US House Redistricting: New York

[Brittain33]

From a map drawing aesthetics perspective, it should be Engel in NY-17.  His district is the ugliest (other than Velasquez' NY-12, which won't be axed due to racial reasons).  There's no reason at all why the Bronx should share a district with Rockland County.

I wonder what happens to underpopulated Long Island and city districts if both districts eliminated start with the Bronx and head north, which is also what happened in 2002. I think they have to axe a district more deeply enmeshed in the city than Engel's in order for it to pencil out.

[Brittain33]

It's kind of hard not to give up seats when you overwhelmingly control the state Congressional delegation 21-8.  

An alternative way to look at is a downstate delegation of 19 districts that loses a seat plus an upstate delegation of 10 districts that loses a seat. The population loss neatly divides along those lines. The upstate delegation is 5-5. The downstate delegation is 16-3. Since the downstate delegation almost certainly must sacrifice a Democrat, it stands to reason that evenly divided upstate can and should sacrifice a Republican. There are multiple ways this can be done successfully, although NY-23 as it stands is not so much as a lean-D district and would need shoring up to be counted as a D district.

[Brittain33]

Gotcha. I think they'd be foolish not to let the Republicans have 3-4 reasonably safe districts: two based on NY-24/26/29, and one roughly corresponding to NY-20. The lifespan of the '06-'08 Dem pickups is too sobering to ignore. Not sure what happens exactly with NY-25 and NY-23 but neither one is close to secure for the party currently holding it. I think politicians are concerned enough with their own careers that they'd be happy to do that to make their own districts safer.

[Brittain33]

I suspect the Republicans have the advantage in New York. They can say, look if you don't suck up the loss of both seats, we will just let the courts draw the map, wrecking havoc with all of your sordid little NYC district deals

What sordid little district deals in NYC?

I really don't see this.

[Brittain33]

Torie, the Republicans don't want Hinchey's district carved up. Look at where Ithaca and Binghamton go (students up the wazoo and the people who love them) if that district goes.

[Brittain33]

Torie, the scenario you describe happened in 2002 when there was a split legislature and a Republican governor. The congressional maps went to a judge or special master and the results were so disruptive to Republican incumbents that both sides freaked out and worked out an incumbent protection compromise that froze a Republican advantage in western NY and a Democratic advantage on LI. Republicans have more to lose than Democrats if it goes to the courts.

I also don't think there's much discipline of any type, party or moral, in the New York State Senate to count on. I wouldn't expect them to save the national GOP's bacon on this map any more than the Virginia Senate Democrats are going to use their leverage to upend the table in that state and force the Republicans to unpack the old gerrymander, or that Jan Schakowsky is going to torpedo a Dem gerrymander in Illinois because she would fight tooth and nail any watering down her district. It's a pipe dream.

[Brittain33]

Ithaca could be appended to Rochester. As to a court drawing, it would be fun to see if the court map could be found on the internet. I don't recall it put any upstate Pubbie at any great risk, irrespective of where Ithaca was.

As I recall, it shifted everyone around greatly in a counter-clockwise fashion. Sue Kelly's district looked more like Tom Sweeney's district and stretched up the eastern side of the state. Sweeney's district was half his, half McHugh's. I don't know who was put at risk other than that there was extensive change for change's sake without regard for the prior map. No incumbent likes that.

[Brittain33]

Torie, the Republicans don't want Hinchey's district carved up. Look at where Ithaca and Binghamton go (students up the wazoo and the people who love them) if that district goes.

Ithaca could be appended to Rochester.  

It could be in a Republican gerrymander, but if we're talking a court-drawn map where Hinchey's district is broken up, it's more likely to go in with Syracuse, or both Ithaca and Binghamton thrown in with Elmira and points west in a revised and renumbered NY-29. Or maybe they shift the liberal hellmouth and NY-24 to the Dems, I think right now that district encircles the town of Ithaca. Reed's district could probably take that and stay R--Buerkle's couldn't--but neither rep would want to.

[Brittain33]

Thank you to the moderators for your extensive clean-up of the mess I helped make last night, including the duplicate NJ threads. I woke up this morning thinking how helpful it would be if the NY discussion were hived off.

[Brittain33]

Long Island's population no longer supports 4 entire districts, so if 5 representatives now live on Long Island because Ackerman has moved to Nassau, one of them is almost certainly out of a seat barring extensive crossover into Queens that are not likely IMO.

[Brittain33]

Instead you get the new upgraded 2010 earmuffs that goes to from Rochester to Syracuse. Obama 67% or so.

Why would Democrats agree to that? In 2002, you had the excuse of a Republican governor and the influence of the White House, and the district being eliminated downstate was Republican. This time, the Democrats have a stronger hand everywhere and are going to lose a seat downstate. I don't see why they'd agree to a Pennsymander-type Democratic district upstate.

[Brittain33]

I agree with everyone else, it's a great map. Why the east-west split between two GOP districts in Dutchess and Columbia counties?

[Brittain33]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/23/nyregion/20110123-nyc-ethnic-neighborhoods-map.html?ref=nyregion

More data about ethnicity in NYC.

[Brittain33]

Is Anthony Weiner saving Gary Ackerman's career?

Look at a map. Weiner's district should be the one to go.

Could they stretch NY-4 across the Rockaways, circling NY-6, and into the southern bits of NY-9? It makes sense to me. Give other parts of Brooklyn to NY-10, NY-11, and NY-8 on the one side and divide up Queens with Ackerman taking the lion's share and Crowley helping smooth out lines.

[Brittain33]

I doubt McCarthy would be happy with taking in the Republican parts of southern Brooklyn. Also, the Rockaways are needed to up NY-06's black population.

Do you think it's plausible for NY-13, NY-8, NY-10, and NY-11 to take up that half of NY-9?

[Brittain33]

I thought the consensus was that 26 was getting eliminated regardless of who won, but that a Hochul win made the actual act more painful?

I don't think it was ever targeted for elimination--it's in the exact spot where a district was eliminated last time and that's why NY-24 stretches so far to the west when it was a central NY district before. There is enough population in western NY for 4 districts: a Rochester-based Dem district, a southern tier Republican district, and two Buffalo/Niagara based districts incorporating a lot of Republican turf. It's very tough, once you've got that, to make a 3-1 arrangement. We were looking at a solid 2-2 moving forward with NY-24 retreating out of the Finger Lakes and/or NY-25 pulling out of Monroe County.

[Brittain33]

I would love to see the GOP win a special there, though. They'll need a Jewish Republican for sure.

I *would* say this, but I'm skeptical that the district would elect a Republican. Jewish Democratic voters in the New York area were unusually warm to Saddam's-ass-kicking Bush in the post-9/11 presidential election and didn't connect well with Obama in 2008. But they'll have no trouble supporting a local Democrat for Congress by large margins. Especially with Medicare on the table.

Weiner would be a moron to outright resign over this.

[Brittain33]

A Republican would really need to make a big deal about Israel 1967

But any Democrat who would be running would be saying the exact same thing, and sincerely, and that's enough. Voters may feel strongly about Israel but not enough that they'll vote against a pro-Israel Democrat from the neighborhood.

[Brittain33]

I think Hochul has said she will move if she has to.

[Brittain33]

But the Democrat running there wouldn't be Andrew Cuomo, but a Jewish candidate with ties to the community.

[Brittain33]

Why would Democrats ever accept a map like this?

because it's not anti semtic like the current one is (something the democrats are officially against)

This guy is either 12 years old or a sock.

[Brittain33]

No, just 12 years old or fairly insular and not that bright.

I don't see how anyone can doubt he's from the place and community he posts about.

Perhaps being raised Jewish just outside NYC, albeit not Orthodox, gives me a sense of what seems authentic to me and what sounds like a kosher version of CoburnFan. I would like to think people don't throw around the word "anti-Semitic" or "anti-Semtic" this loosely, to me that rings true of someone pretending to be a certain minority, to play up accusations that real people know have to be deployed carefully.

[Brittain33]

You, like, understand that Puertoricans are citizens and a lot of New York whites are not citizens, right? And quite a few New York blacks neither, btw?

Lewis, I don't understand why your tone toward Torie is so disproportionately hostile on this board.

[Brittain33]

I don't think Buffalo to Ithaca is tenable without an unusually gerrymandered map. It's also an awkward combination of Dems.

[Brittain33]

An Ithaca-Binghamton-Syracuse district would have at least 40,000 undergraduates from Syracuse, Cornell, SUNY-Binghamton, and Ithaca College.