Illinois loses clout but 'Go Bears'

Posted by Frank James at 11:16 am CST

Clout is an attribute near and dear to the hearts of Chicagoans, of course. Students of politics and power assumed that Illinois would lose some when Republicans lost control of Congress since that meant the state would no longer have a House Speaker in the delegation or committee and subcommittee chairmanships.

Now Roll Call (subscription required), one of the best-known publications that covers Capitol Hill, has tried to measure just how much juice Illinois’s and other state delegations have gained or lost because of Congress’s recent realignment.

The newspaper says Illinois has dropped to ninth place from the fifth place spot it occupied a couple of years ago during the last ranking when Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was speaker.

Here’s their passage on Illinois.

9. Illinois
481 points
Previous rank: 5
Population rank: 5

Illinois has plenty of important Democrats, but the GOP’s loss of power still hit the state hard — hard enough to knock it down four slots on the rankings.

The drop is attributable to Hastert’s departure from the Speaker’s chair, yet Illinois still boasts a pair of elected leaders — Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D) and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel.

The Prairie State also managed to stick around in the top 10 because its Members have the fourth-most slots on exclusive House and Senate committees, trailing only California, Texas and New York. Illinois also has a freshman Senator named Barack Obama (D) who supposedly has a bright future.

Roll Call based its rankings on several factors:

Roll Call’s crack team of scientists and mathematicians calculates the clout rankings at the start of each Congress using a proprietary statistical formula that gives points to each state based on several factors, including:

• size of the delegation;
• number of full committee chairmanships and ranking memberships;
• number of Members on the most influential committees;
• top leadership posts;
• number of Members in the majority party;
• per capita federal spending received; and
• seniority.

Such rankings, obviously, can’t include intangible factors, like Emanuel cajoling, swearing at and jabbing fellow Democrats in the chest in order to get their attention.

California, which was number one before the recent election, remains number one and has strengthened that position with the ascension of Rep. Nancy Pelosi to the House speakership. Number two and three, New York and Texas, respectively, are unchanged too.

So Illinois has lost significant sway on Capitol Hill. But at least we'll be saying "Go Bears" all the way to the Super Bowl.