US House Redistricting: New York

[cinyc]

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.

Pushing another Bronx district into lower Westchester only should handle that, I'd think.  

I think NY-23 is either going to have to be carved up or take on a significant population base outside of the North Country.  I'm almost certain it has significantly lost population in the past decade - even more so if the prisons are no longer counted (which they can't be for state apportionment purposes due to a new law, though I'm not sure how that affects the federal apportionment).   In any event, I don't see it existing in its current form.  It either has to become more Albany-centric or more Utica/Syracuse-centric.  The latter is more likely - though carving it in half and giving half to NY-20 and half to the Central NY districts can't be out of the question.  

IIRC, Owens lives in the eastern part of the district.  NY-20 could be made more Democratic by putting the three eastern counties in it.

[cinyc]

It seems like an unlikely compromise for NYC Assembly Dems to agree to give up 2 seats. I could see them giving up an NYC seat ("Hey, want to be mayor Eliot?") in exchange for seriously hurting the re-election prospects of one of the upstate Republican freshmen.

It's kind of hard not to give up seats when you overwhelmingly control the state Congressional delegation 21-8.  Which Republicans are you going to pit against each other?  Only NY-19/20 and the NY-24/25/26/29 combo are contiguous.  NY-19/20 is probably out of the question because the Hudson Valley is at least growing (though moving boundaries to include more Democratic-leaning areas isn't out of the question).  And if you do combine two of the NY-24/25/26/29 combo, what effect would that have on the rest of the Upstate map?  Locking in the remaining Republicans?  Remember - Democrats held some of those seats this decade.

If you try to take out Peter King on LI, the Democrat he faces would be in for a tough fight.  I suppose NY-13 could take on parts of Manhattan instead of Brooklyn, making it more Democratic-leaning if Democrats really wanted to - but Staten Island is growing and that district would be impossible to abolish.

I don't think a properly carved and redrawn NY-23 would be a Democratic loss.  It could actually make Owens safe, if done right.

[cinyc]

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.

If you want to look at things that way, Upstate Democrats have a choice - kill off a Republican and lose 3, if not all 4 of the remaining Republican-leaning districts for the decade or sacrifice one of their own and have a good chance of picking up 7 or even 8 of the remaining 9 Upstate seats in a good cycle.  Politicians being politicians would prefer the former.  But the latter may leave Democrats in a better position, particularly if Louise Slaughter were convinced to retire and her D+15 district used to make a redrawn NY-25 and NY-26 off limits to Republicans except in the very best of cycles.

[cinyc]

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.

Have you ever tried to draw a district with Elmira, Ithaca, Binghamton and points west in it?  It's an interesting experiment, given New York's shape.  Normally, I start from the corners.  New York's shape almost compels it, which usually ends up with Elmira and Binghamton in separate districts.  But if you just draw Upstate without worrying about Downstate, it makes things easier because you don't have to worry about the Bronx-Westchester bottleneck.  Leave out Orange County and points south, but keep all of Dutchess County except the area immediately surrounding Beacon.  That will allow you to draw 9 districts on a 27 district map.

If you assume a court will try to respect county and city lines to the extent possible, putting Binghamton, Elmira, Ithaca and their respective counties together in a district stretching from Stueben to Delaware Counties ends up throwing the Rochester and Syracuse suburbs together and ultimately ends up putting the city of Syracuse in another district, probably with Utica, possibly with the North Country, depending on how you want to draw things.  Monroe County pretty much gets its own district and Erie County a whole district plus a fraction.

[cinyc]

Here's an attempt at a 6-5 map of upstate. It's hard.



Higgins, NY-27 (Buffalo): 63% Obama
Lee, NY-26 (Buffalo suburbs, Rochester suburbs, Southern Tier): 53% McCain
Slaughter, NY-25 (Rochester, Rochester suburbs, Geneseo): 59% Obama
Reed, NY-24 (Syracuse suburbs, rural areas): 52% McCain (Buerkle could try running in the primary here, too)
Owens, NY-23 (Syracuse, Ithaca, Northern Tier): 62% Obama (Buerkle lives here but couldn't win it, and Owens might lose a primary)
Hanna, NY-22 (Rome, Utica suburbs, Syracuse suburbs, rural areas): 52% McCain
Tonko, NY-21 (Albany, Schenectady, Utica, random college towns, Hudson): 59% Obama
Gibson, NY-20 (random rural places): 49% McCain, by about 1,500 votes
Hinchey, NY-19 (Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Middletown, Beacon, Binghampton): 58% Obama
Hayworth, NY-18 (New York exurbs): 52% McCain
Lowey, NY-17 (Westchester, Spring Valley, Nyack): 64% Obama

Yikes, that's ugly!  

I still think the Democrats' best Upstate plan is for Slaughter to retire (or face off against a Republican) and her heavily inefficient district be carved up and allocated to its neighbors, changing a potential 5-4 map into a 6-3 one.  You kind of do that by separating urban Buffalo from Rochester in her district, but Buffalo and Rochester might have to be further carved up for that to work.

Given that's never going to happen, my guess is Burkle will be the odd woman out as NY-23 takes on more of the Syracuse area to become more Democratic.

I generally exclude the main NYC suburbs from my definition of Upstate, though the outer fringes in Dutchess, Ulster and Orange need to be thrown in to create 9 seats.

[cinyc]

I don't think the Democrats would ever agree to screw over Syracuse like that.

Someone has to get "screwed over" in Western/Central New York.  Under the current map, it's arguably the Rochester area - Monroe County is split among 4 districts.   In the next map, it's probably going to have to be Syracuse or Utica - Utica, by losing effective control of a House district or Syracuse/Onondaga County by being split up.  The population simply isn't there anymore.

JohnnyLongtorso's map is really ugly, but plausible.  Gibson and Tonko's districts seem to be a bit less compact than they probably have to be.  And I'd expect Hinchey's Gerrymandered monstrosity to somehow keep Newburgh in Orange County, if not also Middletown.

[cinyc]

Here's the number of districts to which the various New York regions are entitled:

Long Island: 3.95
New York City: 11.39
Lower Hudson Valley: 1.90
Mid-Hudson Valley: 1.30
Albany: 1.76
North Country: 0.70
Southern Tier: 1.00
Central New York: 1.45
Rochester: 1.41
Western New York: 2.15

The ideal district size is 717,707.  If you start districting from Long Island, it needs to pull 5% of a district from New York City - about 36,000 residents.  NYC in turn will have 34% of a district to share with the Lower Hudson Valley (Westchester/Rockland/Putnam).  The Lower Hudson Valley will then have about a quarter of a district to push into the Mid-Hudson region, which I've defined to include the outer counties the NYC TV Market (Orange/Dutchess/Ulster/Sullivan).  That ends up giving those counties one full district and 54% of a district to be split up elsewhere.  Pushing that 54% up into the Albany region and then into the North Country would leave the other three regions of the state with almost exactly 6 full districts to be split among them.

Obviously, that's not necessarily how things will be done - Hinchey's district gets in the way of doing so - but should give an idea of how the math works.

[cinyc]

I have a hard time believing urban immigrants were accurately counted.  I bet there's probably more new immigrants on a single tract or two in Flushing than foreclosed homes in all of Queens.

Flushing wasn't Queens' problem. Its population rose.  The problem was with blacks fleeing places like Springfield Gardens, Whites leaving places like Woodside and Astoria's population declining, perhaps due to gentrification.

I could spend hours looking at the NYT's maps - days if they had maps of percentage change in racial subgroups.  That's about all they are missing.

[cinyc]

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.

The western half of the Rockaways are white.  The question then becomes how to draw a district that allows NY-06 to take up Far Rockaway and NY-04 Rockaway Park or so and points west.  Drawing NY-04 into the ocean census tract might work - or some type of point continuity in Jamaica Bay.

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've always though Burkle's NY-25 would be the odd district out Upstate - even more so now with a Democrat winning NY-26.

[cinyc]

A federal judge is calling for a three judge panel to determine whether to appoint a special master to draw the congressional map (and reportedly, the legislative map, too).  The Second Circuit appointed the three judge panel today.  Time is supposedly of the essence now that a federal judge has forced New York to hold its federal primaries in June instead of September to comply with federal military absentee requirements.  I'm not sure how that applies to the legislative maps, which are already out and for which primaries need not be held until September.

[cinyc]

I hope Cuomo stands firm against both parties. Doesn't he have every incentive to kick it to the courts if the lines aren't to his liking?

How hard is it to amend the state constitution in NY?

It is very hard to amend the NY state constitution.  Doing so requires passage by two consecutive legislatures and voter approval.

[cinyc]

According to the New York Post, New York Democrats are reportedly feuding over the shape of Charlie Rangel's district.  One plan has the district sprawling from Harlem to Westchester, presumably picking up African-American majority parts of the North Central Bronx and at least Mount Vernon.  That could be drawn as a majority black VAP district.  Another plan has the district becoming a Hispanic majority district in Manhattan and the Bronx.

Republicans also might be refusing to name the Upstate Republican seat to axe.   Assembly leader Sheldon Silver thinks its possible that no agreement would be reached this week, leaving the courts to draw the map.

[cinyc]

NYS Senate Republicans are going to release a Congressional map tomorrow.  Whether that map is solely their map or a compromise map with Assembly Democrats remains to be seen.

Either way, it is a reaction to the federal court order that the legislature quickly provide a map by Wednesday, with objections to be heard by Friday.  The Congressional map is on a fast track.

[cinyc]

It's not clear to me that the court isn't going to just pick a map from competing Assembly and Senate proposals instead of trying to draw its own.  Time is tight.  Everything needs to be completed in the next two weeks or so because the petitioning process for the primaries begins March 20.  That's because another federal court moved up the federal primaries to late June in order to comply with military absentee requirements.

According to media reports, the special master asked if there was any non-partisan staff on LATFOR, the joint NY Assemby-Senate task force responsible for redistricting.  She was told that there is no non-partisan person on staff.

[cinyc]

The Senate and Assembly are filing separate plans with the court today. 

The Senate Republicans' plan eliminates Hinchey and Ackerman's districts.  Charlie Rangel's district becomes a Hispanic majority district, likely solely in Manhattan and the Bronx.  44 counties are kept whole. 

The Assembly Democrats' plan also carves up Hinchey's district.  It combines Turner with a Democrat - or Democrat-leaning areas.  The exact mechanism is unclear, combining various Queens and Nassau districts, as is what happens to Rangel's district.

No maps yet, just two media blog entries here and here.

[cinyc]

The federal court is accepting maps from the public.  The deadline is Friday.

[cinyc]

The map proposed by Assembly Democrats Republicans is here.

[cinyc]

The map proposed by Assembly Democrats is here.

It seems New York legislators believe it should take us as long to download the map as it took them to draw it.

It's probably the court's website straining to send out a 9MB file.

I made a mistake.  This is a map proposed by Assembly REPUBLICANS, not Democrats.

Strange map.  Rangel's district adds on parts of Queens currently represented by Maloney.  The rest of Maloney's district seems to be combined with Nadler's, which only includes Manhattan.  I'm not sure where she's supposed to run.  One Queens African-American majority district sprawls into Nassau.  Westchester is split four ways, with the Sound Shore put in a minority coalition district that includes the Bronx and Queens.  Hayworth's old NY-19 adds Poughkeepsie and Newburgh.   The new Southern Tier/Utica district gets custody of Ithaca.   The earmuffs are gone and Rochester gets its own district.  County splits seem minimized Upstate.

It would be interesting to see the partisan breakdowns.  DRA isn't working for New York for me.

[cinyc]

Here's the Assembly Republicans' proposal: 

Upstate


Long Island


NYC



The Assembly Democrat and Senate Republican proposals are still not available.  Senate Democrats aren't going to make a proposal.

[cinyc]

This is a map of the Unity proposal, filed by various Hispanic and Asian legal defense type groups.  Note that the map is only of the NYC area.  They didn't even bother redistricting Upstate:



This plan literally axes Turner's NY-09.  There is no NY-09 on the map.

[cinyc]

Plaintiff-Intervenor Map, perhaps the strangest so far:

Upstate, LI:


NYC Inset:


This map seems to preserve the worst of the current gerrymandering with even newer oddly shaped features.   Rochester gets custody of Ithaca in a bizarrely-shaped district.  The Binghamton area is split into two CDs.  Utica gets combined into the North Country District.  And the Long Island districts are totally reworked, with a North Shore and South Shore district crossing county lines.

Hinchey's district is obviously dismantled.  What they eliminate downstate is less clear.

[cinyc]

The NYS Senate Republicans' map:



Syracuse gets custody of Ithaca.  The Albany district gets part of Ulster County in the Hinchey Carve-Up.  As we already knew, Ackerman faces off against McCarthy.

[cinyc]

I didn't see the time deadline for public submissions to the court. Does anyone know if there is a time other than midnight eastern time?

The order just says "by Friday, March 2, 2012", so I guess it's Midnight.

The Assembly plan wasn't immediately posted in the docket, so I guess it's also possible that any public plans wouldn't immediately post, too.

[cinyc]

I didn't see the time deadline for public submissions to the court. Does anyone know if there is a time other than midnight eastern time?

The order just says "by Friday, March 2, 2012", so I guess it's Midnight.

The Assembly plan wasn't immediately posted in the docket, so I guess it's also possible that any public plans wouldn't immediately post, too.

Is the judge drawing the lines really a Dem hack?

The judge referred the case to a magistrate who hired a Columbia professor as a special master.  So even if the judge is a Democratic hack, she's really not the person immediately deciding the case.  The court asked LATFOR to give the special master relevant redistricting data in a format for a particular computer program, specifying it be absent any partisan data and information about the location of incumbents' homes.  So the special master may be drawing his own map.

[cinyc]

There was one other map that is mentioned in some of the court filings, though I don't see it in the docket.  It is the Common Cause New York "Reform" Map.  It radically changes many current  districts, pitting many incumbents together.   And because they used EDs as the basis for district lines, maximum deviation is much greater than 1. 

The map with explanation is available here.  Or, you can see the map on Newsday's DRA-lke mapping page, from which I took these screenshots of the plan:

State:


NYC Metro: