The seat is up for grabs this year. But, what does the job entail? With Election Day quickly approaching, WMBD News is getting a series of civics lessons from Dr. Megan Remmel, Political Science Professor at Bradley University.
For this installment, we also spoke to former State Senator Richard luft
There are two Illinois State Senate races on Peoria County’s ballot this year, and they couldn’t be more opposite in terms of their contentiousness.
In the 37th Legislative District, Republican incumbent Win Stoller is running unopposed.
The 46th Legislative District, meanwhile, has seen oodles of money poured into advertising as incumbent Democrat Dave Koehler is being given a tight race by Republican challenger Mary Burress.
So, what, exactly is this office that’s being so hotly contested?
“The State Senate in Illinois has 59 seats, and they represent, based on the 2010 Census, about 215 or 220,000 people, so they represent about twice as many people as State House members,” said Remmel.
“They have similar powers to the federal Senate, so they’d be the place where you’d try impeached officials. The slightly different thing we have in Illinois is, our State Senators serve four-year terms, but the scheduling is a little different.
“It’s on a cycle where not every single member of the senate is up for reelection at the same time, so it’s not theoretically possible for every single member of the senate to be voted out of office at once, and have just an entire change of the institution. The senate districts are on different schedules.”
Remmel explained some are on 4-2-4 year election schedules, while others are on 2-4-4, and others are on a 4-4-2.
“You try to prohibit the possibility of there being overturned membership, and so you get at least some sort of consistency out of the senate, where you theoretically could have the entire House of Representatives voted out of office at once. That can’t happen with the senate,” she explained.
Luft broke down how widely a state senator’s duties range.
“Most people don’t realize the most work you do is when you come back home from Springfield and have to work with your constituents on anything from a dog license to Social Security or whatever,” he said.
Luft said the House and Senate tend to mirror each other.
“In a lot of cases, there are duplicates. The same bill that maybe will come out of the Senate will come out of the House,” he said.
“They’ll line up in what’s called a conference committee if it’s a major bill.”
In contrast to what former State Representative Ricca Slone said, Luft said there was very little interaction between State Senators and U.S. Senators.
Rest of series:
