A lawyer for the Democrats argued with a straight face before five Albany appellate justices the other week that New York’s 26 current congressional districts were only an emergency solution to a (Democratic) violation of the state Constitution last year and that the lines should now be redrawn for the next four rounds of elections before the normal redistricting due in 2032.
Justices Molly Reynolds Fitzgerald, John Egan, Elizabeth Garry, Stan Pritzker and Eddie McShan should reject the nonsense and ratify the September ruling of Albany state Supreme Court Justice Peter Lynch, who dismissed the ridiculous case, exclaiming: “I think not!”
Congressional districts are in place for 10 years. It’s been that way since the first census in 1790 and the state Constitution explicitly says that districts “shall be in force until the effective date of a plan based upon the subsequent federal decennial census.” The next big count is in 2030, with new maps in 2032. But the Dems want to short-circuit the system.
Based on the performance of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his fractured Republican conference so far, we hope that Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn wins at least five more seats next year and becomes the Democratic speaker. The six legitimate GOP freshmen from New York, along with Con(gress)man George Santos, make for seven ripe targets.
But Jeffries and the Democrats should seek to win by fielding strong candidates, with good messages and running excellent campaigns, not by trying to redraw the eminently fair New York congressional district maps to give them a partisan advantage.
These current maps were created not by Albany pols, but by an unbiased expert, a special master working for the courts, just as the maps for the prior decade were also created by a special master under judicial authority. New York had the fairest, most competitive districts in the country from 2012 to 2020, with House seats swinging back and forth between the two parties, allowing the voters to choose.
We expect that to be the same situation for the next four rounds of elections up unto 2030.
