US House Redistricting: New York

[ag]

You know the funny thing is NY Jew has attacked far more Jews in this thread than anyone else for all his accusations of anti-Semitism.

Well, welll.... Talk about self hatred ))

[ag]

This would be easy to circumvent. If Dems ever come to power in the NYS Senate, a group of them is delegated to form a Working Families faction, meaning that no party technically has a majority. At that point, a map is passed w/ a simple majority, after which the 2/3 Dem majority in both chambers is hardwired into the system. What could be simpler?

[ag]

Well, this won't be a majority Jewish district, would it be? And, of course, the Jewish community there would be divided between the Orthodox/Hassidic and pork-and-cheese-eating Russian: calling this a "community of interest", to the exclusion of the secular Jews (other than recent ex-Soviet migrants), is a definite stretch - they seem to believe they have more in common w/ Italian Catholics than w/ most American Jews. A funny notion of a "racial" group it is )

[ag]

I wouldn't be that sure. Just by plugging in the South Brooklyn numbers on that map I got about 360,000 - but big chunks of that are well outside of the proposed district (they are just too spread). Also, of course, this includes both the Orthodox and the Russians (big chunk of whom are not even halakhikally Jewish, and most of whom have no love lost for the Orthodox) and the others, raising the issue of existence of a "community of interest". And while the Orthodox might be growing, is the entire growth in Brooklyn and does it compensate for the emigration of  all sorts of Jews to the suburbs? Though, perhaps, I'd grant you that it should be possible to gerrymander a Jewish majority district in Brooklyn - and do so even without the Park Slope/Brooklyn Heights folk that you've come to consider goyim because they don't vote the way you like ) But you'd, probably, have to be quite a bit more ingenious about the boundaries, to get rid of the gentiles and the "wrong" Jews.

[ag]

BTW, I got a great idea for a Jewish district in Brooklyn :)) Take Flatbush, Midwood, Borough Park and even Crown Heights - you can't say we are splitting the Orthodox, can you? Williamsburg's missing - but that's a bit off geographically, hard to get w/ the rest without ugly gerrymanders. Add Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights - these are Jews, as much or more so than the bacon-on-matzo Russians. If you are creative, this would not be much less Jewish, if at all so, than the South Brooklyn version. Pack the rest w/ reliably democratic minority areas and bingo - a reliably Dem district with an Orthodox Jewish pack at its core ) Should be doable ))

[ag]

BTW, I got a great idea for a Jewish district in Brooklyn :)) Take Flatbush, Midwood, Borough Park and even Crown Heights - you can't say we are splitting the Orthodox, can you? Williamsburg's missing - but that's a bit off geographically, hard to get w/ the rest without ugly gerrymanders. Add Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights - these are Jews, as much or more so than the bacon-on-matzo Russians. If you are creative, this would not be much less Jewish, if at all so, than the South Brooklyn version. Pack the rest w/ reliably democratic minority areas and bingo - a reliably Dem district with an Orthodox Jewish pack at its core ) Should be doable ))

that would not come close to half  in order to get to Crown Heights (all bunched up) for example you would have to take in way to many blacks which would never work with the voting rights act and would never take in enough jews to be worth it.  (Williamsburg would be possible if you use the east river)

There is no law that says ALL blacks should be in majority black districts )) Especially, if we are alleging that we are doing this to avoid disenfranchizing another minority )) Arguably, the district I propose would concentrate more ORTHODOX Jews than the South Brooklyn district - we are uniting a community of interest. And it is not that easy to argue that the Russian Jews (many of them not even Jewish from the Orthodox standpoing) belong to the same community of interest - their interest in most areas are quite diametrically opposed to those of the Orthodox. That they happen to be part of the same emerging pro-Republican coalition is an accident, based, primarily, on vehement racism, which is de rigueur inside the Russian community.

[ag]

BTW, I got a great idea for a Jewish district in Brooklyn :)) Take Flatbush, Midwood, Borough Park and even Crown Heights - you can't say we are splitting the Orthodox, can you? Williamsburg's missing - but that's a bit off geographically, hard to get w/ the rest without ugly gerrymanders. Add Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights - these are Jews, as much or more so than the bacon-on-matzo Russians. If you are creative, this would not be much less Jewish, if at all so, than the South Brooklyn version. Pack the rest w/ reliably democratic minority areas and bingo - a reliably Dem district with an Orthodox Jewish pack at its core ) Should be doable ))

that would not come close to half  in order to get to Crown Heights (all bunched up) for example you would have to take in way to many blacks which would never work with the voting rights act and would never take in enough jews to be worth it.  (Williamsburg would be possible if you use the east river)

There is no law that says ALL blacks should be in majority black districts )) Especially, if we are alleging that we are doing this to avoid disenfranchizing another minority ))

that argument didn't seem to work for jews before.
In addition the only way possible to make a compact majority Jewish district would be to include Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach.  If you don't realize that it's probably because you have no clue where jews live in NY. 

I happen to be a Russian Jew who spent 9 years in greater New York (admittedly, in the 1990s). Should I tell you where exactly the groceries where I used to buy my bacon are, or will you just believe me? ))

My argument is subtly different ) Anybody, who argues for a Jewish majority district on these grounds would have to be using definition of the Jews that goes against the definition used by the ultra- (and not very ultra) Orthodox. Many of the "Russians" are only Jewish by descent on the male line and/or converted to other faiths. Those who are technically Jewish still, mostly, follow the Jewish law mostly in its breach. Finding a community of interest between them and the Orthodox presents a stretch - more of a stretch, in fact, than finding a community of interest between the Orthodox and the Park Slope or Upper West Side guys. Yes, of course, the Russians and the Orthodox happen to be more of Republican types - but Republican Jews is, most definitely, a not very protectable community ))

The South Brooklyn district removes big chunks of the Orthodox community (Crown Heights and Willamsburg) - so, it fails in its stated objective of uniting a well-defined community of interest. A Central/North Brooklyn district would gather more of the ultra-Orthodox Jews. Of course, it would not take in the Russian Jews - but that's a very distinct community, with its own interests. And it would be quite hard for the Orthodox lawyers to argue otherwise - without abandoning the Halakha, at least )

[ag]

BTW, the Jewish sector of the Crown Heights could be incorporated with relatively few blacks - via a salient from Park Slope through the Prospect Park. Not a big deal.

[ag]

Anyway, it is not hard to draw a district that would include the entire Borough Park, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Midwood Jewish parts of Williamsburg, Crown Heights, Flatbush, etc. - I even got the entire Gravesend and half the Homecrest in (Ocean Parkway is in all the way through to the Belt Parkway) that would be 66.5% Obama (72.1% Dem on average). It's only 9% black - no concern there. 12.9% Hispanic and 11.3% Asian - but you can't draw a Hispanic district from those parts anyway. There is still a lot of stuff I've included for no good reason to pad the Dem margin (such as Red Hook) that could be removed to replace w/ Jewish neighborhoods without making it less than 60% Obama. Of course, once you insist on including Brighton and Manhattan Beach, it would change - but why include those atheist ex-Commies )?

[ag]

<Adopting an offended Jewish posture> Well, if this map is not designed to SPLIT the Orthodox Jewish vote accross several district, what is it designed to do? Russians ain't Orthodox!

[ag]

One quick point I would like to make here in the Orthodox Jewish seat argument is that if such a seat is drawn to grant representation specifically to the Orthodox Jewish minority is that for such a seat to do just that, the main premise would be that the seat needs to be drawn so that the Orthodox community is able to elect the representative of their choice. It does not need to be majority Orthodox Jewish. We often use this standard with other minority groups throughout the country in redistricting. Note, I am not arguing that the Orthodox Jewish community is large enough that representation should be legally required, but if it is, the district needs to be drawn so that other groups will not drown out the Orthodox vote. This means that the other groups cannot be too heavily partisan against the Orthodox prefered candidate (which right now seems to be Turner).

Do you really think that the Orthodox Jews would elect (Catholic) Turner if it were up to them? He'd loose a primary in any Orthodox-majority district before you can say "Jesus".

Partisan arguments can't be a problem: the courts have repeatedly ruled that it's ok to gerrymander for partisan ends. The problem is dilution of a racial/ethnic/other minority group for the purposes of preventing it from electing the candidate of their choice. It is hard to see how a district that maximizes the concentration of the target group (Orthodox Jews) could be wrong here. It is also hard to see how reducing the proportion of that group in the district (as would be the case in the South Brooklyn district as compared w/ the North-Central Brooklyn district) could help the Orthodox Jews elect the candidate of their choice that would not also be supported by some other major group. Of course, it is simply impossible to get a district in Brooklyn where Orthodox Jews would be able to elect candidate of their choice without them happening to coincide with some other, not Orthodox community - there are simply not enough of them (especially, if we just look at the voting age population).

That's why, any proposed "Orthodox Jewish" district would have to rely at least as strongly on other, non-Orthodox, or even non-Jewish groups to do the trick - the Russians, the Irish, the Italians or whatever. But at that point it becomes a matter of coalition building, not of electing a candidate of the Orthodox Jewish choice. In as much as "candidate of choice" seems to be an euthemism for "one of their own", this is going to fail outright - a proper Hasid won't get elected in such a district (many Russians would, probably, rather vote Dem, as would many of the other elements of this "Republican coalition"). Turner is certainly not one of them, and would not have been their choice if they could decide on their own.

Hence the difficulty with defining the "protected group". The Orthodox Jews simply are not numerous or concentrated enough for a district (unless one finds a way of linking Borough Park and Rockland county in one district ) ). Protecting Jews as such - a group that less than 4 years ago voted, what, 70% for Obama - would not seem to require drawing a Republican district; if anything, that would prevent the Jews at large from electing representatives of their choice. So NY Jew and his kind have invented a new "protected group": Republican Jews - which includes the Orthodox and the Russians (especially the first-generation immigrants among those), but excludes the bulk of the Jews in Manhattan, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, etc. For their purposes Bob Turner is a member of this group, while Woody Allen isn't. Fine by me - but they'd have to pursuade Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Kagan )))

[ag]

One quick point I would like to make here in the Orthodox Jewish seat argument is that if such a seat is drawn to grant representation specifically to the Orthodox Jewish minority is that for such a seat to do just that, the main premise would be that the seat needs to be drawn so that the Orthodox community is able to elect the representative of their choice. It does not need to be majority Orthodox Jewish. We often use this standard with other minority groups throughout the country in redistricting. Note, I am not arguing that the Orthodox Jewish community is large enough that representation should be legally required, but if it is, the district needs to be drawn so that other groups will not drown out the Orthodox vote. This means that the other groups cannot be too heavily partisan against the Orthodox prefered candidate (which right now seems to be Turner).

The question I don't understand is how they make a case. To appeal to the federal court they would have to argue that they are a racial or language minority. Religion is not covered by the 15th amendment, and probably by the 1st amendment it can't be used.

Racial minority. Hm.... has a nasty tinge when applied to Jews, don't you think so? Are Jews a race? Linguistic minority sounds better. It would work for the Hassidim - many of them, especially the Satmars, I believe, are still largely Yiddish-speaking. Might be more trouble w/ other Orthodox, though, (do they still speak much Yiddish in Lithuanian yeshivas? I don't know), if we take the current linguistic situation, but, probably, could be argued by descent for most Ashkenazic Jews in Brooklyn, including almost all the ex-Soviets (the Bukharans and the Georgians, whose ancestors have never been Yiddish-speaking, are, mostly, in Queens). It would, of course, exclude the Sephardim, unless that common language is defined as Hebrew - which would, in all frankness, exclude the Russians ) But Sephardim are not so big in Brooklyn (though, of course, present), so, I guess, it is fine. So, the ultimate irony: the despised "jargon" would, probably, serve best as the identifier for the group to be protected ))) As somebody who has a fair deal of sentimental attachment for the language of Sholom Aleykhem, I'd be thrilled )))  

Of course, the problem then would be how to avoid including all those liberal Manhattan/Park Slope Jews, who would be as much part of the same community (you can't exclude them by only considering current Yiddish-speakers, as that would exclude the Russians as well). If you include them, it becomes unclear why the protected group should be electing a Republican, if it is, mostly, Democratic ) But then the same problem would be even more acute if the racial argument were to be used. Tough....

[ag]

The question I don't understand is how they make a case. To appeal to the federal court they would have to argue that they are a racial or language minority. Religion is not covered by the 15th amendment, and probably by the 1st amendment it can't be used.

Imagine getting it up to the Supreme Court and arguing it in front of the current roster of the Justices ))

Justice Ginsburg: "Would, say, some of us present here be considered a part of the same protected minority".

NY Jew: "With all due respect, justice, I would say that this minority is defined not merely in terms of ancestral usage of Yiddish, but in terms of current cultural practice and personal identification".

Justice Kagan "Are you suggesting that myself and Justice Ginsburg are not Jewish?"

NY Jew: "I wouldn't say that. But, the self-hating Jews might as well be considered anti-semites, and, so, definitely, would not be part of the protected minority. Then, of course, come to think about this, as the example of Bob Turner shows, Justice Scalia might well be part of it".

I just can imagine it. It would be a great show )

[ag]

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.

NY had a Rockland-Richmond-Kings district at one time.

That could be great for the Orthodox Jews! Well, I guess, it would have to be drawn along the Hudson, because if it takes any significant population on Manhattan, there is a way of making it Jewish, but no way of making it Republican ))

[ag]

Claiming they speak Hebrew at home won't cut it for some of the Hassidim: they make a point not to ) It's loshn koydesh vs. mama loshn, and you don't use the former to talk about chickens.

But then, if Scottish Gaelic is not a European language by Australian law, what would prevent Yiddish from not being a European language by American law? For that matter, there are almost no speakers left in Europe )

[ag]

Well, if there are lots of Sefardim in the Orthodox block, that makes it worse: they can't be part of the same linguistic minority, as they don't speak Yiddish. They can't be part of the same religious minority, because it is not protectable. That leaves the racial designation, which is both borderline anti-semitic and not even very certain to succeed, as it is pretty hard to identify them w/ the Ashkenazim in any way that is not reliant on religion. Tough - I guess, any arguments relying on the joint numbers of Sefardim and Ashkenazim might not be allowable.

[ag]

besides Orthodox + Russian Jews are around 60% of NYC Jewish population.

If that is true (and I would need a source), this would suggest that the two blocks together are fairly Democratic (which is not that surprising, since, once the younger Russian Jews move off the Brighton Beach, they tend to assimilate in the general secular Jewish population and start voting Dem). I haven't found the exit poll number for Jews in NY state in 2008, but for Jews nationwide the NYTimes exit poll shows that 78% of them voted for Obama (fairly typical numbers; the Jewish share of vote for the Dem presidential candiate in the last 5 cycles has oscillated between 74% for Kerry in 2004 and 80% for Clinton in 1992). About a quarter of US Jews lives in NY state, so, if most NY Jews, did not vote for Obama, this would imply that nearly 90% of the Jews outside of NY State voted for him. And it is not as if there were no Russians or Orthodox in the other 49 states. It simply seems implausible to assume anything other than most Jews in NY State reliably vote Dem in most elections. Drawing a Republican district to represent this "protected minority" seems a rather strange exercise.

Of course, there remains a possibility (that seems increasingly likely to me) that NY Jew is simply using the definition of Jewishness that excludes Woody Allen and the 3 Supreme Court Justices and includes Bob Turner. Thus, the minority to be protected is DEFINED to be "Jews who vote Republican and allies". Good luck defending that in court.

[ag]

besides Orthodox + Russian Jews are around 60% of NYC Jewish population.

If that is true (and I would need a source), this would suggest that the two blocks together are fairly Democratic (which is not that surprising, since, once the younger Russian Jews move off the Brighton Beach, they tend to assimilate in the general secular Jewish population and start voting Dem). I haven't found the exit poll number for Jews in NY state in 2008, but for Jews nationwide the NYTimes exit poll shows that 78% of them voted for Obama (fairly typical numbers; the Jewish share of vote for the Dem presidential candiate in the last 5 cycles has oscillated between 74% for Kerry in 2004 and 80% for Clinton in 1992). About a quarter of US Jews lives in NY state, so, if most NY Jews, did not vote for Obama, this would imply that nearly 90% of the Jews outside of NY State voted for him. And it is not as if there were no Russians or Orthodox in the other 49 states. It simply seems implausible to assume anything other than most Jews in NY State reliably vote Dem in most elections. Drawing a Republican district to represent this "protected minority" seems a rather strange exercise.

Of course, there remains a possibility (that seems increasingly likely to me) that NY Jew is simply using the definition of Jewishness that excludes Woody Allen and the 3 Supreme Court Justices and includes Bob Turner. Thus, the minority to be protected is DEFINED to be "Jews who vote Republican and allies". Good luck defending that in court.

or the polls are way off because they underestimate the Orthodox and Russian vote's big. 

Any reason to believe that? Unless, of course, the Orthodox and the Russians are somehow ashamed of their anti-Jewish behavior and refuse to answer the pollsters, that is )

In any case, for the moment we do not have a shred of evidence that most NY Jews would prefer electing Republican to electing a Democrat, but definite evidence that it is the other way around. Until polls and exit polls start showing that it is the other way around, why exactly would anyone decide that they, as a group, would need a Republican district in Brooklyn?

This is even if we forget, that the current congressional delegation from New York already has at least 5 Jewish congressmen and a Jewish Senator, most of them elected w/ overwhelming Jewish support. Drawing a district that would reliably elect a Republican Catholic to the dismay of most NY State Jews (the latter according to the best available evidence) seems a very interesting way of letting the Jews elect a candidate of their choice.

To sum up, it seems increasingly clear, that NY Jew does NOT want Jews as such to be the protected minority. As there is no way of drawing together the Orthodox (both Sefardic and Ashkenazic) and the Russians to the exclusion of the secular American Jewish population into any community based on anything other than their shared support of the Republican party (based to a significant extent, let us be honest, on dislike of blacks and other racial minorities), it is equally clear that the group he would like to protect are the Republican Jews.

[ag]

BTW, even if I believe the Jewish databank data (btw, interestingly enough, you exclude the NYState Jews outside the city - why, may I inquire? they are about 40% of the total, if I am not much mistaken; or do you think that the protected community should be Republican Jews in NYCity?) you forget that a) Russians outside of Brighton Beach are a lot less Republican (probably, in fact, substantially Democratic, as they quickly become American Jews) and, in the absence of recent massive Russian immigration they, as a community are becoming less and less distinct from the general secular Jewish population (even if they don't move to Jersey ) ) and  b) Orthodox families have lots of kids - these are not voting age and would not be voting for a while.

In any case, it would be a coherent position that Orthodox Jews are a distinct cultural community that should be protected - but there are not enough of the Orthodox for an Orthodox majority district (forget about VAP), and certainly not enough of them for an Orthodox majority district in Brooklyn. It would be a coherent position that Jews (or, at least, Ashkenazic Jews) should be protected as a whole - but these are still mostly Democratic by all the evidence we have. It's NOT a coherent position to ask to protect the Orthodox and the Russians together, to the exclusion of the rest.

[ag]

why don't you look at who they vote for in elections (in areas where they are the majority) that might be a better indicator then exit polls.  there is no way in the world that the calculated for all the heavy McCain Jewish neighborhoods throughout the country.
I'll be shocked if McCain didn't win the NYC Jewish vote.  most Orthodox and Russian jews don't want to speak to pollsters.

This is unadulterated nonsense. There is no evidence the Russians don't talk to exit pollsters in any numbers that are distinct from the other population groups and in ways that are unanticipated by the pollsters. Based on the exit poll numbers I'd be shocked if McCain got much more than 40% of NYCity Jewish vote or 35% of NYState Jewish vote.

People who live in the ghetto vote differently from those who live outside it. There is a reason all those Russians have moved out of the greater Brighton Beach area: they don't like to live in the ghetto. They still go there a few times a year to stock up on Russian food and books - and then spend weeks discussing the barbarousness of the permanent residents of that self-made Soviet shtetl (hey, even the Russian dialect of Brighton Beach is a major subject of hilarious jokes). A trip to a Russian deli in Brighton Beach is an incredible, exotic experience to most Russian Jews in the US.

Unlike the Brighton Beach crowd, people from outside the area, tend to be more fluent in English - the get less of their information from the Russian-American media (there is a reason the Novoe Russkoe Slovo has died - young people didn't read it). Those outsiders, especially the younger ones, most definitely DO NOT vote the same as the brightonbeachers. There might still be a slightly elevated share of Republicans among these assimilated Russians, as compared to other Jews, but I don't think there is any doubt that they are, actually, mostly voting Dem. Also, keep in mind, the Russian community is not homogenous: electoral habits of those who came from small-town Ukraine and those who came from major cities in Russia should not be confused. And Brighton Beach is, mostly, about the former, not the latter. By the time you get to Washington Heights even some elderly Russian ladies might be volunteering for Dem causes.

As for the Orthodox - well, these do overwhelmingly live in the ghetto. The problem is, their electoral strength lags behind their raw numbers: too many kids. Of course, this is only a temporary delay, but a delay it is - you need to be 18 to vote (and, thus, to show up in exit polls).

[ag]

Again, there is no reason to create a "majority Jewish" district to elect congressmen that would be rejected by a large majority of NY State Jews. I could see a reason to create a district for the ultra-Orthodox, if they were sufficiently numerous in a compact area - but the are not, at least not yet. Joining the Russians and the Orthodox serves no identifiable objective, except electing a Republican congressman and, perhaps, spiting most NY Jews, who would be opposed to creation of such a district. There are 5 Jewish congressmen currently that are elected in NY State, and there is every reason to believe that they got an overwhelming majority of the Jewish vote in their districts, which represent a substantial proportion of NY State Jewish population. That most voters in those districts were not Jewish is NOT an argument in support of segregating Jews in "Jewish" districts: as it is, Jewish voters elect the representatives of their choice. That a minority of the Jewish voting public is unhappy is undeniable - but that is not a legal reason to do anything.

I am coming to believe that you are an archetypal "self-hating Jew". You happen to sincerely dislike most of your fellow-tribesmen and prefer to invent your own idea of a Jewish-American, that has little to do w/ reality, at least of today. Well, the Woody Allens, and not the Bob Turners, are still the Jews you have to deal with, if you are talking of NY Jewry.