South Side Politics is About to Change Big Time

posted by chicago pop

Redistricting is coming up in post-election 2011. While that normally entails some politically-motivated jiggling with the Chicago ward boundaries, given the 2010 census numbers showing dramatic reductions in the city's African-American population, it will directly affect the number of wards that currently exist on the South Side.

Greg Hinz of Chicago Business lays it out:

Huge areas of the city – particularly on the South Side –are dramatically under-populated. Such areas will have fewer aldermen under the one-man, one-vote rule.

The lowest is Alderman Pat Dowell’s mid-South Side 3rd Ward, now home to just 40,506 people – barely half of Mr. Reilly’s 42nd. Closely trailing is Alderman Tony Beale’s 9th Ward, with 43,530 residents.

...

Four other wards have fewer than 47,000 people each. Those are the 5th, with 46,263; the 7th, at 46,582; the 16th, with 45,955, and the 17th, with 45,993. They are represented by Leslie Hairston, Sandi Jackson, JoAnn Thompson and Latasha Thomas, respectively [italics added].

Since each new ward will have to have around 54,000 residents, at least one of the above wards is going to have to go or gobble loads of people from its neighbors. And most nearby South Side wards are way off, too – just not as much.

So there is going to be some major sorting of voters going on and Hyde Park-Kenwood-Woodlawn-South Shore will be right in the middle of it. The 5th Ward could disappear entirely.

How will this play for Hyde Park politics? Chances are it will make it harder than ever before for the neighborhood's tradition of "independent" politics -- detailed so well in Rebecca Janowitz's book -- to get translated into action on a city-wide level, as Hyde Park gets swallowed up in an even larger ward unit. Whatever news ward or wards comprise Hyde Park and other South Side neigborhoods will be even more geographically diverse, with all the political challenges that entails.

On the other hand, there is a slight possibility that all of Hyde Park-Kenwood might wind up within the same ward -- as it had been within the 5th Ward for most of the 20th century -- for the first time since it was split in two in 1981 under Mayor Jane Byrne.

That would not be good for Alderman Hairston. But it would be good for Chicago. The question is whether the New Boss would come to view a more powerful Hyde Park neighborhood as most of his predecessors have, i.e., as something to be avoided.