Independent commission fails, legislature will draw NY congressional districts
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In 2014, New Yorkers voted to amend the state constitution to end partisan gerrymandering. The independent redistricting commission that constitutional amendment created failed to pass one bipartisan map, instead leaving the task of redistricting to the Democratic-led state legislature. Now, gerrymandering appears imminent.
The New York State Independent Redistricting Commission is made up of 10 members, four Democrats, four Republicans and two independents. The group was tasked with creating a single, nonpartisan proposal for how to adapt the state’s congressional districts according to new data from the 2020 U.S. Census.
New York state will lose a representative in Congress in 2022 due to the new census information, going from 27 to 26 representatives.
The commission failed, instead submitting two maps — one proposed by the commission’s Democrats and the other by its Republicans. The two independents within the commission voted along with the party that nominated them.
Now, the state legislature will step in and draw the maps itself. It will likely result in maps gerrymandered to favor Democrats, which may have been the plan of state Democrats all along, said David Bateman, associate professor of government at Cornell University.
“The way the commission was set up, it allowed the legislature to go around the commission’s recommendations,” Bateman said. “The commission that was established was not necessarily toothless, but more within arms length of political control than something that would be truly independent.”
This outcome was fairly predictable, he said.
Chair David Imamura, a Democrat, claimed that Republicans refused to cooperate with his side’s recommendations and consigned the group to failure.
“Throughout this process, what has disappointed me most about my Republican colleagues is their seeming indifference to public input and an unwillingness to put pen to paper and modify their maps,” Imamura said in the commission’s final meeting on Jan. 3.
Kyle Chouinard | Asst. News Editor
Vice Chair Jack Martins, a Republican, denied Imamura’s allegations, instead claiming that Democrats cut off negotiations over maps at the last minute, acting in bad faith.
Despite its independent commission, New York’s redistricting will now head for the same partisan redistricting process that will help Republicans in most of the country, according to Steven White, assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University.
White said Democrats have to gerrymander in their own favor in order to keep up with Republican gerrymanders. If they don’t, the Democrats would be putting themselves at a large disadvantage, he said.
“Ultimately, even if Republicans are made worse off in New York state, nationally, the redistricting process for (the 2020 census) is going to help Republicans on net, even if in New York state it’s the opposite direction,” White said.
Kyle Chouinard | Asst. News Editor
The legislature’s redistricting could play a large role in the fate of the U.S. House majority in 2022 as well, both Bateman and White said. Republicans are projected to gain seats from redistricting nationwide, and combined with long-term trends that the non-presidential party does better in midterm elections, Democrats will need all the help they can get in order to hold on to their current nine-seat advantage, White said.
“There’s every reason to expect Democrats will do badly in 2022, not because of any political thing they’re doing in current politics, but just generally that tends to happen. The Republicans did very badly in 2018 with Trump, and Democrats very badly in 2010 with Obama,” White said.
Nationally, Democrats are caught in a difficult situation, Bateman said. Democrats will have to either follow what the party believes and not gerrymander while Republicans continue to — costing them seats — or go against the party’s stated platform, Bateman said. While Democrats would prefer not to gerrymander, it’s a necessity of the current political situation. But a solution to the gerrymandering problem is also hard to execute, he said.
“What the Democrats should be doing is passing national voting rights legislation that would require all states to draw congressional districts on the basis of a genuinely independent commission, in some form or another,” Bateman said. “That would be, from a democratic perspective, a good thing, but that’s not likely to happen. It’s not going to happen because of the anti-democratic institution of the filibuster in the Senate.”
Democrats proposed national voting rights legislation in October, known as the Freedom to Vote Act, which would provide federal oversight to changes in state election law and make partisan gerrymandering more difficult. The bill failed earlier this month, however, due to opposition from Senate Republicans and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., to remove the filibuster rule in the Senate. The voting rights legislation would require the bill to get 60 votes to pass. Sinema was denounced by her own state’s Democratic Party for her vote against changing the rule.
The 24th District, which includes Syracuse, could see major changes after new maps are drawn. Both proposals from the independent commission moved Syracuse into the neighboring 22nd District, bending from Ithaca through Syracuse and east to Utica. It’s difficult to project how this new shape will affect the district’s representation, but it does unify multiple cities that tend to vote for Democrats, Bateman said.
“(The proposed district) concentrates liberals in many ways. It puts together different communities with relatively similar interests. Syracuse, Ithaca and Utica each have as an anchor for their regional economies, major universities. They’re each varied, once-industrial towns that are making the transition to a knowledge economy,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to me to be an implausible district.”
Incumbent Rep. John Katko, R-Camillus, is not running for reelection in the 24th District, leaving the race to Democratic challengers Francis Conole and Steven Holden, who will face each other in a primary this summer, and a yet-unknown Republican candidate.
The state legislature voted down both of the commission’s maps earlier this month and took over the process Wednesday after the commission failed to submit an amended map by the Jan. 25 deadline.
The candidate filing deadline for New York congressional races is April 4, meaning any map the legislature makes should be finalized by that date.
