With control of the United States House of Representatives potentially hanging in the balance, the New York State Legislature voted last week to redraw the state’s congressional districts in a way that makes a Democratic gain of three seats more likely.
After a contentious Feb. 2 vote in the Legislature, New York’s First Congressional District, a seat that is up for grabs as Representative Lee Zeldin runs for New York State governor, will both expand westward to encompass more Democratic-leaning territory and lose the Republican-heavy western part of Southampton Town to the Second District. Where the First District once spanned the five East End towns, Brookhaven, and part of Smithtown, it will now stretch from the East End into Nassau County, encompassing parts of Islip, Babylon, Huntington, and into Oyster Bay, apparently concentrating more Democratic-leaning voters.
The implications are enormous for Suffolk County Legislators Bridget Fleming and Kara Hahn, both seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination to represent the First District, and their Republican counterparts, Robert Cornicelli and Anthony Figliola. Though the district has historically flipped between Democrats and Republicans, Mr. Zeldin won four consecutive elections, three of them by a wide margin.
With the redrawing of congressional districts, which Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law last Thursday, the Democratic hopefuls in the state’s First Congressional District stand a far better chance of electoral victory in November. As Ms. Fleming noted in a Jan. 31 fund-raising email that followed the Legislature’s issuance of the proposed new district map, the redrawn First District voted for President Biden by 11 points in 2020, versus the district’s 4-point margin of victory for former President Trump in 2020.
The First Congressional District “will now be at the forefront of the national effort to keep the House,” Ms. Fleming said in the email. “We’re going to need candidates who have won in tough districts and can appeal to swing voters who will decide these elections. . . . It could mean the difference between keeping Democratic control of the U.S. House of Representatives or losing it.”
The redrawn map is “a game-changer in many ways,” Ms. Hahn said on Tuesday. “With these new lines, this district becomes one of the few Republican-held seats that Biden won in 2020 and is really going to be one of the best red-to-blue pickup opportunities.” Like Ms. Fleming, she presented her candidacy as the one best positioned to win in the general election on Nov. 8. “There’s no question that we need a strong candidate to take the district back for Democratsin a hard cycle like this one. I’ve represented my community for over 10 years in the Legislature and won six elections in the legislative district, including in ‘wave’ Republican years like 2021.”
But Republicans including Mr. Figliola, who last month announced the campaign for his party’s nomination, remained upbeat. “I’m all in,” he said on Monday. “I anticipated that they were going to make some changes to the district, that we were most likely going to get [Central Islip] and Brentwood.” He noted that his campaign website is available in Spanish. “I will do a lot of outreach” to Latino voters, he said. “They can throw whatever they want against us, but my campaign is about the working-class men and women of Long Island — Republicans, Independents, and Democrats. I feel our campaign is primed and ready for whatever changes we make to this district. Bring it on.”
“The redistricting is interesting,” Mr. Cornicelli, who is known as Cap, said in an email. “We know there are going to be court battles, but if these are the lines then so be it. I always knew that running in New York was going to be a fight but at the end of the day, however the party numbers play out, we’re confident our message will resonate with our constituents. Running for office is never easy and it definitely is something that should not be taken lightly. We knew it was going to be a battle, but it’s one we’re looking forward to.”
Democrats also hope to flip Republican-held seats in Central New York and the North Country.
The redrawing of New York’s election districts comes amid the backdrop of a nationwide struggle for control of Congress, where Democrats presently hold a narrow majority. With looming midterm elections that historically favor the party that does not control the White House, Republicans hope to regain a majority. That effort would presumably be helped by efforts in Republican-controlled state legislatures to redraw districts to their advantage. Last week, the Democratic-controlled New York Legislature followed suit.
The Legislature’s vote to redraw districts followed a long and ultimately futile bipartisan effort to draw new maps. In 2014, voters in the state overwhelmingly approved creation of the Independent Redistricting Commission to reform the redistricting process. The commission was supposed to conduct “rational line-drawing,” according to its website, and protect minority voting rights.
But the commission, comprising an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, could not agree on a redrawn map, and the matter was relegated to the Legislature, where Democrats hold a majority in the Assembly and Senate.
The Legislature’s vote prompted cries of gerrymandering, the manipulation of electoral boundaries to favor one party over another practiced in many states and by both major parties. Gerrymandering has evolved, becoming so precise as to allow creation of districts that, while bizarrely contorted on a map, practically guarantee one party’s control. The result is incumbents and candidates who effectively choose their voters, and not the other way around.
“In 2014, and again last November, New Yorkers overwhelmingly voiced their support for an independent redistricting process to create fair, nonpartisan lines and ensure equal representation for all,” Rob Ortt, the Senate Republican leader, said in a statement issued after the vote. “This week, Legislative Democrats shamelessly turned their backs on the will of New Yorkers by adopting legislation to create their own gerrymandered partisan districts after rejecting maps created by the Independent Redistricting Commission. They did so behind closed doors, without considering input from thousands of communities of interest or holding a single public hearing.”
“Democrats’ hypocritical actions are blatant attacks on our democratic process,” Mr. Ortt said, echoing the complaints of Democrats in Republican-controlled states where gerrymandering has allowed a near lock on power.
Redrawing of congressional and state legislative districts follows the United States Census, conducted every 10 years. The most recent census determined that New York would lose one congressional seat due to national population shifts. New York’s Assembly and Senate districts were also redrawn, and some are likely to change hands in upcoming elections.
As in other states, the redrawn maps will have to withstand legal challenges. A Republican-led group of voters has filed a lawsuit arguing that the new district boundaries violate a 2014 constitutional amendment meant to protect against partisanship in the drawing of district maps.
