US House Redistricting: New York

[Torie]

http://atr.rollcall.com/new-york-gary-ackerman-to-retire/

Longtime New York Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman will retire at the end of the 112th Congress, he announced tonight.



Crowley elbowed Ackerman out.

One would have thought Ackerman would have been competitive. Crowley gets a lot of new territory too. I'm surprised. Is that just because I don't know enough on this one? 

[Torie]

No surprise, but the appellate court seems disinclined to mess much with the Congressional map Judge Mann drew, if at all. One judge noted the ripple effect, and if you mess in one place, that has consequences elsewhere, and so forth, and time is short anyway. Nobody really lodged any real objections anyway, other than the Senate Pubs who whimpered that no cognizance was taken as to where incumbents lived. That one is going absolutely nowhere.

[Torie]

Sam, on the state senate, how effectively did the Pubs move the ball towards their goal of making their majority more secure than it is now? What is the partisan PVI number which is at the tipping point between control and losing control?  Are the tipping point seats around Pub PVI +3%, or greater or less?

[Torie]

It would indeed by a nightmare if some sadist dredged up all my old posts for evaluation. I would probably be driven to put such a person on ignore. It would all be just too embarrassing.

[Torie]

Well Slaughter is going to have her hands full it appears, and Owens won't be getting the help he got last time.

In Rochester, (NY-25), three term Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks (R), plans to announce her candidacy for the seat held by Ms. Slaughter tomorrow.

In NY-21, GOP party splitter and problem child Doug Hoffman won't be stirring the waters this time, so the Conservative and GOP party will have but one candidate to face Bill Owens (D) in the fall.

Thanks to Red Racing horses for the hat tip.

Down south, Lowey's new CD has agitated the Pubs out of their slumber perhaps.

Oh, and here is an incendiary tidbit about why Cuomo signed off on the Pub gerrymander for the State Senate (and insurance of no Dem gerrymander later) in such a lamb-like manner.

[Torie]

Pity you guys picked up on the Orthodox Jewish submission. I was going to put up a poll, with all the usual suspects listed, from myself to BRTD to Muon2 to Sbane to NY Jew to Lewis to Brittain33 and so on, and ask who do you think would like the map best. But now the answer has been given away.

Here is their entire map. I got the drf file from the chap who drafted it (except for the 4 northern CD's in the Bronx and Westchester, which a Catholic friend of his drew, because of the press of time). The map has a few "problems," alas, some fixable, but the bleaching out of the Crowley CD might raise a retrogression issue. Hewing to municipal/village lines was not job one either. I quite admire the chutzpah in merging the Mahoney and Nadler CD's, as the white CD to go, in exchange for creating the "Jewish" one in Brooklyn.

I spoke to the map drawer about 3 times on the phone for a couple of hours. I initiated it because his submission had problems, and I wanted to help him fix them, if possible, even though the filing deadline had passed. By the last conversation, the federal appellate court had rejected his submission, and he want to file a petition to SCOTUS, based on ignoring communities of interest for white people and so forth, particularly Jews, who are the most victimized by hate crimes. It took some time to persuade him that the odds of SCOTUS taking the case were effectively zero.

I must say one party would like this map a whole lot better than the other party. The other party if the appellate court accepted this after making some necessary adjustments, like equalizing population, would have just gone bonkers. The Israel district goes Pub, and Lowey's is down to about Dem +2% in  PVI. (I am not sure, because I had to draw the 4 CD's the Catholic guy drew myself, and the PDF screen shots did not show the Lowey CD's northern perimeter.)  The Lowey CD needs to go farther out anyway, because overall the NYC area CD's about about 50,000-75,000 or something short of population overall.

Oh by the way, the map drawer says he spoke to the Pub Senate majority leader Skelos, and tried to persuade him to leave two Jewish state senate CD's in Brooklyn Queens somewhere alone because in another couple of years both would fall to the Pubs. Skelos said he needed another CD now, rather than two later, so he merged them to get one more sufficiently Pub to flip now. I guess the discount rate on future Pub seats, but not right now, was close to 50% per year of something.

The guy was fascinating to talk to. He knows the NYC streets like the back of his hand, and who is doing what to whom. I'm sure NY Jew would enjoy talking to him. He agreed that gay marriage did indeed tank Welperin, allowing Turner to win.

[Torie]

How in the world did you plan to sell it, Muon2?  Or did you not do the Westchester and Long Island gerrymanders?  What was your Hispanic percentage for the Crowley CD?

[Torie]

Pity you guys picked up on the Orthodox Jewish submission. I was going to put up a poll, with all the usual suspects listed, from myself to BRTD to Muon2 to Sbane to NY Jew to Lewis to Brittain33 and so on, and ask who do you think would like the map best. But now the answer has been given away.

Here is their entire map.

Wow, that Staten Island-Ozone Park district is really something else.

It is no problem. Most folks know how to swim these days. Bridges are just for the physically challenged.

[Torie]

Ok, I was wrong in thinking that restoring Slaughter's district to Monroe only was painless for Dems. Too many Dems disagree.

But why are they that worried. With a D+6 the district looks secure on paper. If the problem is Slaughter, then that's an internal issue for the Dems.

The "internal problem" is that Slaughter is refusing to retire. I suspect that she can be bagged given the Pubs have such a strong candidate, and it should be a good Pub year.  The problem is then trying to hold it when the Dems come up with a much better opponent. It will be a tough call given that how much money the RNC and the PACS and so forth want to spend on this race given that it seems to me. Maybe if Buerkle goes down with Slaughter (quite possible), in an ensuing bi-partisan gerrymander after the election (I would not count that out depending on what happens), the two CD's can then do a precinct exchange - just in the reverse direction of what might have happened if a bi-partisan gerrymander were done this year.

The Dems probably will demand in such a deal that Israel and Lowey be shored up as part of such a deal however, assuming they both get re-elected (which of course is highly probable with Lowey, but somewhat less probable with Israel, depending on how good an opponent he gets, and how much money is dumped into the race). What happens in NY-01 might be part of the mix too.

Ah the wheels within wheels.

[Torie]

I'd say the biggest problem for the Monroe County Executive woman is that she can get elected in a low-turnout off-year election, but she's going to have an extra 200,000 Presidential-year voters who have never voted for or against her. Torie's acting more like redcommander with the irrational exuberance over this woman.

It is animated by my low opinion of Slaughter. We shall see.

[Torie]

Does anyone have a close up comparison between Slaughter's 1988 district and the 2012 district and how much additional territory is in the current one?

Here is the 1988 CD, old NY-30, although I think a part of the city of Rochester itself was excised from it, but from the tiny map I have in my 1990 almanac, I am not sure, and have no way of drawing the boundary in the city of Rochester anyway. The CD went 54% to 45% for Bush pere in 1988, per the almanac stats.  Back then Slaughter was viewed as a superstar believe it or not. How times have changed. And as you can further see New York has viewed gerrymandering as an exercise in cutting edge abstract art for a very long time indeed. This map was from a Pub gerrymander, and this CD was drawn for Barber Conable, who then retired in 1984. He successor was a Pub named Fred Eckert, whom Slaughter beat in 1986 51%-49% due to his suck personality and political skills.

And there you have it!

[Torie]

In an idle moment, after the Pubs bagged three seats in NY in the last go round,I was wondering if it would ever be possible for the Pubs to get a majority of the House seats in NY.  They have nine, and needed fourteen, or five more. NY 2, NY-4, NY-18 are possible, and after the Pub came so close in Rochester, NY-25 is not impossible. However, that last one, NY-17, is a very steep climb indeed. So probably not. But wait a minute, if the Court had drawn that South Brooklyn seat, which it didn't, would that not it be possible then?  Should the court have drawn the seat? Was it possible to do so, hewing to the VRA (bearing in mind that Article 5 is now dead), and good redistricting principles (now I would like to think a bit older and wiser at it, and now no longer "fooled" by all this community of interest hype)? So I redrew one of my prior maps, and voila, it is. Indeed, the south Brooklyn seat would be by far the most Pub in NY, with a PVI of something like 10, believe it or not (56% McCain).

I wonder how my map would do in the little contest Muon2 is hosting for Virginia (not sure how erosity for intra-county lines is measured in that contest). I jiggled the lines on Long Island to minimize Town chops (Towns, not villages), as well as Borough chops in NYC.

[Torie]

How do you think it will change now that they've created a commission to do it?

I think it could help the GOP, since the Dems won't be able to gerrymander anymore.

When did the Dems gerrymander New York other than the state assembly? Not in 2012 or in 2002, certainly.

Well, as a technical matter, the Dems gerrymandered in 2002 - hand in hand with the Pubs, in a rather disgusting display of incumbent protectionism, giving rise to the Slaughter barbell excrescence, and the Hinchey writhing serpentine affair. Slaughter was very sad to lose her barbell, as she whimpered about at least not getting Ithaca as a consolation prize. Turns out that she was near prescient to be worried. I am not sure the Dems have ever gerrymandered the NY CD's in a solo affair, which is most odd for such a Dem state. The Pubs have been incredibly lucky.