New York’s seemingly endless saga of redistricting might have finally reached a finale – at least for now. The congressional district map drawn by the Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) was not accepted by the Democrat-run state legislature. Instead, the legislature drafted their own version, which has passed in both chambers and appears to have the blessing of Governor Kathy Hochul (D).
Since we don’t always hate being the broken record of Suffolk County, we’ll give a brief recap.
After the 2020 Census, all states that are not at-large congressional districts were required to alter their congressional lines to reflect population shifts, increases, and decreases where applicable. New York lost one of its congressional districts after the Census due to population hemorrhaging. It now has twenty-six congressional districts, the fourth-largest amount in the nation.
Each state varies in their process for redistricting, with some being completely unique.
That’s where New York comes in. In 2014, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) championed the IRC to “end partisan gerrymandering” in New York. The plan was well-conceived when both parties shared power in Albany. The IRC has members appointed by both party leaders in Albany as well as independents. They draft proposals to the legislature for their consideration, with the legislature able to accept or reject the proposals.
This method works on paper when Albany is under split control, as it was in 2014. However, when Democrats took the Senate in 2018, that benefit of the doubt was retracted entirely, and 2020 was the first time we actually got to see the IRC go to work.
To no surprise, it failed miserably, rendering Cuomo’s vision a mere fantasy-league of what an actual independent commission should be.
The IRC drafted several maps that did not give one party a massive advantage over the other. In fact, according to various fairness metrics, the maps were more competitive than the previous decade’s map. The IRC has two attempts to appease the legislature with its proposals.
After two strikes, the legislature has full liberty to play in the sandbox.
Predictably, the Democratic-led legislature dismissed the maps and worked to create the most egregious Democratic gerrymander the nation saw from the 2020 redistricting cycle.
The map was ruled an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander by a judge from Steuben County, a solidly Republican county in western New York. The map was then nullified by the state’s highest court, tossing the redistricting to a special master.
The special master then drew the maps we had for the 2022 elections. It created six highly competitive seats and three others that, under certain circumstances, could be competitive. NY-01, represented by Nick LaLota (R-Amityville), was one of them.
Democrats suddenly became more vocal about the apparent “inequities” of the map after they suffered embarrassing losses in easily winnable districts that helped Republicans form a majority in the House of Representatives, despite a nationally disappointing year. Now realizing that their own path to 218 seats in the lower chamber runs squarely through the Empire State, Albany Democrats quickly got on the case.
They stacked the Court of Appeals by denying Hochul’s pick in Hector LaSalle a Senate floor vote, a historic rebuke of the modern judicial appointment system in the state. LaSalle was eventually rejected by the Senate and a more liberal pick was confirmed to the Court.
Once in action, the Court ruled that the redistricting process must, according to the state constitution, be completed by the IRC, negating the map that produced some of the most competitive seats in the country, and handing the process down to the fantasy-league IRC.
At this point, it was just a formality for Democrats to bob and weave their way into another situation of total control. The IRC’s proposal last week made minimal changes to the map and gave two Upstate incumbents slight boosts, but not enough to guarantee them re-election: Pat Ryan (D, NY-18) and Marc Molinaro (R, NY-19).
House Democrats protested the draft by the IRC, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY-08) criticizing the map for shoring up a vulnerable Republican incumbent. Again, the “shoring up” was practically negligible, and was not delivered in a way that displayed favoritism. A vulnerable Democrat, Ryan, also slightly benefitted from the map.
Not to mention that Jeffries and company actually drew the longer straw since Syracuse Republican Brandon Williams (R, NY-22) got hit with a slightly bluer district in a seat that already voted for Biden.
But that wasn’t enough.
Granted, Albany Democrats played a smarter hand this time around by keeping a map that didn’t make drastic changes. Incumbents LaLota, Anthony D’Esposito (R, NY-04) of Nassau County, and Mike Lawler (R, NY-17) in Westchester County were spared from bombastic congressional lines. Lawler and D’Esposito will see competitive races in November, but LaLota’s NY-01 got marginally more Republican. Eastern Brookhaven precincts from Andrew Garbarino’s (R-Bayport) Second District were transferred to LaLota’s.
Also shoring up LaLota’s seat, but also shoring up Tom Suozzi’s (D-Glen Cove) NY-03 is the transfer of western Huntington precincts from NY-01 to NY-03. Areas like Lloyd Harbor, Cold Spring Harbor, and Huntington Station now belong to Suozzi, giving LaLota a better picture for November.
Suozzi and Ryan are the only incumbent Democrats in competitive districts who benefitted from the map. Suozzi was already seen as the favorite to retain his old district, but now more so in a presidential year in a seat that went from Biden +8 to Biden +11.
Pat Ryan’s seat gets slightly more Democratic by shuffling some parts of blue-leaning Ulster County, but he’ll still be a top Republican target this autumn. Marc Molinaro’s district now includes less of suburban Cortland County and more of Rensselaer and Otsego counties, giving him a slight boost but not enough to insure him of an upset.
Brandon Williams is still the big loser in the equation, with more of Cortland County and less of Oneida County, his district now would have gone for Biden by 11.6 points.
Overall, the changes are minimal and Democrats could possibly net one seat based on redraws alone. We could argue that Democrats intentionally overplayed their hand last year to get as much leverage as possible without being totally shut out, but the changes they received this week are so minimal, it’s hard to put too much stock into that.
But above arguing why it happened, it’s important to point out their hypocrisy when we align their stances on other initiatives concerning the electoral process in New York.
Firstly, Jeffries will criticize any map that doesn’t maximize his party’s chances of winning as many seats as possible in November. This isn’t disingenuous, as that’s basically his top job as his party leader. But this situation is more than just winning seats: Jeffries wants the Speaker’s gavel, and his path to that chair runs through New York.
With all the talk of “voters’ rights” and “accessibility” and “protecting democracy,” Democrats seem intensely hung up on their national prospects by trying to swing just two or three seats in one state that, realistically, they should not have problems in, and by reconfiguring the map, out of all possible reasons. If they really wanted to wage a campaign on democracy and communicating to all voters, why didn’t they just compete with the hand they were dealt in 2022 and put their stake in the large number of swing district Democrats who should, by and large, be able to be their party’s standard bearers going forward? If Democrats overperformed last year in purple and red districts, they shouldn’t have problems in an at least neutral political environment.
Asserting that their prospects of taking over the House hinge on a map redraw is disingenuous to voters across the nation, just as it is to voters in New York.
Furthermore, Democrats in New York just scheduled off-year local elections to coincide with even-numbered year elections, citing voter fatigue, apathy, and high administrative costs as their reasons.
Firstly, the millions of dollars required to win this lawsuit should render their argument completely hypocritical. They also risked spending even more money if another judge ruled the map unconstitutional and the Court of Appeals agreed.
Secondly, voters have been in limbo for months about their congressional representatives. Democrats stymied the process last year with their gerrymander, which forced a late primary for congressional races after the statewide ones in June. Democrats ran that risk again, nullifying their stance on fighting voter fatigue.
Finally, Democrats are not for the “little guy” having their say based on the measure they’re trying to pass regarding redistricting. Since the lawsuit that overturned their 2021 gerrymander was initiated by a judge from a Republican county, the proposed measure stipulates that challenges against the maps can only be brought from Albany, Erie, New York, or Westchester counties. These are some of the bluest counties in the state that are the least likely to voice any resistance to the maps.
This is completely abhorrent and makes Democrats more disingenuous than they would have been had they just walked away with an uncontroversial map.
All residents should be accurately represented, as Democrats pontificate. Why, then, can residents of most counties cannot be legally represented against a map that might go against their interests? Why, then, are millions of New York residents excluded from the legal process regarding their congressional representation? Why, then, do Democrats get to condescendingly postulate to the public about how transparent they are when it comes to running elections?
We can wipe our brows now that redistricting seems over and we walked away with a competitive map. But we remain fully vigilant of how Democrats are likely to behave going forward to reshuffle a state so obviously moving away from their disastrous policy and politics.
