From Red to Blue: The Political Transformation of Chicago's Northern Suburbs
Wealthy neighborhoods in North Cook and Southern Lake Counties are shifting toward the Democratic Party, but maybe not toward the party's economic principles.
When people think of the northern suburbs of Chicago, the first thing that pops into mind is probably any 1980’s John Hughes’ movie. From National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and a host of other movies, chances are that they were stories based out of, and filmed in, these suburbs. This is particularly the case for New Trier and Northfield Townships in Cook County, and Moraine Township in Lake County.
While these neighborhoods are synonymous with these 1980s comedies, they were also synonymous with traditional Republican voting patterns. During the 1984 election, Congressman John Porter, the Republican incumbent, won 72.6% of the vote over Democrat Ruth C. Braver. From that point on, Illinois’s 10th Congressional District would continue to reelect Porter with a vote total anywhere from 64.5% to 100% of the vote (as he ran uncontested in 1998). And while Porter’s replacement, Mark Kirk, barely won it in 2000 with only 51% of the vote, in 2002, Kirk would win the district with 68.8% of the vote.
But those days are gone for the Republicans. The residents of these affluent suburbs have traded in their “Reagan/Bush ‘84” signs for lawn banners supporting Black Lives Matter, gender equality, gay and trans rights, and other buzzwords that come with the modern-day social justice warrior movement that promotes their concept of equality. One slogan that seems to be conspicuously missing is that of income or wealth inequality.
And if we look at the most recent election in Illinois, that doesn’t seem to be a surprise.
In the 2022 midterm election, Democratic incumbent governor J.B. Pritzker ran for reelection. There was never any doubt that he would win reelection, and he did with 54.9% of the vote over ultra-conservative Darren Bailey. However, the three townships mentioned above (New Trier, Northfield, and Moraine) gave J.B. Pritzker 70.09% of the vote, a full 15% higher than what Pritzker received statewide. At the state and federal level, all of the members of these townships are Democratic as well, and usually win their elections by a wide margin.
During the same election, there was also a constitutional amendment on the ballot. Amendment 1, as it was known on the ballot, was a pro-union change to the Illinois Constitution that would give workers a “fundamental right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of negotiating wages, hours, and working conditions, and to protect their economic welfare and safety at work”, while prohibiting “any law that interferes with, negatives, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively.”
The aforementioned J.B. Pritzker strongly supported the bill, as well as other Democrats and labor unions. Opponents of the bill were Republicans and the typical “Chamber of Commerce”-type organizations. In addition, all of the state representatives and state senators from these three townships supported placing the measure on the ballot. Therefore, it was a solid Democratic issue.
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But not for the voters of these three townships. Once all the votes were counted, Amendment 1 only received 54.0% of the vote. While that is a majority, that is 16% less than the vote J.B. Pritzker received in these townships. This means that nearly a quarter of the Democratic voters in these townships fundamentally oppose the right to collective bargain, a fundamental staple in Democratic policy, especially in the State of Illinois. In the town of Winnetka, where many for Hughes’s films were based, Amendment 1 only received 38.7% of the vote, while giving Pritzker 62.7%.
Of course, the positive side is that this amendment might have only received 30% had the vote been taken back in 1984. But the fact that there is such a large deviation between J.B. Pritzker’s vote total and that of Amendment 1 shows how working-class issues, and particularly issues regarding unions, might be having waning importance among Democratic voters. Of course, as the Democratic Party starts seeking more voters in the suburbs, especially in elitist suburbs, issues of fundamental economic policies might shift drastically. These three townships show just how much opposition there is amount higher income suburban Democrats.
This then leads us to the questions regarding the future of Democratic messaging. Is is better for Democrats to take on SJW issues, gaining voters in affluent suburbs, and the expense of working-class voters in the city? This seems to be where the Democratic Party, nationally at least, is trying to figure out.
But there has been a counter-balance to this, where diehard working-class voters have, to some extent, abandoned the Democratic Party. In Part II of this series (which will be out next week), we’ll look at Mt. Greenwood on Chicago’s South Side and see the flipside of this coin.
Also the movie you are referring to I think is the The Breakfast Club NOT the Breakfast Clue.
There is a book I think I have mentioned in the past called Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party by Lily Geismer. Anyways the book makes the argument that this trend has been going on for a long time perhaps not as long in the Chicago suburbs as elsewhere(like New England) but has it’s origins in the Adlai Stevenson-Eisenhower era. Geismer suggests the main cleavage in the Democratic Party between these suburban voters and more traditional urban constituencies has been over subjects such as affordable housing and deficit reduction.
Anyways good book.
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Blame-Us-Transformation-Democratic/dp/0691157235