I’ve given Governor JB Pritzker some grief for his failures during the past few months. His graduated income-tax proposal went down in flames in November. He failed to pass his top priorities during January’s lame-duck legislative session. And his candidate for Democratic Party of Illinois chair lost to US Representative Robin Kelly earlier this month.

For the first year or so of Governor JB Pritzker’s administration leading up to the beginning of the pandemic, his polling wasn’t exactly horrible, but it was still pretty darned underwhelming. But after some spectacular, crisis-induced polling-spikes last year, the governor has seemingly come back down to Earth.

Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch gave his standard reply to a question about redistricting reform last week when queried at the Chicago Economic Club, saying different people have different opinions about what a “fair map” actually is. But then the new House Speaker leaned a bit harder into the concept of protecting minority rights when redrawing the new legislative district maps than I’ve heard him do in the past.