US House Redistricting: New York

[Torie]

That's Crowley's district, Torie. If he gets challenged there, it's from the Bronx. It's not as if you're getting Crowley a majority white seat anyhow.
If a court draws the lines, it goes by legislative intent. That means it will view and treat the 12th as a protected district... even though it's not majority Hispanic, by the way. The 9th, not protected, in between everything, barely more contiguous than the outrageous 12th, doesn't stand a chance in that setting.

Actually, the new NY-06 is much like the old NY-12.  Just its number has changed. Moreover, even if it wasn't essentially the same CD (and it is essentially the same, just adjusted to get the Hispanic VAP up), the law is clear that one minority district can be canned, if another is created.  It is just a numbers game. I learned that from that guy lecturing to the redistricting commission in AZ about the voting rights act. Below is a map of the old NY-12 and new NY-06. Crowley's CD was chopped to bits.  But there is an open seat for him as it were in NY-11 if he can win the primary.

The tan area was in the old NY-12. The "N" areas are added to it, and the "L" areas were cut from it. It didn't change much.  Lewis I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.

[Torie]

Muon2, that is one ugly map!

I doubt a court would ever draw that. Would it change your mind as to what a court might do, if you were aware that the current NY-12, which elects an Hispanic as it is (Velaquez), is only 46.8% Hispanic, and as redrawn it is bumped up to 52.7% Hispanic?  It could be made higher by poaching some Hispanics from NY-15, which is 64.8% Hispanic (the two CD's would trade some precincts), but I doubt a court will do that. I wouldn't as the judge. Hispanics were able to elect a "candidate of their choice" at only 46.8%, so a fortiori they will be able to do so with 52.7% VAP.  My NY-06 is also 15.4% Asian, who also vote lightly in this area, which helps push the Hispanic percentage who actually vote up.  Blacks and whites only make up 30% of the VAP. It is not like Texas, where there is an Anglo/Hispanic competition, with next to no other players in much of Texas, and where the Anglos just don't vote for Hispanics unless they are Pubbies.    NYC by contrast is much more of a Dem machine operation, where the power brokers have a lot to say about who gets nominated. I assume all of the above was why Velaquez was nominated and won the Dem primary in the first instance.

Hopefully a judge is not going to be influenced by politics, and just follow the VRA, and try to connect communities of interest in reasonably compact districts that follow where possible appropriate jurisdictional and geographic boundaries. I think my CD boundaries try faithfully to do that. I gave it a lot of thought. I may have made some errors of course. I don't claim to intimately know the Big Apple, but I think I know it reasonably well.

Make sense?

[Torie]

OK muon2, but I suspect the NY state judges in 2001 with their map didn't go down that road, although there have been court cases since of course.  I  am quite sure the CD I drew is legal from a VRA standpoint. There is no requirement to create an erose mess at these percentages. In any event, if it needs to be higher for whatever reason, the fix is to swap precincts between NY-15 and NY-06 as I mentioned above.  That is a relatively non erose and community of interest way to do it.  I bet however the Hispanics won't be pushing to do that, and I doubt Velaquez wants a lot of strange new territory anyway, unless perhaps from next door NY-15.

[Torie]

OK muon2, but I suspect the NY state judges in 2001 with their map didn't go down that road, although there have been court cases since of course.  I  am quite sure the CD I drew is legal from a VRA standpoint. There is no requirement to create an erose mess at these percentages. In any event, if it needs to be higher for whatever reason, the fix is to swap precincts between NY-15 and NY-06 as I mentioned above.  That is a relatively non erose and community of interest way to do it.  I bet however the Hispanics won't be pushing to do that, and I doubt Velaquez wants a lot of strange new territory anyway, unless perhaps from next door NY-15.

But, strange territory is exactly what you've given Velazquez. I don't think your CD-06 has any of her current district. I do think that what she wants will matter a lot to the national Latino groups. That's why much of my CD-12 is from her current district, as bad as that shape is.

No per the map I drew, it has almost all of her old territory. Only its CD number changed!  Please look at the map I drew for Lewis making this very point. Thanks.

[Torie]

Yikes!  I thought that was Crowley's CD!  LOL.  My oh my.  OK, thanks muon2.  CD-09 is going to have to cross the border into Queens alas to pick up whites instead of Hispanics north of Broadway.  Man, I didn't realize there were that many Hispanics around. In fact there are so many, that the issue becomes whether to create two solid Hispanic CD's, or one solid and two more marginal perhaps. I see the fix.  It will mess up the map a bit, but not too much. The existing CD's are such a mess that it just got me confused. I thought that when I created a majority Hispanic CD by just giggling the lines a bit, and having looked at the existing Hispanic percentages in Velaquez's CD, that it must have been hers. The percentages just "fit" to well. My bad.

So yes, I did have Crowley and Velaquez swap CD's literally. That dog won't hunt. In any event, Crowley is going to end up with a very Hispanic CD after fixing generating the Velaquez CD with the Brooklyn-Queens border bisecting so that it has a sliver in Queens and a sliver in Kings, and then go and pick up the Hispanics near LaQuardia (sp) airport in Queens (that portion will be new to her).  NYC is segregation city isn't it?

[Torie]

So yes, I did have Crowley and Velaquez swap CD's literally.

Lol, nothing of the kind. You were just setting up Velazquez a primary against a worthless weak incumbent... in a district drawn so that she might conceivably lose. The incumbent being Maloney.

You don't need 60% or even over 50% Hispanic in New York city by the way... provided that the remainder is atomized. (Except in trying to prove that one more district than the state is willing to draw must be drawn, but we're talking about either a court-drawn or a compromise map here.) A 45% Hispanic, 20% White, 15% Asian, 15% Black seat is an utterly safe Hispanic seat.

The bottom line is this, Torie. Forget this first draft existed. Go back to the drawing board. Start with bringing the minority-held districts up to population without changing their composition far to the adverse. Then do 4 Long Island seats, without bringing King's share down, with McCarthy's extending into New York City. Then draw what you have to from what's left. That's what a court would actually feel it had little choice but to do.

We shall see. I have a draft of the Velaquez CD up to 56% Hispanic or so (it still needs some work on the Bradlee utility is slow on my mac as opposed to a PC for some reason, so it take more time). It does not affect the balance of my map much. It just makes things more erose. I don't understand your McCarthy point at all. What does that have to do with Hispanic CD's?  I will have to study Muon2's map some more. I find his light maps hard to read. Muon2 why can't you make them brighter? Take screen shots damn it! Do it my way. Please!

[Torie]

It has nothing to do with Hispanic districts, but it has everything to do with simulating a reasonably likely outcome. (I'm not saying you absolutely can't move any of Nassau into Meeks' district, which is why I said to draw the minority seats first. But use as little as you feel possible and then excise another five precincts.)

I don't understand your few precincts comment. Yes, Meeks' CD must go into Nassau to get to 50% black VAP.  The alternative to getting it to 50% creates a ludicrous mess. Why would a court do that?  One problem is that the blacks and Hispanics are in competition for some precincts. To get the Hispanic percentage up in the Velaquez seat, the black percentage in NY-10 needs to go down.  Another problem is that it appears that at least two snakes, and maybe three will be needed to link disparate minority neighborhoods, while allowing NY-13 to get at a bunch of white and Asian voters that are in sort of an island in the middle of Queens, forcing the Velaquez CD to cut north to its west, rather than the more natural route to its east.  I am working on that, but it may be unavoidable.

[Torie]

I have some trouble understanding some of the content of your posts, Lewis. Story. Maybe it is a sign of incipient senile dementia. If your comments are all about my taking precincts out of Nassau to put in the Meeks CD, yes, they have significant black percentages, and are right next to the CD, and are not snakes at all. The snakes to which I was referring involve the shape of the Velaquez CD potentially to get its Hispanic percentage up.  I am seeing if there is a way to minimize them some more.

I should look again at Muon2's map again, to see what he did, but it is more fun to do my own work, and then see if Muon2 had some insight that I missed that makes sense to me (I am amazed that he said he created a third 50% Hispanic CD; I am not near that at all with the Crowley CD at present).

In any event, my effort is solely based on what I think a court might do that is trying to be fair and follow the law, and so forth. You might think my judgment sucks, but such is life. More detailed comments as to specific flaws would in any event be more helpful.

I agree that appending Akron to Cleveland is probably not legally necessary, but that is not for certain, and appending it eliminates a legal risk, albeit perhaps not a huge one. I so posted elsewhere.

[Torie]

Oh my!  Moving right along, why don't you guys pick apart this map. I did some "minor" surgery. LOL. One things leads to another thing, which leads to another thing, and then an insight, and on and on it goes.  Remember, we are talking about a court drawn map here. Racial gerrymandering is just so much fun. But this puppy I think is really coming together - finally!  

Please be specific as to the flaws. Thanks. Yes, I know, NY-05 goes into Nassau. Lewis doesn't like it. I do. We shall just agree to disagree as to what a court will do there. What are the reasonable alternatives? None in my judgement. I did get rid of that one little spike jutting off to the NE, just to annoy Lewis, taking away one of his silly little bullets that he thinks is made of silver. I love when that happens!  

If this map is now the very embodiment of perfection, I think I may give it to the Pubbies to "help" them bargain with the Dems. Why not?  Life is beautiful.

Yes, NY-14 could probably be made majority Hispanic, if some court wants to screw the blacks. I doubt that will happen. But it is easy to do. Just switch out the blacks for the Hispanics in the Bronx. It might not quite get there, but it should be fairly close.

[Torie]

OK. Thanks Muon2 for your comments.

If I were a judge, I would disregard incumbents' little problems. She can move. There is some merit where possible and reasonable for constituents staying together rather than being moved around every ten years, but I don't feel that way about where incumbents live. Heck in NY you don't even need to live in the CD to represent it. Her existing CD is a mess, and may well have been drawn that way because ten years ago that was the only way to get the Hispanic percentage as high as it was. If I were a judge I would have no interest in maintaining that excrescence. (Heck it even wanders into Park Slope (probably as a population equalizer), which isn't even Hispanic, after picking up maybe 50,000 Hispanics next to the docks who are an isolated Hispanic island, and you have to wade through a ton of whites to get there.  No thanks; there are plenty of Hispanics elsewhere for her.)

The guts of her CD  along the Brooklyn/Queens line have been maintained. It is just the a bunch of white precincts that were excised along with that wandering tail that goes down to the docks picking up white Brooklyn Heights and  Park Slope en route, plus a few Hispanic precincts next to NY-10 that were put in NY-10 to up the black percentage a bit (because NY-11 already has enough Hispanics). As to the latter, it was a balancing test between NY-10 and NY-11. That is my reasoning anyway.

I also think it unwise to dump a black incumbent for an Hispanic, which may or may not happen if you get the Hispanic percentage that high in NY-14. On that one however, I would listen to what the blacks and Hispanics have to say. It can go either way. The Pubbies certainly will not care much, although I suspect they would prefer to deal with Rangel than most of the minority congresspersons around in New York. He is a pretty savvy and realistic guy - and certainly genial. Perhaps a compromise is to pick up some of each in the Bronx, which would get rid of that little blue NY-16 indentation there jutting to the west at the NW corner, that is packed with Hispanics.

By the way, the Dem PVI as it happened went way down now in NY-06 (I corrected my matrix chart which had some errors), and given last night (all those Orthodox Jewish precincts in current NY-09 Queens), and if the Pubbies are able someday to make an effective play for Asians, that CD might potentially be put in play at some point.

[Torie]

Unfortunately my old laptop is sufficiently on the fritz that it doesn't seem to be able to handle large states in the App anymore without taking about eight years to fill in each precinct, but: given that the black population in Brooklyn goes to the water on the SE side but not on any other side, why wouldn't a court just bring the Brooklyn whites up the west side of the black districts, combining the Orthodox Jews with Park Slope, Williamsburg, etc?

Because NY-10 needs them (i.e. Williamsburg) to keep its black percentage up. There is a minority percentage of blacks there. The white CD in Brooklyn could potentially take Park Slope, but it really fits better with the Manhattan CD. There are direct subway lines and a bridge, and the place is more cosmopolitan. Heck, Lunar lived there.  It also would force NY-13 to jut more into Queens which creates its own problems, although NY-07 could move farther up the Hudson River, and force NY-14 to take more of the Bronx I suppose. But then where does NY-16 go?  It might have to cross into Queens, and that dog won't hunt. It was really a very tricky map to draw, with very tight constraints. There are walls everywhere as it were - ethnic walls, and water walls, and state line walls.

[Torie]

OK, I jiggled stuff around a bit, and shoved up the Hispanic percentage in NY-14 by a couple of percent, so that it is now about a point higher than it is in the existing CD. The black percentage goes up 6 points.  The lines look a bit better too. NY-07 finally gets to the southern edge of Columbia University. I think I will go with this fix.

[Torie]

Be that as it

OK. Thanks Muon2 for your comments.

If I were a judge, I would disregard incumbents' little problems. She can move. There is some merit where possible and reasonable for constituents staying together rather than being moved around every ten years, but I don't feel that way about where incumbents live.

Well, yeah. And this hispanic-opportunity district is based around Williamsburg and the Lower East Side. You will have to start from scratch and do the minority-held districts first if you want to be able to present a plan good enough to serve as a starting point for discussion.
You also need to get your intentions clear - do you want to simulate what is most likely to happen, or do you want to prove that Turner's district could conceivably survive? Your current maps would be good enough, minor corrections aside, to serve the second purpose - but then it hardly needed proving; I would have happily agreed to that immediately.

Yes, this exercise is all about guessing what a reasonable non partisan court would do. I understand that you think my efforts are incompetent. No problem. We will just have to disagree with what a court might reasonably do.  You can put up your own map.

I did do the minority CD's first actually. It was just that I got mixed up with the Velaquez CD,thinking it was the Crowley CD because its Hispanic percentage was so low.  I just screwed up. Stuff happens. It didn't help that the salient that you like so much is only about 30% Hispanic overall, which is in part why the Hispanic percentage in the CD was so low.  I discussed with Muon2 why I didn't go down to the Hispanic island next to the docks.  

As to the balance, below is what you are talking about. There are maybe 20,000 majority Hispanics to pick up in Manhattan. I don't think a court will go there, hopping the East River to pick up these 5 or 6 precincts, particularly since it needs to cut through a few rather low percentage Hispanic precincts.

As to the balance, below is what you are talking about. Maybe 30,000 Hispanics are involved in the precincts that are majority Hispanic. So this is not going to upset any apple cart. However, I do see a few very heavy Hispanic precincts to pick up in Williamsburg that I missed because I was drawing the black CD, and went through there to pick up a couple of precincts with a substantial black precentage (15%-20% or so), and was not focusing on the Hispanic percentages not realizing that it was an existing "Hispanic" CD. So I will correct that. Thank you for your comments Lewis.

[Torie]

I just screwed up. 

Exactly.
Now you're scurrying about like a cat in a litterbox trying to not have to fix it.

LOL. I thought I did,  but missed a few precincts, because I was focused on blacks. Thank you for pointing that out.  Have a great day Lewis.

Actually, an idea occurs to me. I am going to see if I can find some Pubbie NYC politician to look at my map when I finally get it right, and see what he or she thinks about it from the standpoint of what a court might do. 

At the rate we're going, you might soon have me on ignore.

[Torie]

The exercise in racial gerrymandering has reached its max. The clockwise turn cannot go any further. Every white precinct in Manhattan has been stripped from NY-14, and that to me is a hard wall. NY-14 can't be stripped any further. To do more, would require crossing into Manhattan from Queens to grab six precincts, sucking up 4 white ones on the way, and so forth, that I don't think any court would do. White cosmopolitan Park Slope is bisected between two black CD's, but such is life. That is the reality of geography and racial gerrymandering. None of the partisan numbers change much. The Hispanic percentages in NY-11 and NY-14 do go up some more, due to emphasizing drawing lines based on racial considerations. Sad, but that is the world in which we live. I hate it!

I will put up the numbers later.

[Torie]

What does DRA mean?  I am confused as to what point you are making regarding the two black Brooklyn CD's. I am also having trouble understanding your points about what is currently NY-12. but  I take it that you don't think a court will take what is currently NY-12 into the Bronx.  Is that correct?  If so, why?  If NY-12 does not go into the Bronx, while it can be made a bit over 50% Hispanic, it can't get anywhere near the 61% that I have it now. And then the issue is where does the current NY-09 go.  Does it just have a sliver to get it into Queens? By the way, Park Slope is about 7% black or so. There are no blacks in the current NY-09 land bridge, so you have a dilution issue. It also crosses borough lines. Everything of course is a balancing test.

I just can't image that a court will draw Muon2's erose mess, putting white communities together that have nothing in common, and long slivers everywhere. It really is quite disgusting. But of course it is all speculation. What I drew is what I would do a judge based on what I now know. But obviously, I don't know everything! 

I kind of hope that the parties deadlock, so that we can find out what a court does to settle our little spats. That would be just grand. I tried to find the map the court drew 10 years ago, based on which the parties cut their own deal to prop up incumbents, but was unable to find anything on the net. Pity that.

[Torie]

Muon2 thinks Hispanic CD's ideally should be 65% Hispanic.  

When it comes to redistricting, there is no statutory guidance or "legislative intent" other than the VRA.  61% is certainly not packing for an Hispanic CD with low voter turnout and non citizens, particularly if it is not really possible to create another Hispanic CD. Whether a court does it is another matter (Muon2 thinks the Hispanics will be pushing for a high percentage but who knows?), but it is certainly legal in my opinion. My white Brooklyn CD certainly does combine communities of interest, and that counts - even for whites. To me it is much more natural to dump the Carolyn Maloney seat (current NY-04).

However, if I am representing the Pubbies in the legislature, and you the Dems, one thing that I do know. We will get a court drawn map! We don't seem to agree on much at all, and just "coincidentally" what you think will happen is a Dem wet dream, and what I think will happen is a quite a Pubbie one  (although maybe not quite as much wet as yours is for the Dems).  So we won't be able to agree on a map given our totally disparate views of the default option, and thus our "negotiation" will be very short, before we just shake hands, and file our lawsuits, and so forth.    

[Torie]

The court Texas map was drawn by a Dem judge who had improper contacts with Dem politicians, and the map was dumped and he was removed from the case.  I don't know the "principles" to which you refer that a court "should" follow, but what I think I know is that a fair court will have no interest in maintaining some bipartisan incumbent protection erose  gerrymandered monster. That map should be tossed into the garbage. I certainly hope it is. The principles of which I am aware are compactness, respect for communities of interest and jurisdictional boundaries, and that sort of thing, except to the extent the VRA forces a violation of those principles.

You don't seriously think the Pubs will agree to your map do you at this point? That dog just isn't going to hunt. The Pubs would be nutter to agree to tossing their new CD in Brooklyn into the dust bin without a fight. We shall see what happens. If the Dems think like you, I would be amazed if this doesn't go to court.

Oh, and Muon2 tossed out the 65% number in the context of NYC redistricting - not Texas redistricting. Do you think the turnout figures for Hispanics in NYC are that much higher than in Texas? Sure they might be some, but by how much? There are a lot of new Hispanics who are not Puerto Rican in the neighborhood.

[Torie]

Ya, I got the two dumb blonds mixed up there. My bad! 

[Torie]

My version was not intended to be what a court would draw, but rather what a court would accept. It was based in a June worldview which meant that NY-9 was on the chopping block, and would make an easy place for the two parties to come to agreement.

I assumed that the Brooklyn reps would largely want their own minority districts as is but with enough new pop to make them whole. As Lewis noted, I found that keeping the basic shape of the current CD-12 intact makes a formidable wall for the black districts, especially if CD-6 can't go far into Nassau. With my self-imposed constraints those four districts along with a much more GOP Staten Island CD pretty much wrote themselves.

Of course that was when it seemed in the GOP's interest to negotiate an end to NY-9 in exchange for much safer holdings for King and Grimm. In principle they could still do that, but they would need substantial control over the upstate map in exchange.

It will be hard to avoid a loss of a GOP seat upstate. It would have to be a rather hideous gerrymander really, and might still leave stuff pretty marginal for the Pubbies up there.  I would be surprised if that is the deal.  And given the big news of the Turner upset, to dump him when he has a natural CD, would cause a lot of Pubbies to be upset I would think. I would think a Pubbie representing a heavily Jewish district would help facilitate further GOP inroads among Jews in general over time. But politicians do do things which I find inexplicable I must admit.

[Torie]

Smug snake?  

[Torie]

While federal courts generally follow the "least change" rule, state courts do not is my understanding. And state courts generally handle this task unless you get that incredible saga that jimrtex described in Texas. I believe a state court drew the NY map in 2001.  It was not a least change map is my recollection - at all. No, it was a sensible map.  And then the legislature cut a deal and drew its monstrosity to protect incumbents. I think I  know what  a state judge would do with the existing map - kill it!  

As I said before, I hope a state judge does draw a map just like last time. That will be the only way to find out of course just whose cyrstal ball is more accurate. In any event, I'm happy with my map now, even if Lewis is not.

[Torie]

Yeah, so I arrive at something not too dissimilar in the parts that really matter, except I did it the hard way. A district for Turner in Southwest Brooklyn (and a little bit of Queens) does indeed make sense.
I'm not running the Queens-Brooklyn (now very much Queens) district up into the Bronx, though. Nosirree. And adding McCarthy's district to the stew is not necessary for VRA compliance, is disruptive to old districts/disregarding legislative intent, is not going to be popular with anybody, and - and this is a new argument - it doesn't even help the Republicans, either!

No, it doesn't really, but it's right. It hews nicely to jurisdictional lines and maximized compactness. It is the CD that should be tossed by a court in my opinion. Deal with it Lewis!

[Torie]

I just told you why Lewis. I understand that you don't agree. That is why we have courts damn it. 

[Torie]

That is why we have courts damn it.  

I thought that was just a make-work scheme to keep you and your kind off the streets?

  Man those wigs your barristers wear are expensive!