Democrats protect their own in state legislative remap

By Ray Long, Tribune reporter

SPRINGFIELD ——
Jonathan Goldman was encouraged when Democrats first unveiled new state legislative boundaries in mid-May. The Bucktown resident's house was inside Sen. Annazette Collins' district, giving him a clean shot at a Democratic primary election challenge next year.

But the map that passed a little more than a week later came with a surprise. The lines in the updated version ran along one side of Goldman's house and followed an alley past his garage door. The result? Goldman was sliced out of Collins' district and put into territory represented by safely ensconced Democratic Senate President John Cullerton.

Goldman is not the first politician to be displaced by Illinois redistricting — it happened to onetime congressional candidate Barack Obama a decade ago — but he is among the latest batch of would-be lawmakers lamenting the realities of a sophisticated new map.