Yes, Illinois is a pretty solidly red state.
Despite the fact that "Democrats" currently have a supermajority in the legislature and control the Governor's mansion, Illinois is a red state.
Despite the fact that that "Democrats" have controlled all three branches of government for eleven consecutive years, Illinois is a red state.
Despite the fact that "Democrats" have been the majority in the house for 28 of the last 30 years Illinois is a solidly red state.
In fact, now has never been a better time to be a fiscal conservative in Illinois.
Last spring Illinois' politicians acknowledge just how red Illinois is when Democrats introduced a bill hoping to break the state's unions and take away retirement benefits for a handful of different public unions, especially those greedy public school teachers. Led by conservative Speaker of the House Mike Madigan(D) and his loyal conservative soldier Elaine Nekritz (D) SB-1673 was as draconian as you'd expect from people like Paul Ryan and his fellow fiscal hawks in Illinois. A small number of state senators who still somewhat anachronistically identify as Blue in the sea of Red, introduced a competing bill which was immediately squashed by the solidly Red Speaker of the House.
The Madigan-Nekritz bill's plan, which took away money from those fat cat retired public servants, easily garnered support from the deep Red politicians in the house, and plucked away the extremely conservative votes in the Senate. Some of these extreme conservatives include Senate President John Cullerton (D), Dan Biss (D), Steve Sadelman (D), Heather Steans (D), Steve Landek (D), and Don Harmon (D). Fortunately, the last remaining liberals in Illinois banded together and were able to kill Madigan's plan in the Senate.
Madigan and his fellow fiscal conservatives have been hard at work trying to figure out how to best punish those responsible for Illinois financial problems, old people and teachers, and turn the rest of Illinois red too. It seems they have succeeded. Over the weekend Illinois politicos put together a bill which will take at least $130 billion dollars from teachers. There is not likely to be a split between the conservatives in the house and the slightly less conservatives in the senate. Governor Quinn has also expressed support for the bill.
Yep, nothing like celebrating the season of giving by taking from those less fortunate. It is a good time to be Red in the state of Illinois
At this time it is unclear whether Madigan, Quinn, Biss, Nekritz, et al are going to cement their celebration of their trickle down economic ideas by building a statue of their idol, Ronald Reagan, in Eureka, Illinois.
11:59 AM PT: Update: There may be hope for blue believers in Illinois yet as Gubernatorial candidate Dan Rutherford (R) has said that he believes stripping earned benefits is unconstitutional (he is right) and the law, if passed, will not past judicial scrutiny (he's right again.)