The reigning Democrats in New York State’s legislature finally revealed their proposal for new congressional district maps on Sunday. After both chambers ratify the plan, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is expected to sign it into law.
The new, highly gerrymandered map, which is likely to net Democrats three more House seats, overjoyed Democrats across the country and angered Republicans who accused Democrats of hypocrisy.
After all, U.S. House Democrats passed H.R. 1, a bill outlawing partisan gerrymandering nationwide, in a party-line vote last March.
But until Republicans join them in supporting a bipartisan armistice, most Democrats believe the party has no obligation to unilaterally disarm. If Republicans gerrymander GOP-leaning seats in states such as Ohio, Tennessee, Florida and Texas, Democrats reason, it’s only fair for the party represented by the donkey to try to offset the damage in states like New York, Maryland and Illinois.
What’s perhaps more interesting about the New York vote is that absent a political earthquake inside state Democratic politics in recent years, it’s likely the gerrymander would not have been possible.
“The New York maps are a vindication of the long-term organizing investment progressives and the labor movement have made in New York politics over the last 15 years, especially in the state Senate,” said Neal Kwatra, a Democratic strategist in New York City who works closely with labor unions. “Democrats rarely take a maximalist approach like this when the stakes are so high, which is what makes the end product here all the more impressive.”
New York has been a heavily Democratic state for decades. Former President Barack Obama won the state with more than 62% of the vote in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
But when the legislature was tasked with redistricting after the 2010 census, Republicans still controlled New York’s state Senate. The upper chamber could not reach an agreement with the Democratic-controlled state Assembly on new congressional district boundaries, so, in March 2012, a panel of federal judges drew their own nonpartisan boundaries. The 2012 map won praise from good government groups for not inordinately advantaging one party over another. But then Democrats lost the chance to counter extreme Republican gerrymandering from Pennsylvania to Ohio to North Carolina.
At the time, Democrats in New York’s state Senate hoped to at least have a greater say in the process after the 2020 census. They begged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to veto state Senate Republicans’ plan to gerrymander favorable districts for themselves, but Cuomo declined, blessing both the pro-GOP map in the state Senate and a map drawn to favor Democrats in the Assembly. His concession to critics was promoting a state constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2014 that would have convened a bipartisan redistricting commission in lieu of maps drawn by the legislature. New Yorkers approved the amendment in a 2014 referendum.
“If there are more seats that Democrats could win, that’s good for progressives.”
- Bill Neidhardt, New York City progressive strategist
Proponents of independent redistricting pointed out a big hole in the referendum: If the legislature voted down the bipartisan commission’s proposals twice, the legislature would have a free hand to draw their own districts.
Neither Cuomo nor state Senate Democrats imagined at the time, however, that the state Senate ― engineered to benefit Republicans ― would soon be dominated by Democrats and, with it, the entire legislature.
In the 2012 elections, Democrats managed to secure a narrow numerical majority in the state Senate despite a map favorable to Republicans. But a group of rogue Democrats calling themselves the Independent Democratic Conference, or IDC, aligned with Republicans to keep the GOP in power ― reportedly with Cuomo’s blessing.
Following President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, a variety of New York progressives looking to effect change locally were outraged to learn about the IDC’s existence. A group of political newcomers founded the group No IDC NY to educate the public and provide support to candidates willing to run against the IDC’s eight members. The Working Families Party lent critical institutional support to primary challenges against the IDC and endorsed Cynthia Nixon’s left-leaning run at Cuomo.
Cuomo ultimately prevailed, but fearing Nixon, he brokered an end to the IDC. Six out of eight of the IDC’s former members still lost their primaries, and Democrats picked up additional seats to boot, giving them the majority for the first time in a decade. Additional gains in 2020 gave the party a veto-proof supermajority in both legislative chambers, setting the stage for Sunday’s power play.
It was especially apt that New York state Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris (D), a frequent Cuomo foe who quietly helped recruit candidates to run against IDC members, led the redistricting process.
“This is a very Democratic state, let’s start there,” he told The New York Times on Sunday. “It’s not surprising that a fairly drawn map might lead to more Democrats getting elected.”
In theory, Democratic gains are a prerequisite for progressive gains. Progressives generally only run against more moderate Democrats in seats where internecine strife doesn’t risk surrendering a seat to Republicans.
“If there are more seats that Democrats could win, that’s good for progressives,” said Bill Neidhardt, a progressive consultant and former spokesperson for former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D).
But for all that the map pleases many progressives eager to balance the scales in the party’s favor, some on the left noted that the maps also appeared to be drawn to insulate some incumbents from progressive primary challenges.
For example, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat representing New York’s 12th Congressional District, faces challenges from her left for the third consecutive election cycle. In the past, her progressive opponents have picked up the greatest traction in the Queens and Brooklyn sections of her district, which are home to a high concentration of young, college-educated, left-leaning voters. In the legislature’s proposed map, New York’s 12th has been redrawn to include more of Manhattan and less of the northwestern corners of Queens and Brooklyn, according to a visual tool created by the City University of New York Graduate Center’s Center for Urban Research.
Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat representing New York’s 9th Congressional District, also faced a formidable primary challenge in the two previous election cycles. In the legislature’s proposed map, her district would no longer contain liberal Brooklyn neighborhoods, such as Park Slope, where her main challenger got the most traction.
“This map is as clear an incumbent protection map as any map we’ve seen,” said a New York City-based progressive strategist who requested anonymity for professional reasons. “The left helped us get the supermajority and make these lines, and yet it’s to the benefit of the status quo.”
Melanie D’Arrigo, a progressive who challenged Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) in New York’s 3rd Congressional District in 2020, cried foul about the new map. The new 3rd District, long centered on Long Island’s North Shore, is gerrymandered to include Democratic parts of the Bronx and Westchester County across the Long Island Sound. D’Arrigo may now have to compete with a broader array of aspiring Democratic politicians in the soon-to-be open House seat.
“There is no discernible reason to draw a district that leapfrogs the Long Island Sound in an attempt to loosely tie together Long Island, Queens, the Bronx and Westchester,” she said. “How is this fair to the people who live in any of these counties?”
Rana Abdelhamid, a Google employee challenging Maloney, by contrast, sounded a more resolute note.
“We have always run this campaign expecting that the district would be redrawn,” she said in a statement. “We have planned for this, and we are still on track to win.”
Asked about some progressives’ complaints ― as well as criticism from good-government groups ― Mike Murphy, a spokesperson for New York state Senate Democrats, offered broad praise for the proposal.
“These maps are a gigantic step forward for fairer representation and reflect the strength and diversity of New York like never before,” Murphy said.
Progressive gate-crashers like Abdelhamid ― and even New York’s embattled Republicans ― have some basis for optimism.
Gerrymandering only goes so far in dictating outcomes, noted Steven Romalewski, director of the Center for Urban Research’s mapping service at CUNY’s Graduate Center.
After all, New York Democrats retook the state Senate despite Republican gerrymandering of its district lines. And Democrats took over the U.S. House in 2018 despite similar gerrymandering in a number of key states’ congressional district boundaries.
“Voters are not monolithic. They don’t vote the same way in each election,” Romalewski said. “Even if you say it’s ‘majority X’ or ‘majority Y’ now, it’s not clear what it will be in a few years.”