AP
Make no mistake: Eliminating Republican competitors for elective workplace was all the time the Democratic Occasion’s endgame.
The writing was on the wall. Hell, it could as nicely have been plastered on billboards up and down I-90.
“We should win the redistricting warfare,” New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney bluntly informed Politico Nov. 30, 2020, three days earlier than he was elected chairman of the highly effective Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee.
When Democratic powerbrokers in Albany emerged from their star chamber Sunday with new “honest and neutral” political maps that resemble a snakes and ladders sport, the “warfare” plan got here into full focus: With one hand, level fingers at Republican-led states throughout the nation and scream “Gerrymandering!” whereas the opposite hand erases as many Republican-held congressional seats in New York as doable.
Democrats maintain 19 of the state’s 27 Home seats. With one district to be eradicated because of inhabitants loss, these maps they search to extend that overwhelming benefit to 22 of the remaining 26 districts, wiping out 4 of the eight GOP seats. These added New York congressional seats could possibly be pivotal to the Dems’ hope to carry onto energy in Washington as they head into midterm elections with a dragging economic system and a president with abysmal approval rankings.
To perform this, Dems have focused the lone New York Metropolis Republican voice in Congress, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, by snaking the strains northward from her Staten Island-based NY-11 district to incorporate the Brooklyn lefty-strongholds of Sundown Park, Park Slope, Gowanus and Pink Hook — a transfer that might dramatically change the district from a Donald Trump +10 in 2020 to a Biden +10.
They drew new strains to merge GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin’s NY-1 district into Andrew Garbarino’s NY-2, transferring NY-1 from a Trump +4 to a Biden +10, and get rid of GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney’s NY-22 altogether.
And to guard liberal Democratic Rep. Nadler, they “Jerry-mandered” his already-liberal district by slithering throughout the Higher West Facet and elements of Brooklyn, detouring via Prospect Heights.
It ought to shock nobody that New York’s redistricting course of has been a whole sham.
No, the New York State Unbiased Fee Redistricting Fee didn't fail in its mission to “rationally” redraw the district maps via “a good and readily clear course of.” It did precisely what it was imagined to do.
Does anybody imagine the fee’s Democratic appointees negotiated with their Republican counterparts in good religion, understanding full nicely that in the event that they compelled a stalemate between the 2 sides, management of the maps could be ceded to the state Legislature, the place Democrats maintain a supermajority in each homes? As a result of if you happen to do, I've a Mario Cuomo Bridge to promote you.
For all of the pearl-clutching that Republicans are stacking the deck in different states, suppressing voter rights and threatening the very foundations of our democracy, there’s been barely a mumbling phrase in regards to the blatant partisan chicanery occurring proper right here in Huge Blue New York.
The place is the outrage from the good-government goo-goos and the voter-rights warriors? The place is the Division of Justice, which is suing Texas over its redistricting course of? The place is the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina over their “unconstitutional” political maps?
However these are Republican-led states, and voters’ rights solely appear to matter when these voters are Democrats.
The method that may play out over the approaching weeks is solely predictable. Democrats will justify these dodgy district boundaries with arguments about how they “protect and strengthen communities of curiosity.” Then, after a lot handwringing, Democrats within the Meeting and state Senate will vote to undertake these monstrosities.
Finally, the newly drawn congressional maps will head to courtroom. There, the identical individuals who referred to as the redistricting course of a “warfare” should clarify to a federal Justice of the Peace how maps that obliterate districts the opposing get together represents on no account violate Article 6-A of the state Structure, which says that “districts shall not be drawn to discourage competitors or for the aim of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or different explicit candidates or political events.”
They may reject the notion that they ignored the need of the three million New Yorkers who voted for that very modification in a referendum that created the Unbiased Redistricting Fee.
I, for one, would like it if for as soon as they simply informed the decide the reality: They're a bunch of hypocrites. They don’t actually care about voter rights or gerrymandering. The redistricting course of was by no means about retaining the core of districts intact or consolidating “communities of curiosity.” It's about consolidating Democratic energy.
Joe Borelli is the minority chief of the New York Metropolis Council.
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