UPDATED: 14 DEC 2023 10:43 AM EST
ALBANY, New York — Democrats won the court fight. Now they’ll look to win the redistricting war.
New York’s top court Tuesday handed Democrats a victory in a lawsuit over the state’s congressional lines, ordering the restart of a redistricting process that will eventually put the maps in the hands of the Democratic-dominated state Legislature.
How much Democrats seize that opportunity will determine the fate of candidates from Long Island to Syracuse.
There’s a chance the lines might not be as ambitious as some Democrats are hoping: While the Legislature can now redraw the maps, lawmakers also need to guard against an inevitable Republican lawsuit alleging an illegal gerrymander.
Since both sides want to avoid two years of legal battles, any change might be relatively minor — perhaps just tweaking a couple of neighborhoods in the five districts Democrats lost by narrow margins in 2022 and hoping the party fares better in a high-turnout presidential year.
But there will be plenty of pressure from Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, to make sweeping changes to help the party.
“Everybody has strong incentives to draw the maps in a way that creates as many seats that are favorable to Democrats as possible,” Jon Paul Lupo, a New York City Democratic consultant, said.
Exactly what an ambitious overhaul would look like won’t be clear until they’re finalized in January or February. But there are plenty of clues to the changes that might be on tap.
The commission tasked with drafting the plans collected 51 hours of public testimony in 2021. And there have been 20 different congressional plans that have appeared in various legal proceedings — including one that Democrats attempted to enact in 2022.
Here’s a look at five changes Democrats could make if they want to swing for the fences:
1. Join Ithaca and Syracuse
The most obvious move for Democrats would be to place liberal Ithaca in the Central New York district held by freshman Republican Rep. Brandon Williams.
Doing so would add one of the most Democratic-friendly pockets of the state to a district that Williams won by only 2,600 votes last year.
A map that joins Syracuse and Ithaca with other Democratic enclaves like Cortland, another college town, would create a district where Biden dominated by 20 points in 2020 — far better for Democrats than the district Williams narrowly won in 2022, where Biden won by only 7 points.
Drawing a seat like that makes both strategic and legal sense.
Democrats will still need to withstand another round of GOP lawsuits over the lines. Language added to the state constitution in 2014 likely means the best way to beat back a legal challenge would be convincing the courts that changes were made in an attempt to unite communities with common interests.
But Democrats could have an easier time justifying the changes to Williams’ seat than those in other parts of the state: The new district would unite nearby college towns in a compact block.
2. Make Bowman's district more moderate
When Democrats were drawing lines in early 2022, three incumbents lived in the corner north of the Bronx and south of Ulster County in the Hudson Valley.
But the new court-drawn maps contributed to Republican Rep. Mike Lawler’s defeat of Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. It also placed Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones into the same district.
Jones wound up finishing third in a New York City primary. Now he’s challenging Lawler.
Democrats thus have different interests than they did last year: Rather than protecting three of their own, their overarching goal in the region is to topple Lawler.
And with Biden enjoying a nearly 50-point edge in the Bowman seat, there’s room to move blue neighborhoods into the Lawler district without risking a Republican upset against the winner of a Democratic primary between Bowman and Westchester County Executive George Latimer.
The overhaul might not be dramatic: Voting rights concerns could ensure that non-white voters continue to make up a majority of Bowman’s constituency.
But if enough neighborhoods shift, Lawler’s district could become Democratic-friendly enough to let mapmakers move blue corners of his district into the neighboring seat held by Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan. That could be the best of both worlds for Democrats: make Ryan’s seat safer and Lawler’s race more competitive.
The tweaks would leave Bowman’s seat safely Democratic, but also make the primary electorate more moderate. That could be an added bonus for Latimer, a well-liked former state lawmaker whose former colleagues will approve the lines.
3. Protect Molinaro, maybe
Helping freshman Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro probably isn’t a top priority for any Democrat. But he could wind up becoming one of the big winners in a new set of maps.
Democrats drew their 2022 lines to make the party a favorite in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts. They wound up winning only 15 under the lines drawn by the court.
But the blame for the poor showing rests more with a relatively weak election year for Democrats in New York than it did with the maps. Democrats lost in five court-drawn seats where Biden comfortably won in 2020, and they wouldn’t have done much better even if the Democratic lines were still in place.
With those results fresh in mind, any new maps might be less aggressive than those from two years ago.
Rather than trying to draw as many seats as possible in which Democrats have an edge, they could try to draw as many as possible where they have solid advantages. That would limit the number of districts the party could win in a good year, but set the floor in a bad year at somewhere around 18 victories — guaranteeing at least a few pick-ups.
Under the current lines, Molinaro, Williams and Ryan each won with less than 51 percent of the vote, making them textbook swing races. If Democrats decide to take the less aggressive approach, it would be difficult to make Molinaro’s battleground district into a blue stronghold.
So it could be one Democrats simply write off to bolster their chances in neighboring seats — moving Democratic-friendly pieces of the Molinaro seat like Hudson and Ithaca into the seats held by Ryan and Williams. That would come close to locking up two of those three seats for Democrats for the remainder of the decade.
4. Change a part of Brooklyn linked to Staten Island
Staten Island isn’t quite big enough for a district of its own, so it’s guaranteed that it will be joined with a piece of another borough.
In 2022, the final maps were similar to those from the prior decade. The Republican-friendly island was joined with a moderate portion of southern Brooklyn, and Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis received 62 percent of the vote.
The lines that Democrats drew would have paired Staten Island with deep-blue pockets of western Brooklyn like Park Slope — allowing for a competitive district that has voted Democratic in several recent elections.
There’s a path to be even more aggressive.
Democrats didn’t have too much room to play around with the Manhattan maps in 2022, since the mid-town addresses of Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney meant that both needed to have most of their districts squeezed into the portions of the island south of Harlem.
The court-drawn maps placed the two into the same seat, ending Maloney’s career. Nadler now represents the middle portion of Manhattan, while freshman Democrat Dan Goldman represents its southern parts and a chunk of Brooklyn.
It’s possible to push Goldman’s district a bit further into Brooklyn. That would clear room for adding some Manhattan voters to the Malliotakis seat.
While that would be the type of gerrymander that’s likely to come up in court, Democrats would have some ground to argue the boroughs make sense together. Earlier this year, new maps for the state Assembly were approved with strong bipartisan support that were similar.
5. Try something different with Long Island
There are four congressional seats on Long Island. For most of the past decade, the major parties split those 2-2.
Democrats entered 2022 with a plan to squeeze as many Republicans as possible into Rep. Andrew Garbarino’s district — with the goal of solidifying their standing in the other three. That would set the stage for a decade where Democrats held a 3-1 edge in these seats.
Democrats wound up going 0-4 in the court’s maps. They performed so poorly that they would have had the same results even if the Democratic-drawn maps had been on the books.
Mapmakers will need to decide whether they want to swing for the fences again, drawing three districts that appear friendly to Democrats, but none of which is a lock. Or they could try to squeeze as many Democrats as possible into one or two districts to hopefully ensure at least some success in the region.
One major factor that might influence their thinking is the result of the special election to replace Rep. George Santos on Feb. 13.
If the map-making process drags on long enough, state legislators could know if Democrat Tom Suozzi has won the special election. That would ensure that boosting Suozzi’s reelection efforts in November would be a centerpiece of their strategy on the entire island.
Correction: The article has been updated to reflect that former Rep. Mondaire Jones finished third in the 2022 Democratic primary.
