A redistricting surprise in New York: a card that plays few favorites
When the New York Supreme Court ordered the state to redraw its congressional map late last year, it was widely expected that the state's ruling Democrats would use the opportunity to aggressively reshape district boundaries to their advantage.
But on Thursday, a bipartisan state commission created to guide the redistricting process overwhelmingly approved one new proposed map that looks a lot like the current court-drawn map that helped Republicans gain seats in 2022.
The panel's 9-to-1 vote now imposes a politically and legally thorny choice on legislative leaders in Albany, who will have the final say on any plan.
They can approve the compromise, dashing the hopes of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and other powerful Democrats in Washington, or they can reject it and risk sending the entire process back to court by pushing for a more favorable alternative .
The answer could have far-reaching implications for the national battle for control of the House of Representatives this fall, with New York's rocking chairs alone being enough to tip the game.
The committee's map includes modest adjustments that would help Democrats flip one seat in Syracuse and would likely make a pair of vulnerable incumbents — one Democrat and one Republican — safer in the Hudson Valley.
But it doesn't touch the boundaries on Long Island or in Westchester County, both major suburban battlegrounds where Democratic campaigns have been looking for an edge, or on Staten Island, where the party has long coveted a right-leaning seat. Even subtle shifts in those areas could have made a handful of Republican seats virtually unwinnable for incumbents in November.
Commission leaders began selling the deal Thursday as a just conclusion to a muddled redistricting saga that has gripped New York's political world for two years.
“This vote is ultimately a victory for the committee process and for small D's democratic participation in New York State,” said Ken Jenkins, the committee's Democratic chairman.
Addressing potential critics in his own party, Mr Jenkins added that “any legal input we have requires compromise” to comply with the court's ruling.
It was unclear how Democratic leaders in the Legislature, which won't meet again until Feb. 26, would proceed. Under the state constitution and a court order, if lawmakers reject the plan they would take control of map-making themselves, claiming much greater latitude to draw lines as Democrats want.
But they are likely to face intense lobbying in the coming days from people close to Mr. Jeffries, the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, who represents a district in New York City and has spent a year criticizing the current boundaries as unfair and other partisan interests around the world. the political spectrum.
If the deal stands, it would immediately imperil Rep. Brandon Williams, a first-term Republican who won a Democratic-leaning seat in the Syracuse area in 2022 by less than one point. By adding the cities of Cortland and Auburn to the district, the proposed map would make the baseline nearly four points more Democratic.
It would mean good news for four other endangered Republican incumbents who had been bracing for career-ending changes. Those first term representatives – Mike Lawler in the northern suburbs of New York City; Anthony D'Esposito and Nick LaLota on Long Island; and Marc Molinaro in the Hudson Valley — still face tough reelections in districts that President Biden won by between 0.2 and 14 percentage points in 2020, but a shift to the left would have made the task virtually impossible in some cases.
Mr. Molinaro would actually benefit from the new lines, trading blue parts of Ulster County to Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat, in exchange for redder Orange County.
Privately, some Democratic operatives close to leaders in both places said they feared the Legislature had no choice but to accept a plan that had such broad support in committee.
All of this took place under the eyes of the courts and the threat that Republicans would sue to block any resolution deemed too partisan.
New Yorkers first voted to create the commission in 2014 as part of a series of changes to the state constitution intended to reduce partisan gerrymandering. But when the panel first met in 2022 to draw maps for the coming decade, it found itself deadlocked along party lines and failed to complete its work.
That failure set off a cascade of interconnected actions that spelled disaster for Democrats.
The Democratic Legislature took control of the process and approved a map that experts said would clearly favor the party's candidates. Republicans sued, and New York's highest court ultimately ruled that the map was an unconstitutional gerrymander.
A court-appointed special master eventually drew up a replacement map, and Republicans running on it flipped four seats in that fall's midterm elections, almost single-handedly gaining the majority in the House of Representatives.
Then, at Jeffries' urging, the Democratic House campaign arm filed a new lawsuit, arguing that the process should be restarted before the 2024 elections to give the commission — and ultimately the Legislature — another chance to do its job. complete.
In December, the state's highest court, changed by the appointment of a new judge, sided with Democrats and ordered the commission back to work drawing new maps for the June primaries.
Party leaders in New York and Washington had expected the body's five Democrats and five Republicans to again follow partisan lines.
The committee's Republican members began negotiations last month not to make any changes to the current map. But after weeks of private negotiations, they agreed to accede to some Democratic requests, in part to avoid a situation in which the Legislature again took control of the process and made more sweeping changes.
There were other, smaller changes to the map the committee proposed Thursday.
The panel decided not to intervene in a bitter Democratic primary battle between Rep. Jamaal Bowman, one of the House of Representatives' most outspoken progressives, and Westchester County Executive George Latimer. Mr Jenkins is a close ally of Mr Latimer and could have significantly improved his chances with new lines, but both sides said they were happy to remain unchanged.
The panel made other minor changes in New York City and Western New York, moving communities of interest that Democrats said should be moved from one district or another. However, none of the changes would likely have a meaningful partisan effect.