State Representative Patrick Windhorst Announces Committee Assignments for 104th General Assembly
Springfield, IL – State Representative Patrick Windhorst (R-Metropolis), who has once again been appointed to serve as the Illinois House Republican Floor Leader, announced his House Committee assignments for the 104th General Assembly this week.
“I am honored to serve as the Illinois House Republican Floor Leader and look forward to leading the debate on crucial legislation,” said Rep. Windhorst. “Illinois faces many challenges, including the need for greater ethics reforms to combat corruption and efforts to restore law and order in our communities. I will continue to fight for the people of Illinois by standing up for our police officers, supporting victims’ rights, and working to ensure our state government operates with integrity and transparency.”
Rep. Windhorst will serve on several key committees in the Illinois House, including:
Ethics & Elections (Republican Spokesperson)
Gun Violence Prevention (Republican Spokesperson)
Judiciary – Criminal Law (Republican Spokesperson)
Restorative Justice & Public Safety (Republican Spokesperson)
As a strong advocate for ethical governance, Rep. Windhorst has been a vocal proponent of comprehensive ethics reforms to combat public corruption.
“Illinois has seen too many public officials abuse their positions for personal gain, and our state’s poor track record on corruption has been an embarrassing stain on our reputation for too long,” Windhorst said. “As the House Republican ranking member and Spokesperson on the House Ethics and Elections Committee, I will be working to restore public trust in government by pushing for stronger anti-corruption measures.”
Prior to becoming a legislator, Windhorst served as the State’s Attorney for Massac County for 14 years. Windhorst says his law enforcement background helps guide his work as the ranking member and Republican Spokesperson on three House Committees focused on criminal law.
“I have always been a steadfast supporter of law enforcement and an advocate for the rights of victims of crime,” Windhorst said. “I am dedicated to implementing policies that prioritize public safety, hold criminals accountable, and provide law enforcement with the necessary resources to protect communities across Illinois.”
“Illinoisans deserve a government that is accountable, transparent, and committed to upholding the rule of law,” added Windhorst. “I will continue to work tirelessly to ensure our communities are safe and that our state upholds the highest ethical standards.”
Windhorst operates two full-time district offices in Harrisburg and West Frankfort. Windhorst can be reached by phone at 618-294-8703 or by email at Windhorst@ILHouseGOP.org.
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Windhorst Supports GOP Lawsuit Targeting Illegal District Map Boundaries
SPRINGFIELD, IL – State Representative and House Republican Floor Leader Patrick Windhorst says he strongly supports a lawsuit filed this week by fellow House Republicans and House GOP Leader Tony McCombie that seeks to invalidate the current legislative maps as they stand. Windhorst says the legislative district map governing House district boundaries was one of the most egregiously gerrymandered maps in the country.
“This is a classic case where politicians picked their voters, instead of it being the other way around as it should be,” Windhorst said. “From non-compact district maps to intentional packing of Republican and or Democrat voters into certain districts, Democrats drew a legislative map that guarantees them a supermajority for a decade. After a review by data and legal experts, our team has determined that suing to redo the illegal maps was the right thing to do.”
If the lawsuit is ultimately successful, House Republicans have requested the appointment of a Special Master who would be charged with redrawing legislative district boundaries. The lawsuit was filed in Illinois Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon.
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HOUSE REPUBLICAN WEEK IN REVIEW
Week in Review for the week ending 2/1/25
- General Assembly – Redistricting lawsuit (McCombie, Spain, Ugaste)
- Madigan Trial – Closing arguments; jury deliberations begin
- Education – Test scores show improvement
- Jobs – December 2024 unemployment rate
- YouTube – Subscribe to our YouTube channel
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Lawsuit filed by House Republicans to remedy extreme partisan gerrymandering. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Tony McCombie was joined by State Representatives Ryan Spain and Dan Ugaste for a press conference in the State Capitol to discuss their latest litigation effort to combat legislative gerrymandering. McCombie, in her official capacity, filed a lawsuit with the Illinois Supreme Court to declare the current map unconstitutional and ask for a special master to draft a redistricting plan that complies with the Illinois Constitution.
The U.S. Supreme Court has given the responsibility of ending extreme partisan gerrymandering to the states, and now Illinois will potentially join other states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina who have had redistricting plans struck down on the basis of identical or comparable constitutional provisions.
McCombie’s lawsuit filed this week will address the 2021 enacted maps at the state level and challenge two key features of the maps: the compactness of the districts (Article IV, Section 3) and the partisan gerrymandering (Article III, Section 3).
“Illinois’ State House District Maps are the byproduct of extreme partisan gerrymandering,” Leader McCombie said. “They are drawn by the political party in control and intended to entrench the Democratic Party in power and prevent voters of the minority party from electing candidates of their choice. The general election outcomes are rigged.”
In addition to seeking legal remedy through this announced lawsuit, State Representative Ryan Spain has filed House Joint Resolution Constitutional Amendment 05 in the 104th General Assembly to enact a Fair Map Amendment.
“Instead of a promised New Day by Speaker Chris Welch, we have instead seen Democrats opposing democracy through a multitude of efforts, but the most egregious remains the map,” said Spain. “When we say the map is rigged, we mean that the better Republican candidates do, the more effective the Democratic gerrymander is.”
In 2016, over 600,000 Illinoisans joined an effort to end partisan redistricting through a Fair Map Ballot Initiative. The measure would be thrown out by the Democrat-controlled Illinois Supreme Court after former Commonwealth Edison executive John Hooker filed suit. Mr. Hooker would later be convicted of charges related to bribing former Speaker Michael Madigan, who now sits awaiting a verdict in his own federal corruption trial.
State Representative Dan Ugaste has long advocated for fair maps, in addition to larger ethics reform the House Republican caucus seeks.
“The recently completed election cycle made clear how successful the partisan gerrymandering deprived voters of their voice,” said Ugaste. “Of the 2024 Illinois House elections, Democratic candidates won 55% of the statewide vote. But Democratic candidates won a super-majority of seats (78 of 118, or 66.1%).”
Dr. Jowei Chen from the University of Michigan is the leading academic researcher on partisan gerrymandering in the nation and contributed expert research for the complaint. Ugaste discussed the impact of Chen’s research in Tuesday’s press conference.
“I support expanding recall elections for all elected officials, strong ethics reform, and changing the corrupt way Democrats have perverted the system to draw legislative maps which provide them with what our expert witness, Dr. Chen, describes as an “insurance policy” for the House Democrats,” continued Ugaste. “Voters across our state deserve to be heard, and we will not stand for them to be silenced any longer.”
While HJRCA05 awaits further consideration in the Illinois House, a full copy of the complaint filed today can be found online at RedoRemap.com.
- Closing arguments conclude in Madigan corruption trial. The blockbuster trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan and his former associate Michael McClain went to the jury this week. The prosecution and the defense made their closing statements to the court. When federal Judge John Blakey read out the court’s instructions to the jury, this was the signal for the members of the jury to begin their deliberations. The jury’s members and alternates have sat through fourteen and a half weeks of evidence presentation and court statements. They have now been asked to decide whether the former Illinois political boss is guilty of a set of alleged federal offenses, centered around acts of alleged bribery, influence peddling and racketeering.
Integral to the federal case against Madigan and McClain were a sequence of wiretap evidence gathered by federal prosecutors and their informants. The court heard former Speaker Madigan and former insider and lobbyist McClain explicitly discussing various deals and agreements. The prosecution team described these deals and agreements as parts of a sequence. These event sequences resulted in the passage of controversial bills in the Illinois General Assembly, the hiring of politically connected insiders for “no-show” jobs, and the payments of money to Madigan’s well-connected Chicago law firm. Now, the jury has been asked to make a finding of fact about these criminal charges. Jury deliberations are expected to continue next week.
EDUCATION
National Report Card shows Illinois students scoring above national average. The report card, which brings together the multi-state results from standardized tests given to students in fourth grade and again in eighth grade, covers both reading and math. In 2024, Illinois students scored significantly above the national average in mathematics. In addition, Illinois students scored above average on reading skills when students were measured in eighth grade. In terms of overall standing, Illinois scored 17th among the 50 states.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a federally mandated program of standardized tests and test aggregation. Performed every other year, it is an exercise intended to measure teaching performances among the various U.S. states. The survey is reported out in subgroups that are intended to serve as signposts toward areas where greater efforts are required. The surveys are performed by the individual school districts under supervision, but the aggregation is performed under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Education.
As with previous NAEP exercises, the aggregated results showed significant achievement gaps in Illinois between racial and ethnic groups. In addition, the losses posted nationwide in student achievement during the 2020-21 pandemic and school lockdown have not yet been fully recovered. Although Illinois 8th-grade reading achievements stabilized between 2022 and 2024, nationwide 8th-grade reading achievements continued to decline. In addition, fourth-grade reading achievements continued to decline throughout the U.S, including in Illinois.
JOBS
- Illinois unemployment rate at 5.2% in December. The Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) has published jobless numbers for Illinois in December 2024. For a significant period of time, the Prairie State has notched higher jobless numbers than the percentages in neighboring U.S. states, and higher joblessness than in the U.S. as a whole. In December 2024, Illinois had a preliminary unemployment rate of 5.2%. This was 1.1% higher than the 4.1% rate recorded during the same month for the U.S. as a whole.
The year-end 2024 table released by IDES generated further data on the ongoing transition in the Illinois economy and jobs. Illinois employers reported having 6,156,600 (seasonally adjusted) non-farm jobs on their payrolls in December 2024, but these jobs are significantly different from the employment picture that many Illinois residents remember. Historically, the Illinois job economy centered on professional and business services, centering in greater Chicago, and manufacturing, dispersed throughout the state. In 2024, however, these categories continued to decline in the numbers of jobs they supported throughout Illinois. On a year-to-year basis, the job count reported in Illinois ‘professional and business services dropped by 16,200 jobs statewide, and the job count reported in Illinois manufacturing dropped by 6,900 jobs. These are continuations of long-term trends that affect these employment categories.
YouTube
Subscribe on YouTube. The Illinois House Republican Caucus maintains a YouTube channel, hosting hundreds of videos promoting our caucus members as well as caucus positions and news. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and is an important tool in getting our message out about reforming Illinois. If you have not done so already, please subscribe to the House GOP YouTube channel by going to this link: https://www.youtube.com/@ILHouseGOP and selecting the subscribe button.