ILLINOIS PRIMARY SHOWS WHY BERNIE WON’T QUIT
Final Illinois primary tally shows why Sanders hasn’t given up race yet
WASHINGTON — Bernie Sanders is staying in the Democratic presidential race even though he has little chance of overtaking Hillary Clinton in the all-important delegate count, and new data from the Illinois primary provides a vivid example of how the arcane system works — and why Sanders has reason not to quit.
“We still have a path to the nom- ination, and our plan is to win the pledged delegates in this primary,” Sanders said in a fund-raising appeal after Clinton bested him by 10 percentage points in New York last Tuesday. “Next week, five states vote, and there are a lot of delegates up for grabs.”
Sanders, his campaign manager Jeff Weaver and top strategist Tad Devine all insisted in interviews after New York that that path, while increasingly narrow, was realistic.
We’ll know more come Tuesday, when five Eastern states vote: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware.
This chaotic campaign season, in which outsiders Sanders and Republican front-runner Donald Trump have gained enormous followings, has thrown a spotlight on the presidential nominating system.
Many voters are realizing for the first time that primary and caucus votes are just one step of many and that the state and national parties have enormous influence in the process. Delegates at the GOP and Democratic nominating conventions this summer decide the nominees, not caucus and primary voters, whose voices, at best, are heard indirectly.
The system is complicated. It is not, as Trump likes to say, rigged. But it is tilted toward insiders who study the rules with the zest of a Talmudic scholar.
Breaking it down
Let’s break down Illinois, which can be done with precision now that the Illinois State Board of Elections has finalized the results of the March 15 primary.
Illinois Democrats will send 182 delegates to the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia in July.
Clinton won the March 15 Illinois primary with 50.56 percent to Sanders’ 48.61 percent in overall votes — the “beauty contest.”
That doesn’t mean, though, that Clinton clinched all 182 delegates.
Of those delegate slots, actually just 102 were up for grabs in the March primary, allocated among the 18 Illinois congressional districts.
With the final tally now in, the Illinois election results mean that, of those 102 elected delegate spots
in Illinois, Clinton won 52 and Sanders 50 — almost a tie.
In theory, since no Democratic contest is winner-take-all — unlike the Republican Party, which allows that in some states — all Sanders has to do is stay neck and neck with Clinton, as he did in Illinois, by doing OK on Tuesday in the Eastern votes, then clinch in June in California, where more than 300 congressional district-level pledged delegates will be elected.
In reality, though, the delegate math is overwhelmingly in Clinton’s favor.
Here’s the count: 2,383 delegates are needed to win. As of Friday, according to the Bloomberg delegate trackers, Clinton has 1,930 — including 502 superdelegates to Sanders with 1,189, including 38 superdelegates. There are 1,646 delegates still to be decided.
A convoluted path
Those 102 Illinois delegates elected from congressional districts are pledged to either Sanders or Clinton. Those slots were allocated at a rate of four to nine per congressional district, based on the 2008 and 2012 Democratic Illinois presidential votes.
What about the rest? There are various categories, detailed in 91 pages of delegate selection rules the Democratic Party of Illinois finalized in April 2015. The short of that is this:
Superdelegates: In Illinois, there are the 25 unpledged party leaders and elected officials, nicknamed “superdelegates,” who get to be delegates by virtue of their party or elected office.
Among Illinois Democratic superdelegates are President Barack Obama, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, the 10 Illinois House Democrats and other “distinguished” leaders, who this year will include Cubs coowner Laura Ricketts and Chicago business executive Raj Fernandez — both of them Democratic contributors and fund-raisers. Pledged party leaders: There are 20 pledged party-leader and elected-official delegates — a vehicle to make it easy for big-city Illinois mayors, statewide elected officials, legislative leaders and local party honchos to get to the national convention. Applications for those slots were due April 11.
At-large delegates: There’s another pot of 34 at-large delegates to be selected when the Democratic Party of Illinois meets in Springfield on May 9. Under the party’s rules, those spots will be apportioned based on the primary results, so it’s likely that Clinton and Sanders will each get 17.
Special case: One. John Keller, of Chicago, is an automatic delegate pick by virtue of his position as an officer of the Democratic National Committee’s Young Democrats of America.
There is no worry about any double agents here — under the Democratic Party’s rules, Clinton and Sanders get to choose who they want to fill their at-large slots.
More Illinois primary highlights
Clinton won the seven most Democratic Illinois districts — the ones with the biggest delegate allotments.
The 1st Congressional District on the South Side, a Democratic stronghold represented in Congress by Rep. Bobby Rush, and the 7th, on the West Side, with Rep. Danny Davis, have the most delegates — nine each. The 2nd district, with Rep. Robin Kelly in Congress, has eight.
The Rush, Davis and Kelly districts are all majority African-American, and Clinton and her husband, Bill, spent a lot of time on this turf in the closing days of the Illinois primary.
Using the first congressional district as an example of the proportional system: All nine contenders on the Clinton slate got more votes than anyone on the Sanders slate. Under the party rules, though, Clinton gained five delegates and Sanders earned four.
The overall top Democratic delegate vote-getter in the state? Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who easily won in the 1st Congressional District.
Preckwinkle got 97,932 votes, followed by: state Sen. Jacqueline Collins, D-Chicago, with 93,421; state Rep. Mary Flowers, D-Chicago, 87,677; state Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, 83,785; and Ald. David Moore (17th), 83,587.
The next four Clinton delegates weren’t elected, in order to make way for the four Sanders delegates, even though they got far more votes. Not elected were Rush’s wife, Carolyn Rush, who had 83,373 votes; Illinois House Majority Leader Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, 81,504; Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), 80,392, and city Treasurer Kurt Summers, 76,765.
To compare: The top Sanders delegate in the 1st district is Adriana Sanchez, who secured a delegate spot with only 54,330 votes. Sanchez is a telemetry nurse at the University of Chicago Medical Center who stumped for Sanders through one of his main allied organizations, National Nurses United.
Sanders won 11 of 18 Illinois’ 18 congressional districts.
In the Chicago area, that’s the 3rd, represented in Congress by Rep. Dan Lipinski; the 4th, represented by Rep. Luis Gutierrez; the 5th, represented by Rep. Mike Quigley; and the 8th, represented by Rep. Tammy Duckworth.
All of these House members are superdelegates. Lipinski said a few days ago that if there’s a contested convention, he would be for Sanders. Gutierrez, Quigley and Duckworth are for Clinton.
Sanders did best in Illinois in districts represented by Republicans in Congress, with his top district the Downstate 13th (Rep. Rodney Davis), followed by the far west suburban 14th, (Rep. Randy Hultgren) and the south suburban/Downstate 16th (Rep. Adam Kinzinger).
Another wrinkle
Democrats are committed to dividing delegates equally between men and women among the 102 elected delegates. That means that sometimes, to make sure there’s gender parity among the elected delegates, someone with fewer votes still secures a slot.
For example, in the 5th Congressional District, Clinton and Sanders each were entitled to three delegates.
The top three vote-getters were all women — Rebecca Abraham and Laura Sabransky for Sanders and state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz for Clinton.
That means they also needed three men. Ald. John Arena (45th) a Sanders man, was next in line.
Cook County Board member Bridget Gainer came in second for Clinton, and Jan Kallish, who stumped for Clinton in Iowa, came in third.
But if they took the spots, that would have left them short of men. So the Clinton guys who ran four and five — attorney Patrick Croke and Rocco Claps, director of the Illinois Department of Human Rights — were deemed the winners instead.