We keep writing about Acting Steuben County state Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister because he is the honest upstate judge who is handling the litigation over New York’s decennial redistricting, which the Legislature’s Democratic supermajority and Gov. Kathy Hochul enacted in violation of the state Constitution, before the Independent Redistricting Commission submitted two rounds of maps as required.
We watched the hearing McAllister held Tuesday and think he must have been as disgusted as we were with the contention of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, as argued by Heastie’s lawyer, that it doesn’t matter that the proposed Assembly lines — which the state’s highest court said were the product of a rotten process that violated the will of the people — remain in place for the next decade. Is this a banana republic?
McAllister must agree to the request of three separate parties to let those protesting the Assembly maps join the case that has already thrown out the maps for state Senate and Congress, forcing those primaries to be moved from June 28 to Aug. 23. Depressingly, the arguments against intervention came from the Republicans who initially sued as well as lawyers for Hochul, Heastie, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and the Dem/GOP cabal in charge of the state Board of Elections.
The unified bipartisan front contended that it was too late for a new claim. But it’s not. The Court of Appeals upheld McAllister on April 27, and these suits were filed within days. And despite what the Dem/GOP cabal whines, it’s not too late to redraw the Assembly maps, which Heastie and GOP Minority Leader Will Barclay both like. Redrawing them under court supervision should be very fast, unlike the heavily disputed Senate and congressional maps.
McAllister was right to ask if there was a Heastie-Barclay deal, as the state Constitution says that “districts shall not be drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents.”
If McAllister doesn’t let these petitioners into the case and toss the maps, another judge will have to.
———
