New York’s Gerrymander Gets Whacked A Democratic plan to pick up four House seats is voided by the courts.
When Albany passed a House reapportionment plan in February, we called it a jerrymander, since it forced Rep. Jerry Nadler’s New York City district to perform contortions worthy of Cirque du Soleil. Democrats drew that map intending to send four congressional Republicans into early political retirement.
But the Legislature was too obviously eager to take partisan advantage, and on Wednesday a majority on the state’s highest court blocked the gerrymander. Voters in 2014 amended New York’s constitution to hand redistricting to an independent commission, as well as to prohibit the drawing of lines for raw partisan ends. Albany thumbed its nose at voters the first chance it got.
The redistricting commission hit a stalemate and offered two competing plans. Then the Democratic Legislature, as Chief Judge Janet DiFiore explains, “responded by creating and enacting maps in a nontransparent manner controlled exclusively by the dominant political party.” The judicial majority says new lines will have to be drawn by a nonpartisan special master, overseen by a lower court. Primary elections on June 28 might have to be postponed.
What a mess Democrats in Albany made for themselves. President Trump won 38% of New Yorkers in 2020. Republicans now hold eight of its 27 House seats, or 30%. The Legislature’s map would have given the GOP an advantage in only four districts, or 15%. Maybe if Albany had been less greedy, it could have gotten away with something.
GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis is probably reveling in her improved shot at re-election. Under the Legislature’s plan, her Staten Island district would have swept up to include liberal Park Slope, Brooklyn. Executing that maneuver is what turned Mr. Nadler’s district into a drunken snake. Who knows how a special master will redo the map, but it will probably be better for Ms. Malliotakis.
The broader point is that this rebuke by New York’s top court, with every judge appointed by a Democratic Governor, puts the lie to the party’s holier-than-thou pose on redistricting. For years gerrymandering generally favored Democrats nationwide, and back then it was treated as a brute fact of political life. As soon as it looked as if Republicans might gain an edge, Democrats began calling it a danger to the republic. New York proves that was a charade all along.
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