Predictably, Republicans howled, perceiving that they were in for multiple short ends of sticks. No such howling was heard from central Lake County, however, where one Republican was the lucky recipient of his own gerrymander. Call it a Sulli-mander.
The original gerrymander got its name for the elongated district created to help a candidate favored by Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry way back in 1812.
The Sulli-mander, a mirror image of the original, features a swath of Ed Sullivan's District 51 Democrats (all of downtown Mundelein) herded into a narrow peninsula and given to next-door Rep. Carol Sente in District 59. The loss of those Democrats makes it almost impossible for Rep. Ed Sullivan to ever lose his seat, except in a primary to a fellow Republican or when he retires 75 years from now.
Hmmm. We wonder what Eddie Sullivan did to earn such a wet, sloppy kiss from King Madigan. Luck o' the Irish?
