That wouldn’t work. While you’d have legit Democrats in the GOP districts, the “Republicans” you’d have in Dem districts, especially no-mans’ land areas, would be leftist Demonrat puppets
Some of what you cite did go go but it was dealt with. But this is not Ohio politics. Explain to me if that didn’t work how we had beside governors Chicago city Republican Aldermen,Cook county Sheriffs, states attorneys and county board president along with Chicago area state senators as well as President Reagan got elected.
How about sticking to stuff going on in Lucas and Hamilton counties in Ohio instead if shooting your mouth about an area you claim you know but don’t.
My GGG-grandfather was the son-in-law of one of IL’s Founding Fathers who drew up the state constitution at Kaskaskia 200 years ago. I’m not from Ohio (or the Toledo or Cincinnati areas as you inferred), so I don’t know where you got that from. I am from Tennessee (where my aforementioned GGG-grandfather was an early settler and fought under Andrew Jackson in the Creek Campaign in Alabama before he moved to the IL Country).
In any event, I’m fairly close to key (Chicago) IL FReepers and discuss IL politics with them quite often, so I do know something about the state. Chicago & Cook County Republicanism is at its weakest point now, and continues to shrivel (and, sadly, that cancer has spread out to formerly heavily Republican suburban counties, notably Du Page & Lake).
Last I checked, there was only ONE Republican out of 50 on the Chicago Board of Alderman. The last GOP Governor to hail from Chicago was Jim Thompson, and he failed to carry Cook County in his last two terms. The last GOP States Attorney for Cook County was Jack O’Malley, who last won in 1992. He was the last Republican to get higher than 27% of the vote since. The last GOP Cook County Sheriff elected in 50 years was James O’Grady in 1986 for a single term. No Republican has gotten above 29% since (including O’Grady’s reelection campaign in 1990, when he got just 28%). Since 1954, only on one occasion, in 1966, has a Republican won the County Board Presidency, that being Dick Ogilvie, who was elected Governor 2 years later and ended up an utter fiasco in imposing an income tax, killing his political career and Presidential ambitions in one fell swoop. Not to mention the last GOP Chicago Mayor was the mobbed-up Big Bill Thompson, last elected in 1929, hardly someone to crow about.
Add to that now there are zero Republicans from Cook County in Congress, and although there are 3 GOP State Senators, they only take in a fraction of the outskirts of the county. There’s a paltry 2 GOP House members, also both of whom are on the extreme outskirts of the county overlapping into the adjacent counties. President Reagan never carried Cook County in either 1980 or 1984, and the last Republican to do so was Nixon in 1972, if only because McGovern was too extreme to stomach (and by today’s standards, he’s well to the right of Hillary & Zero).
No, indeed, the Republican strength of Cook County & Chicago you recall was weak at best and fleeting (with the last breath of strength coming to an end in the 1970s), and now is non-existent. Corruption there is an epidemic and what few Republicans remaining there often have been assimilated into the hive known as the Combine, and it’s not local to just Chicago.
You can point out where I’m wrong.