delivered a sharp attack on Texas Governor Greg Abbott and former President Donald Trump, accusing them of trying to “cheat” by pursuing mid-decade redistricting.

His remarks came in the context of a high-profile standoff in Texas, where a group of Democratic state legislators fled to Illinois to block a vote on new congressional maps and other legislation backed by the Republican majority.

“What Greg Abbott is doing and what Donald Trump is attempting to do is to cheat mid-decade here; they’re attempting to change the map,” Pritzker said. “They know that they’re going to lose in 2026, the Congress, and so they’re trying to steal seats.”

Pritzker accused Texas Republicans of drawing maps that violate both the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution, praising the Texas House Democrats for their walkout.

“Thank God to these Texas House Democrats,” he added, framing their absence as an act of political courage against what he described as a brazen attack on voting rights.

The dispute in Texas hinges on the state’s redistricting process. Republicans, who currently hold 88 seats in the Texas House compared to the Democrats’ 62, cannot proceed with scheduled votes unless two-thirds of members are present.

The absence of the Democratic bloc has effectively halted legislative business, including the controversial new maps.

Governor Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have indicated they may move to compel the absent lawmakers’ return, citing state Supreme Court precedents that affirm the majority party’s ability to maintain legislative operations and reject minority attempts to block proceedings through walkouts.

“What he’s doing is at the behest of the President of the United States, who is clearly attempting to… change the game,” Pritzker said of Abbott, claiming the governor was acting under Trump’s influence.

Pritzker accused Trump of seeking five more congressional seats through redistricting, characterizing the former president’s motivations as self-serving and anti-democratic.

“It’s cheating,” Pritzker declared. “Donald Trump is a cheater. He cheats on his wives. He cheats at golf. And now he’s trying to cheat the American people out of their votes.”

While Pritzker’s condemnation of Texas Republicans was unequivocal, critics have been quick to point out that Illinois Democrats have engaged in similarly partisan tactics — with results that have skewed congressional representation far from the state’s voting breakdown.

In the 2024 elections, Republican House candidates in Illinois received 46 percent of the vote statewide. However, the party won just three of the state’s 17 congressional districts.

Independent watchdog groups have given Illinois failing grades on the fairness of its maps, with some describing the state’s redistricting as a textbook example of modern gerrymandering.

When Meet The Press host Kristen Welker confronted Pritzker with these facts, noting that Illinois had received an “F” rating from nonpartisan evaluators, the governor avoided directly addressing the charge.

Welker posed the question plainly: “You talk about preserving democracy, how do you preserve democracy if you’re using the same tactics that you’ve criticized Texas Republicans for?”

Pritzker brushed off the issue, labeling it a “distraction” from what he sees as the more pressing threat posed by Texas’s actions. Rather than defend Illinois’s maps on their merits, Pritzker pivoted back to his central argument that Texas’s redistricting efforts are an attack on voting rights.

“The reality is that the violation of people’s voting rights is what Texas is attempting to do. That’s what’s wrong with their efforts right now,” he said. “And the fact that the President of the United States knows it, and nevertheless is asking them to do it, that is what’s wrong with what we’re seeing right now. Democracy is at stake.”

His refusal to address Illinois’s own gerrymander has fueled criticism from Republicans and nonpartisan election reform advocates alike. To them, Pritzker’s comments illustrate a willingness to decry partisan mapmaking only when it benefits the opposing party.

Both Illinois and Texas have long histories of partisan redistricting. In Illinois, Democrats have maintained firm control of the legislature and the governor’s office, giving them the power to draw district boundaries in ways that heavily favor their candidates. The resulting maps have been challenged by Republicans as unfair and unrepresentative of the state’s true political balance.

In Texas, Republicans hold the power and have used redistricting to reinforce their advantage, a tactic that Democrats say undermines minority voting power and violates federal voting rights protections.

The battle over Texas’s maps has drawn national attention because of its timing — occurring mid-decade rather than after the traditional ten-year census-driven redistricting process. Critics, including Pritzker, argue that this timing reveals a purely political motive to shore up Republican control before the 2026 elections.

The Pritzker-Abbott clash is part of a broader national debate over voting rights, election integrity, and political representation. Democrats often frame Republican redistricting efforts as attempts to suppress votes, particularly in minority communities.

Republicans, in turn, point to aggressive gerrymandering in blue states as evidence of hypocrisy and argue that both parties manipulate maps when they have the power to do so.

Nonpartisan groups have long warned that gerrymandering — regardless of which party engages in it — erodes public trust in democratic institutions by allowing politicians to choose their voters instead of voters choosing their representatives.

The “F” grade assigned to Illinois by independent evaluators reflects concerns about the extent to which its districts have been drawn to favor one party. Critics say the Illinois maps dilute Republican voting strength by concentrating GOP-leaning voters into a small number of districts while spreading Democratic voters across a greater number of winnable seats.

These tactics mirror those used in Republican-controlled states, where Democratic voters are often packed into a handful of districts to limit their influence elsewhere.

The fact that Illinois’s results so heavily favor Democrats despite a near-even statewide vote split underscores the degree of partisan advantage built into its maps.

Pritzker’s decision to sidestep direct questions about Illinois’s maps may reflect the political reality that gerrymandering has benefited his party significantly. With control of the legislature unlikely to change in the near term, Democrats in Illinois have little incentive to pursue reforms that could make elections more competitive.

By focusing his rhetoric on Texas, Pritzker can position himself as a defender of voting rights without confronting the contradictions in his own state’s approach.

This strategy may resonate with Democratic voters nationally, but it risks alienating independent and reform-minded voters who see gerrymandering as a bipartisan problem.

The standoff in Texas shows no sign of ending soon. Republican leaders there have vowed to continue pushing for their proposed maps, while Democratic lawmakers remain outside the state to prevent a quorum. Legal challenges are also expected, with plaintiffs likely to argue that the new maps violate federal law.

In Illinois, the existing maps will remain in place unless successfully challenged in court — an outcome that seems unlikely given past rulings and the political balance of the state’s judiciary.

For Pritzker, the political fallout from his Meet The Press appearance will depend on how voters weigh his criticisms of Texas against his defense of Illinois’s status quo.

Republicans are certain to highlight the disparity as evidence of double standards, while Democrats will likely rally around his framing of the Texas dispute as an urgent battle for democracy.

Governor JB Pritzker’s clash with Texas Republicans over redistricting has brought renewed attention to the issue of gerrymandering and the partisan double standards that often accompany it.

While Pritzker has positioned himself as a vocal critic of Republican-led mapmaking, his unwillingness to confront similar practices in Illinois has left him vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy.

The broader debate over how congressional districts are drawn — and who benefits from those decisions — is unlikely to subside. As both parties continue to manipulate maps in their favor, calls for independent redistricting commissions and other reforms will persist. Whether leaders like Pritzker are willing to embrace such changes in their own states remains an open question.

For now, the governor’s words about protecting democracy are being measured against his actions at home — and for critics, the gap between the two could not be more glaring.

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