Democrats propose NY congressional map with slight tilt in their favor
A day after rejecting a congressional map proposed by a bipartisan redistricting commission, New York Democrats on Tuesday unveiled new district lines aimed at helping the party regain the majority in the House of Representatives this fall.
Yet their plan shows surprising restraint. Although a few swing districts would become more Democratic, lawmakers in Albany left the partisan makeup of 24 of the state’s 26 districts largely intact.
The middle-of-the-road approach reflected a desire to avoid another protracted court battle like the one in New York, which helped hand control of the House of Representatives to Republicans in 2022, while still leaving Democrats better in key districts were positioned.
The most notable changes would affect districts in central New York and Long Island. By shifting the districts three and four points to the left, the map would endanger Rep. Brandon Williams, a Republican from Syracuse, and make the seat of Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, safely Democratic in a recent special election.
The Democratic map would also undo changes proposed by the bipartisan committee, which would have made the Hudson Valley district represented by Republican Marc Molinaro more conservative. The new district would look more like his current one, where President Biden won 52 percent of the vote in 2020.
Lawmakers in Albany were expected to vote Tuesday to finalize the rules, just hours after their release. If passed, they would govern elections through 2030.
Democratic officials predicted the map would likely produce eighteen safe Democratic seats, six Republican seats and two tossups. When Mr. Suozzi is sworn in on Wednesday, the state will have 16 Democratic representatives and 10 Republicans.
A prominent analyst in the House of Representatives elections, Dave Wasserman, called the proposal a “mild/moderate gerrymander.”
Two redistricting experts disagreed. Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard law professor who studies the issue, called it “pretty much a model of neutrality.” Samuel Wang, the director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, said the map seemed reasonable and that his group would likely rate it an “A” or “B.”
Privately, Democrats with close ties to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader in the House of Representatives, sold the map as a targeted partisan improvement that they believed could withstand the kind of legal challenge that would bring down a more aggressive Democratic gerrymander in 2022 .
“At this point, clarity of lines becomes more important than perfection,” said Steve Israel, a former New York congressman who once ran the Democratic House campaign. “The map may be imperfect for Democrats, but it gives them a good foundation to win back the House of Representatives.”
Mr Jeffries, who exercised great influence over the map-making process, would be in a position to become Speaker of the House of Representatives if his party were to take control. He declined to comment.
Other Democrats, however, called the outcome a major disappointment, especially after the party spent nearly two years reshaping the state’s highest court and fighting for justices for the chance to redo the court’s current lines.
“It’s hard not to look at these proposed maps and think, what was the point of all this?” said Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic consultant who works on House races in New York.
He pointed to Republican-led states across the country that have implemented aggressive gerrymanders with little regard for public opinion.
“When we’re in the same position, we struggle with it,” Mr. Roth Smith said. “It is a shame.”
Republicans, who had loudly warned that they would sue to stop any map that was too partisan, privately offered an assessment similar to Mr. Roth Smith’s. Although no final decisions had been made, two senior Republicans involved in the process indicated it was unlikely the party would file a lawsuit after seeing the new rules.
The New York Constitution prohibits drawing district lines to benefit incumbents or a particular party.
Democrats argued that any changes they proposed Tuesday were either approved by the bipartisan redistricting commission or could be explained by efforts to reunite counties or demographic groups currently divided among existing districts.
Still, there was little doubt about which party the card would benefit.
By proposing lines that would extend Syracuse County further south to pick up Cortland, a Democratic city, the Legislature’s map would change the district from one that Mr. Biden won by 7.6 percentage points to a district he would have won by 11.6 percentage points. Mr. Williams, the first-term Republican representing the district, won by less than one point in 2022.
After Democrats spent $15 million this month to elect Mr. Suozzi and flip the state’s Third District, the new rules would likely mean spending far less money and energy to reelect him this fall. The district would lose Massapequa, a Republican stronghold in Long Island’s Nassau County, in exchange for more moderate North Shore communities in Suffolk County, turning Biden’s eight-point lead in the district into a nearly 11-point lead.
Molinaro’s district is unlikely to be much easier for Democrats, but the proposed outlines leave room open for their candidate, Josh Riley, who spent two years campaigning and raising large sums of money. The committee’s proposed lines were so much less favorable to Mr. Riley that he had considered running for the Syracuse seat, according to Democrats familiar with his thinking.
Democrats left two other Republican-held swing districts, Anthony D’Esposito’s 4th District and Mike Lawler’s 17th District, virtually untouched. Democratic challengers there were disappointed, but party leaders said they were already confident in their chances of flipping both seats, where voters sided with Biden by double digits in a presidential election year.
“Today, the residents of the 17th District woke up to the only news that matters: they are still represented by an anti-choice enabler of MAGA extremism,” Mondaire Jones, Mr. Lawler’s Democratic challenger, added. adding that he is “confident that the voters of this district will wholeheartedly reject Mr. Lawler.
Democrats declined to meaningfully improve the Hudson Valley district of Rep. Pat Ryan, an endangered Democrat, or make another effort to turn Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ conservative Staten Island seat into a Democratic stepping stone.
Justin Brannan, a member of the New York City Council who is reportedly exploring a possible run for Ms. Malliotakis’ seat, did little to hide his feelings about the new rules. “If the Republicans have the pen, they’ll stab us in the neck,” he said wrote on X.
Elsewhere in New York City, Democrats’ map would largely copy the committee’s proposed changes that have little partisan impact but appeared designed to benefit some incumbents.
In one prominent case, Mr. Jeffries’ apartment would be moved back to his Brooklyn neighborhood.
In another closely scrutinized change, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester, is poised to pick up Co-Op City, a large black community in the Bronx that he lost when the new lines opened in 2022 were drawn. Bowman and Mr. Jeffries had argued that the removal of Co-Op City had divided a community of interest and demoted the black vote in Mr. Bowman’s 16th District.
Mr. Bowman’s allies were ready Tuesday to claim it as a victory as he faces a bitter primary battle against Westchester County Executive George Latimer. But it was not immediately clear that the change would be enough to meaningfully tilt the primary race in either direction, as Mr. Bowman would lose largely African-American parts of Wakefield in the Bronx.