2020 New York Redistricting

[David Hume]

None of this discussion really matters. Virtually every court determines this question through a partisan lens. I'm looking at the judges that sit on the New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in the State of New York). They will be the ultimate arbiters of the new maps. The Court is entirely made up of Democratic appointees (a 7-member Court, 6 Cuomo and 1 Hochul). On the other hand, the Chief Judge was once a Republican and another Judge refused the COVID vaccine. If Democrats want this map upheld, they'd certainly be wise to have a better response and counsel compared to what Ohio Republicans put up.

What about O'Connor from OHSC?

Four of the judges in NYCA were confirmed when the senate is under R control, and they are unlikely to be D partisan hacks.

[David Hume]

https://twitter.com/nydems/status/1758287925144703009?t=a2WI36TEdR3pZeiBJyuPrA&a...
Lol it's so dead.

This guy is slime, but he knows he's slime, and knows what he needs to do to keep people happy and himself in a job.

What a pathetic statement from someone who is killing fair maps.

Why should New York have to play by the rules when North Carolina and Texas can gerrymander to their heart’s desire?

because their constitution explicitly bans partisan gerrymander, while NC/TX did not.

[David Hume]

And if eliminating Lawler really takes a Biden >60% district, something is very, very wrong.

I think the answer is less "need" when it comes to Lawler, and rather "can so why not."

Now I'm personally fully under the impression we are getting something like this, though I will admit there isn't much evidence beyond Latimer's power and influence, which leads to it being more of an opinion right now. But it does show how Westchester is just that Democratic, One seat is D+20, one is D+30, and NY-18 is as blue as Ryan seems to want from the new proposal. And if you can force such a clear divide quite neatly, a divide that might just force Lawler to retire rather than tilt at the new windmill, more the better from the perspective of people like Jeffries.



Now why do I personally think something like this is coming? Cause it is totally in favor of the the two people various legislators favor right now - Jones and Latimer - and harms the chances of both Bowman and Lawler. Latimer gets a seat all to himself with Rye and covering his base in the White Liberal side of Westchester. The other 3 are in the Yonkers seat: Bowman in Yonkers, Jones in Sleepy Hollow with ties to Rockland, and Lawler in Rockland's Pearl River. The elimination of the ideological divide between the primary combatants with the sole focus on competency will make Bowman's situation that much more challenging, but for other legislators it will just be a chance to hurt progressives. Lawler meanwhile can't win versus a D+30 almost-majority-minority electorate.


The districts getting "partially" renumbered follows from this. There is continuity
with Rockland in 17 and southern Westchester in 16, but 16 is now facing outwards whereas 17 is now facing inwards and Yonkers. This is of course cause of whose running where right now, and where their residencies are.

One thing I never fully understand is why Reps can demand so much regarding how to draw districts from state legs. The vast majority of Reps are not that powerful, as compared to House leader and DCCC chair. If the House leadership want a maximal safe gerrymander, at the cost of some Reps, why would the state leg defer to the Reps?

In particular, Jefferies is from NY. If some state leg leaders want to get promoted to the Congress, green light from him is much more crucial than other NY Reps. 

[David Hume]

And if eliminating Lawler really takes a Biden >60% district, something is very, very wrong.

I think the answer is less "need" when it comes to Lawler, and rather "can so why not."

Now I'm personally fully under the impression we are getting something like this, though I will admit there isn't much evidence beyond Latimer's power and influence, which leads to it being more of an opinion right now. But it does show how Westchester is just that Democratic, One seat is D+20, one is D+30, and NY-18 is as blue as Ryan seems to want from the new proposal. And if you can force such a clear divide quite neatly, a divide that might just force Lawler to retire rather than tilt at the new windmill, more the better from the perspective of people like Jeffries.


SNIP

One thing I never fully understand is why Reps can demand so much regarding how to draw districts from state legs. The vast majority of Reps are not that powerful, as compared to House leader and DCCC chair. If the House leadership want a maximal safe gerrymander, at the cost of some Reps, why would the state leg defer to the Reps?

In particular, Jefferies is from NY. If some state leg leaders want to get promoted to the Congress, green light from him is much more crucial than other NY Reps.  

By Reps here do you mean state Representatives or individual Congressional Representatives?

Either way the answer is the same: relationships. Connections and allies are one whole facet of politics after all. In this case, the leaders of the party are far away, proverbially in the clouds. Everyone knows them, but nobody actually knows them usually. Meanwhile the state legislators who have the pen (since we are talking about situations where incumbents have demands) have by the necessity of the job cultivated relationships with other legislators and often their congressman. This forms a block of votes that needs to be won. That is especially the case here in NY where there is almost no margin of error, and there is no simultaneous legislative maps to please them in other ways. To get the votes to pass a plan, you have to listen to each group, and therefore the congressman. Double the case if the state has a district residency requirement. This can actually be seen on the commissions map: even though they seem to have set out with the idea of least change, you can spot slight shifts like where Jefferies wanted his house back in the district and Meng wanted Shea Stadium.

What's unusual here is that the leader with these desires is a long term NY politician with many connections, and enough sway to form a block of his own. Jefferies saying No last week likely just immediately killed the map for that reason. And like is said above, its likely to become a test of his own power and sway, how far can he push them in his direction before other concerns start to become relevant.

I mean Congressman.

I agree that the legs leaders who have the pen need allies so it is perfectly understandable that they draw seats for their friends. But the incumbent protection we are talking about seems more than that. I doubt how many Reps they know well enough such that they feel obliged to satisfy their demands. Moreover, they are doing a great favor for those Reps. I am not sure how much the Reps can give back to them.

I guess the dynamics might be, a Rep may have close friends/allies in state legs, likely in their districts. He made his demand clear to his allies. His allies would then ask legs leadership on his behalf. But I am not sure how much sway his allies have, and I think it varies case by case.  

[David Hume]

The case by case nature is yes, very key here. Some incumbents just have more sway and connection, especially if they are near leadership.

Maryland in 2010 is a good case of this. Some very long serving incumbents, everyone had ambitions of some kind, and also the party wanted to make MD-06 a Dem seat.  This led to the spiderweb map that sought to give most of the prominent actors like Ruppersberger, Sarbanes, and Hoyer their desired seats. But since everyone had demands, some just could not be accommodated. The most obvious case of this is Donna Edwards, who publicly wanted to keep her PG-Montgomery county district. But she got to congress by primarying out a previous state legislator, aligned with the reformist wing of the party, and had by far the shortest tenure if we consider Sarbanes to have inherited some of his fathers aura. She just didn't have the sway to win a fight against the other incumbents for parochial demands.

Is incumbent demands too hard to satisfy the main reason they didn't go 8-0 in 2010? Their map is so ugly that no judge would find it not an aggressive gerrymander. And if they think the constitution bans gerrymander, it will be strike down for sure. Moving from 7-1 to 8-0 would not change any thing.

[David Hume]

If they're not going to make any changes to NY-17 and Rockland really is a ticking time bomb due to the growing Orthodox population, it might make more sense to just fully shore up Lawler. Rockland, Orange, and Sullivan Counties put together are just slightly more than the population of one CD and they narrowly voted for Trump. Doing this would also shore up Pat Ryan and allow for a bluer seat to be drawn to get rid of Molinaro.

Another thing I was thinking about -- there is a lot of talk about what part of Brooklyn and/or Manhattan to put with Staten Island...but if Dems really want to go aggressive, couldn't they just split Staten Island? Put some of it with Brooklyn (connection via the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge) and some of it with Lower Manhattan (connection via the ferry).

The would have to nuke the 2% law to do that. This would be evidence for partisan motive for COA. I am not sure if the house want to risk that.

[David Hume]

If they're not going to make any changes to NY-17 and Rockland really is a ticking time bomb due to the growing Orthodox population, it might make more sense to just fully shore up Lawler. Rockland, Orange, and Sullivan Counties put together are just slightly more than the population of one CD and they narrowly voted for Trump. Doing this would also shore up Pat Ryan and allow for a bluer seat to be drawn to get rid of Molinaro.

Another thing I was thinking about -- there is a lot of talk about what part of Brooklyn and/or Manhattan to put with Staten Island...but if Dems really want to go aggressive, couldn't they just split Staten Island? Put some of it with Brooklyn (connection via the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge) and some of it with Lower Manhattan (connection via the ferry).

The would have to nuke the 2% law to do that. This would be evidence for partisan motive for COA. I am not sure if the house want to risk that.

This proposal already goes above 2% for the districts they change. They are de facto ignoring it.

R already said they won't sue this map. If they go more aggressive, they will get sued, and will lose for sure since they clearly violated the law.

[David Hume]

That moment when Atlas realizes that NY Dems care more about keeping incumbents happy and aren't obsessed with making the map blue.

Nah, I think everyone who was drawing maps here was acting under these assumptions - or at least I was - but still found many ways to make things bluer. The incumbents had their ideal districts radically transformed two years ago after all. They barely even touched NYC where the incumbents are. Like Jefferies clearly wanted the Barclays center on the IRC map but didn't get it on this map. If the Incumbents mattered in this regard, it was to just not give them several hundred thousand new constituents. Which in that way, the legislature's lack of care likely mattered more.

Even Jeffries praised the new map, which only has marginal change to the commission map, which he criticized. Given all the effort NYDems made, it's really surprising that they only claw-backed 03 and 22.