The Illinois House of Representatives held their official inauguration Wednesday afternoon at the University of Illinois Springfield campus.
Both multi-term Republican representatives for the area have two takes on their upcoming term.
Randy Frese of Paloma will be over the new 99th District which covers the northern half of Morgan County. Frese says he has some new territory to get familiar with: “I tell you what, I’m looking forward to serving a new district, and getting to know more of the people in that district, and finding out even more of what their needs are, and bringing those needs to the General Assembly to see what we can do in that respect. I’m looking forward to meeting a whole bunch of new people who are coming into the General Assembly. There is quite a change-over and certainly new leadership on the Republican side. I’m looking forward to see how all of that works together and weaves together. Hopefully, we will have a nice, smooth General Assembly for our session that is starting on [Thursday].”
C.D. Davidsmeyer of Jacksonville keeps familiar territory in the new 100th District that draws him further south, south of the City of Jacksonville. Davidsmeyer says the new session is an opportunity for the GOP to head in a new direction: “I think the new session is an opportunity for a new direction for Republicans. We are going to have a new leader, a new leadership team, a lot of new members and on the other side they are going to have a lot of new members, as well. I’m hoping that they are coming in with open minds and have a willingness to make Illinois better.”
Davidsmeyer hopes that there will be some bipartisanship for things to really work in this new General Assembly: “We need to make sure that we can come together and do some just normal, common sense things and not extremes, but things that need to be done for the state.”
Frese is now in his fifth term in the Illinois House after he was appointed to replace fellow Quincy Republican Jil Tracy who moved to the Illinois Senate. Davidsmeyer is also in his fifth elected term. Davidsmeyer replaced Jim Watson in 2012 when Watson resigned from office to take a job as the Executive Director of the Illinois Petroleum Council, the state affiliate of the American Petroleum Institute.