As an ex-New Yorker, I keep my eyes perennially glued to New York politics. It did not shock me terribly that Republicans took back a fair number of upstate New York house seats. There were a lot of 27-1 or 28-0 nonsense maps put on this website last winter that failed to take into account that Republicans in New York often vote Democratic for president when they think the national candidate is too extreme but have no problem voting Republican downballot the rest of the way. This may eventually change, like the voting habits of Dixicrats in the South apparently have, but it will take a while.
What shocked me the most was that it appears that the State Senate, and with it the Democratic trifecta that everyone was counting on last winter, has switched back into narrow GOP control pending the recounts in a few still undeclared State Senate seats. With the lost of the North Buffalo seat to a Republican candidate, it appears our best hopes lay on working to a 31-31 tie. Still, even were the lieutenant governor to cast a tie-breaking vote to organize the chamber for the Democrats, we have to keep in mind that there are quite a few scumbags in the delegation (Carl Krueger always tops the list in my view now that Espada and Montserrate are gone) who are more than willing to cut a deal with Dean Skelos (the GOP leader in the State Senate). I therefore assume the following:
1) The GOP will have a seat at the table with redistricting. Even with the very best scenario of the state senate breakdown of 31-31, it would be very hard to pass a Democratic gerrymander through the state legislature. That’s just the reality.
2) It will be an incumbent protection map that discomfits only those chosen to be drawn out.
3) Despite Cuomo’s enthusiasm for a commission drawing the maps, it will not be passed in time to affect this round of redistricting and probably won’t be passed ever. I can hardly ever see Shelly Silver giving up on drawing the State Assembly lines and that’s what it would take for Cuomo’s idea to prevail. The Democratic leadership of the State Assembly perennially sold their party brothers and sisters over in the State Senate down the river for decades in going along with all the pro-GOP gerrymandering of the State Senate. I hardly see anything different now.
So this will be an agreement brokered between 3 men in a room, like the state budget or anything in New York State politics. (For those of you not from New York or familiar with this phrase, it refers to the governor, the Assembly Speaker (always Democrat) and the State Senate President (usually historically Republican).
4) In addition to protecting the 4 black VRA districts and the 2 Hispanic VRA districts, a 3rd Hispanic district out of Joe Crowley’s currently minority-majority district that is Queens/Bronx will likely have to be passed to pass VRA preclearance. This complicates greatly the map for downstate in a way that 2000 did not. I would imagine that one of the three Queens white Democrats (Ackerman, Weiner, Crowley) gets the axe but expect there to be bitter racial tension over this. Even if the GOP is closed out from redistricting through some act of miracle like the Buffalo state senator deciding to caucus with Democrats and/or Craig Johnson and Suzi Oppenheimer both winning their recounts, all it takes is one or two disgruntled Latino politicians that their constituency isn’t getting their “fair share” of congressional districts for them to bolt tactically to the Republicans. If you don’t think this is a serious concern, I consult you to the 2001 mayoral election as a textbook example. Fernando Ferrer sat on his hands – the Bronx Democratic machine did nothing on election day – and Bloomberg won.
So the crux of the matter is that a third Hispanic district will be created, very likely in the Queens/southern and eastern Bronx area. Despite the fact that Crowley has close ties to Shelly Silver, he seems likeliest to be discomfited the most by the stark demographic realities of New York City.
5) In the past, New York State politicians in Albany have tended to privilege clout above all else. Anyone who sits on Appropriations (Israel, Hinchey, Lowey, Serrano), Ways and Means (Rangel for now, Crowley, Higgins), or Financial Services because of the state’s ties to Wall Street and the large donations these members can draw (Maloney, Velazquez, Ackerman, Meeks, McCarthy) are generally immune from losing their districts. I would add to this list Peter King (the incoming chair of Homeland Security – very important in swinging money to NYC and the State which overrides national partisan political objectives) and Slaughter (on Rules, which if the national Democrats get their act together and win back the House, she will again chair).
6) Western New York, which took the brunt the last time will not this time around, even though that is the part of the state that is losing the most population. Either a prettier version of the dumbells will be created again for Slaughter, or there will be a Buffalo-Niagara Falls and a Rochester-Monroe County district.
7) The Hudson Valley (which gave up the other lost seat in 2002) will also not lose a seat. Nita Lowey is too powerful to consent to a Westchester brawl between her and Nan Haysworth. Hinchey’s on the powerful appropriations committee so a Hudson Valley conglomerated district between him and Haysworth also isn’t going to happen, either. Given the state GOP’s desire to want to protect their most imperiled pickup, Buerkle’s surprise defeat of Dan Maffei in the Syracuse-based district, Hinchey’s elongated Southern Tier-Hudson Valley district will be needed to suck up ultra liberal votes out of Tompkins County.
Therefore, who might get targeted for elimination?
If New York only loses one seat, it seems easy to me to predict the outcome. Bill Owens and Chris Gibson will be merged together in an Eastern Upstate New York congressional district that combines the northern most counties with the upper Hudson Valley, swooping around Albany. It would be, depending on how you draw the lines, anywhere between a 52-54% Obama district and truly a “fair fight.”
What I’ve been struggling with is who gets the axe in addition if it’s a two-seat casualty loss and New York only has 27 seats after 2010. In this scenario, the bipartisan redistricting scenario would require one Democratic and one Republican seat to vanish. Upstate New York is where they would almost definitely take the Republican seat from. Bill Owens would be left alone and Hanna and Gibson or Gibson and Haysworth would be merged.
Okay, so far so good. Which Democrat gets the axe? Remember, NYC is an universe all to itself and city politicians have a tendency to privilege the maintenance of clout and seniority over all else. Also, it seems to me that even when I run the numbers on Dave’s redistricting app, a 3rd Hispanic district will still have to likely be created; therefore Crowley is still in a lot of peril one way or the other.
My guess is Eliot Engel of the north Bronx will eventually get the axe. He is not well-liked in the delegation, nor by the Bronx party machine. The demographic realities of a two-district loss mean that upstate will push a bit south even with losing one seat (because all of the population growth has been Hudson Valley-South for the past 2 decades at least) and there isn’t enough room in the Bronx to maintain a white district for him. He sits on Foreign Affairs, which is a plum committee, but for pork barrel and “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” New York parochial politics, that aint good enough when push comes to shove.
The only thing that gives me pause is that when I play with it on Dave’s application, it does make the map a bit messy. Haysworth swings south a tiny bit, like in the current map, to grab up more Republican-leaning or mixed areas of northern Westchester and northern Rockland. Lowey takes the rest of Rockland and Westchester easily enough. Then you would have Nadler swing north into Riverdale and left-over parts of Yonkers not needed in Lowey’s district. Rangel could then have retain a black-plurality for his district by going into the north Bronx, Mt Vernon and parts of New Rochelle. And then you would have room enough to create the 3rd Hispanic district in the southeast Bronx/northern Queens areas. Down in Brooklyn, Grimm gets the heavily McCain precincts, the two black districts expand a bit more in that direction to gain new population, and Anthony Weiner gets the rest of the area that Nadler gives up. Weiner is exactly the kind of Democrat that these voters would vote for so that’s not a big problem.
My only other guess is what to do out in Long Island. Is it possible to really help Bishop at the expense of Israel or (ripple effects) McCarthy? Bear in mind that Peter King has a safe pass given a) his position as the chair of Homeland Security and b) Dean Skelos being a fellow Nassau County Republican. Realistically also, and this was the major flaw in many of the maps I saw it last year, no New York City politician wants to have to represent Long Island – there is just this hostility between the two regions as well as this narrow parochialism that is a New York City disease (and I can say that being a former New Yawker myself – I absolute refuse to give up rooting for my often lousy Mets).
So Peter King gets a safe GOP district, but unless you go into the City and have some of the City districts come out into the Island a bit, there are only enough Democrats for 2 districts (the current 2nd and 4th, both at 59% Obama performance).
So that’s what I foresee happening; Bishop not being helped all that much (except maybe the removal of Smithtown and the home of Altschuler) with some minority areas of Islip Town being added in its place. This brings his district up from 52-53% Obama to 55% Obama, not that much of a help frankly. It would have to be done in such a way not to imperil Israel most of all (as an appropriator he has a tremendous amount of clout) and McCarthy indirectly (because if you have Israel grab black areas in Nassau to compensate for losing minority voters in Islip, you risk imperiling McCarthy).
So the likeliest Democratic casualty if it is a 2-district loss seems to me to be Eliot Engel. The only other possible scenario that I keep playing in my head is that perhaps Weiner gets the axe with everyone expecting (including himself all these years) that he will run for mayor in 2013. I also note that he does not sit on any important clout committee – Education and Labor is not important enough in steering resources or in protecting tax provisions for Wall Street for Albany politicians to care much to want to protect him. Engel still might not out of the woods with this scenario, though. Might Shelly Silver protect his protege Crowley by drawing Eliot Engel into a Hispanic-majority district, axeing Weiner and drawing Crowley a dream Queens district where he can marshal the Queens Democratic machine behind him? Intriguing possibilities….
I welcome your thoughts on this. As someone who, because of my job, now resides in southern Illinois and only comes back to the City 2-3 times a year or to the Hudson Valley (where I’m originally from), my political radar antenna isn’t as perceptive as it might be were I still resident in New York.
how much Cuomo values a Democratic senate majority. If he really does, he will veto to plan and leave it to be drawn by a court.
For what it’s worth, I think Democrats–and the state itself–would be best served by court drawn maps up and down the ballot. The only way Republicans can retain control of the senate (if at all) is through a gerrymander even more horrendous than the current one.
It would be difficult to work Daves tool in NYC until the updated census figures come out and are entered. I may be wrong, but the racial percentages are based on 2000 data. The numbers for the counties in NYC.
It is much more difficult in LA County, where the intra-county percent of increase distorts the numbers for individual districts exponentialy more than in NYC, where at least there are 5 counties.
In LA County [California] it is my opinion that the number of blacks in the central city, for instance is significantly over emphasized.
This is nothing to say against Dave- It would be next to impossible or time consuming to compensate the various precincts of the county from zero to 20% increase[probably more of a range], which could be the difference between downtown and the area north of the mountains, where CD25 is now located.
But the numbers in Dave tool are sufficiently accurate to show that all of the districts in LA county, except CD25, are heavily D. But CD25, which is R, is probably the district with the greatest increase in population.
But I have a trouble in the basis here.
Reading this, it seems like the democratic party is really weak and would not be able for stop nothing against the own interest in New York. I think this is not the reality, even if the state senate end with 32R-30D. Here the republicans have not the power like in Texas.
At least, I think you can forget a new VRA seat in New York, you can forget the seat of a democratic incumbent disappearing, and you can forget see some current democratic incumbent in a district worse than D+5 after the redistricting process.
You should see a republican incumbent without district after the redistricting. I think NY-25 is the district what can disappear because no-one democrat should accept to make it a R+ district for protect Buerkle and the republicans will prefer keep their R+ seats because they have higher chance of keep them. That can help making more democratic NY-23 what must up until D+5/D+6 and for it need democratic votes from Syracuse and/or Albany.
This leaves still 7 R+ districts with republican incumbents. And this is still under the minimum of the minimum for a democrat. The democrats should improve this poor 21-7 map if they are some Pedro Espada between the state senate republicans. And I think they will have. Then, the republicans still have some reasons for worry.
His current district was 36% Hispanic in 2000 (so it may be 40 or more by now), and I’ve never heard about the Hispanic base having any problems with him. Even if they make the district 55% Hispanic or so, I could see Crowley winning the primary and continuing to represent the district.
Another option is swinging Crowley south and sending Weiner into the Bronx. He’s already focused on his NYC mayor campaign in 2013 so he may choose to temporarily step aside and start working on that, opening the door for a 3rd Hispanic Rep.
about redistricting seat elimination and nearly always a tried and true rule is this. Its always better for a party to eliminate its strongest seat. That’s a painful thought in many cases but its true.
In MA we see that chopping up MA8 allows the distribution of lots of strong territory to other districts. If you chopped up MA3 or MA5 you would handing out some GOP areas or GOP leaning areas to surrounding districts. Who wants that?
If NY loses two seats (as seems likely) its clear one will be upstate GOP and the other will be NY city D.
I would argue that the republicans would put CD26 & CD29 together. Yes Owens & Hinchley plus the other three upstate democrats will be marginally improved (Slaughter would get much more of Monroe county back).
Buerkle & Hanna would get some prime rural/suburban pieces from 29 plus Hayworth & Gibson would get some nice areas too.
There is a large population shortfall in CD28-CD27-CD26-CD29 so (%wise it appears to be the largest in NY) so logically this area should take a hit.
Hinchley take the balance of Tompkins plus Chemung–Hanna Yates & Schyler while Buerkle gets Onatario–
You can keep moving westward if you need to. I am not into maps yet but theories right now.
As noted the GOP would be silly to divide up Buerkle-who wants 1/2 of Onondaga county?
Going off of several of the comments, I am playing with the idea that a basic incumbent-protection map is agreed to, with the Republicans agreeing to their weakest freshman incumbent (Buerkle) being axed in exchange for the Democrats allowing them to roll the dice one more time and try to preserve their perilous hold on the State Senate. The Democrats, under pressure from the national party will go along with this because Bill Owens (their most imperiled incumbent at the moment other than Bishop out in Long Island who really can’t be helped much without pissing off more powerful Israel and McCarthy) gets a far safer district by grabbing Syracuse and jettisoning all the tea-party sympathetic areas, including the home of Doug Hoffman. If Hoffman wants to continue his crusade he’ll have to attack Gibson; have fun Doug! The Republicans will go along with this because, well they’ll they will get a court-drawn plan otherwise and, it does shore up several GOP leaning seats upstate or at least spreads the pain more evenly. Boehner may not be happy about this one bit but I am sold on the idea that Albany Republicans will try to save their own skins ahead of the national party, which is semi-toxic in New York State anyhow.
District 17 (purple) Engel (D) 49 W, 29 B, 16 H
Obama 66, McCain 33
Takes the most Republican (ultra-Hasidic Jews) areas of southern Orange and Rockland and drowns them out in the north Bronx. Engel will like this slightly-more suburban, slightly-less Bronx district. Follows the long-standing tradition in New York districting which holds that only one district crosses from Long Island into the City and likewise only one district crosses from Bronx into Westchester.
District 18 (yellow) Lowey (D)
Obama 60, McCain 39
No worries here for Lowey. As part of an incumbent protection deal, it takes the most Democratic strongholds in Westchester, save Mt. Kisco/Bedford where Hayworth lives, to leave Haysworth a district she can win. Were this a straight Democratic gerrymander, I’d have Lowey take almost all of Putnam and have Hayworth come down to Greenburgh and make both districts about 58% Obama, but not in cards unfortunately unless New York does a mid-cycle Delay-style redistricting when (not if) the Democrats seize back control of the State Senate.
District 19 (puky green-yellow) Hayworth (R)
Obama 52, McCain 47
Still only R+1 like currently. As a parochial consideration, I included all of my former county growing up (Dutchess in the district) – as a county that now has a slight Democrat voter registration advantage, I think time might be on our side with this district.
District 20 (pink) Gibson (R)
Obama 50, McCain 49
Becomes slightly more Republican with the addition of the Tea Party areas of Owen’s current district. Doug Hoffman can run here if he likes. And the establishment wing of the state GOP will do this deliberately, too (see the addition of Madison County to Bill Owen’s district in 2002 to help out Sherry Boehlert if need a reason why).
District 21 (maroon) Tonko (D)
Obama 58, McCain 40
I’ll call this the I-88 district. Surprisingly for central New York, Otsego County is mildly Democratic.
District 22 (brown) Hinchey (D)
Obama 59, McCain 40
Largely the same politically as before, but with the addition of Cortland and Auburn to help out Hanna/Buerkle next door.
District 23 (light blue) Buerkle (R) vs. Hanna (R)
Oboma 49, McCain 49 (Obama carried the district by ~1700 votes)
Removes Syracuse and a few northern suburbs (I won’t cut up townships if I can avoid it… seems funny to me) and combines Buerkle with Hanna into a slight Republican-leaning district. About the best you can draw in central New York if your aim is to bolster Bill Owens to the north. Besides the GOP might end up losing both Hanna and Buerkle in 2012 with Obama winning New York by a landslide; I would think that a hard-nosed politician like Dean Skelos knows this and will sacrifice one (Buerkle) to save the other.
District 24 (purple) Owens (D)
Obama 59, McCain 40
Owens is the prime beneficiary of this incumbent-protection plan. His district removes his chief political opponent (Hoffman), and adds ultra-Democratic Syracuse to the already Democratic North Country, shedding its more conservative areas to the South. The only problem is that this is aint no community of interest district. But as I said earlier, downstate NY Democrats don’t care one bit about upstate – although expect this district to be lambased across the state in newspaper editorials by go-go types.
District 25 (pink-red) Reed (R)
Obama 46, McCain 52
With a 28 district map it is not possible, without endangering Slaugter or Higgins, to collapse Reed and Lee together into a super-safe GOP district. Even though it is losing people in droves, Western New York supports a bit more than ~3.7 districts. So I chopped Buerkle out of a seat instead, added Wayne County and the Finger Lakes region to this Southern Tier district, and called it a day.
District 26 (slate gray) Slaughter (D)
Obama 59, McCain 40
Most Democratic areas of Monroe County and a tiny finger down to Geneseo.
District 27 (green) Lee (R)
Obama 44, McCain 54
In taking up the idea of an exclusively Erie County district for Higgins, I thought that the addition of all of Niagara would piss Lee off. But actually this works in giving him a safer seat than he has now! And It is coherent as well, which I like.
District 28 (pink) Higgins (D)
Obama 63, McCain 36
And finally a Democratic bastion for Higgins – not that he needs this safe a district of course but under an incumbent-protection map he’ll get one all the same.
Another try at a 28 seat Bipartisan deal.
Here, Owens is axed, and CD25 is the swing district
Old Dist New Dist Incumbent
Obama vote Obama vote
CD19 51 49 Haysworth R
CD20 51 48 Gibson R
CD21 58 59 Tonko R
CD22 59 59 Hinchey D
CD23 52 52 Hanna/Owens Lean R
CD24 51 gone Hanna goes to CD23
CD25 56 54 Buerkle Lean R/S
CD26 46 45 Lee R
CD27 54 64 Higgins D
CD28 69 59 Slaughter D
CD29/24 48 47 Reed R
The boundary between CD24 and CD25 can easily be adjusted to reflect between 53-55% Obama, as the negotiations proceed.
If the Dems can redistrict again after 2012, the boundary CD24/CD25 can be cleaned up to make a Democratic CD25, a Democratic CD13, and a Democratic CD13.
D R S
Delegation now 20 9
Above plan 19 8 1
Just for fun, I left Hoffman in CD23. In my dreams, the R negotiators overlook this.
Much of CD23 would be new to Hanna, but the most populous area, Oneida, would be transferred with him into it. Owens 4 year roll of the dice should be over, unless the tea party decides that Hanna is not barking to their drum.
Now a two-time loser.
I don’t think Bill Owens, Chris Gibson, or Dick Hanna has a thing to fear from him now. If Hoffman runs again, it’ll be for gadfly reasons. Tea partiers can (and I suspect will) find fresher faces.