With New York's state Assembly Democratic-controlled (as always) and its state Senate having reverted to form with a GOP majority (albeit very narrowly) the assumption is that the state's new congressional map will be a bipartisan incumbent-protection plan that shores up vulnerable members of both sides, as well as dumps a member of each party as New York loses two seats.
I cannot communicate just how badly that in effect amounts to a GOP gerrymander. But I'll try. Imagine Bill Brady (R) had beaten Pat Quinn (D) in the race for Illinois governor last year. With split control in that state, the assumption would be a bipartisan incumbent-protection map as well. So that would essentially mean that Democrats would be going along with a plan to cement the 2010 fluke winners, and creating a map that gives Republicans more seats than they deserve to hold in a neutral environment, and puts most of them out of reach for the foreseeable future. It would literally be a worse map than the old one.
That is essentially what would happen in New York should the Assembly and Governor Cuomo allow an incumbent-protection map. Such a map gives the most benefit to tea party Republicans who wouldn't be able to win re-election in a neutral year. The Democrats who would benefit have already demonstrated their ability to get elected in swing districts during difficult times for our side. In short, we would be screwing ourselves massively. It is very critical that we understand just how rapidly New York has changed in recent years, particularly upstate New York. Under the current map, there are actually zero safe Republican seats, compared to 17 safe Dem seats. Between 2006 and 2010, we won every single seat in the state at least once except for Peter King's NY-03, which is only safe because of the incumbent's popularity. But even there, we held him to 56% in 2006. Were it an open seat, Obama's 47% would provide a good starting point for any Democrat (and Al Gore actually won the district). So any map that actually creates safe Republican seats out of swingy formerly Democratic-held seats (between 2006 and 2010) is essentially a GOP gerrymander.
But a compromise is required, so this is what I propose: a virtual repeat of the current map, minus two seats. Democrats still have a chance to take back a lot of the seats lost in 2010. Republicans also keep their ability to win seats that are quite red at the local level, like those held by Kathy Hochul and Bill Owens. That's the compromise.
Furthermore, with the assumption that Democrats will be losing a safe D seat, I refused to drop a Republican in a swingy seat as well. Getting rid of someone like Buerkle (who holds a 56% Obama seat) is not a fair trade for dropping Ackerman (a 63% Obama seat). That's dropping two Dem seats, just one of them happens to have a fluke GOP incumbent. Same goes for axing Bob Turner, that's also essentially dismantling a Dem seat. So I drew out Tom Reed who holds probably the most conservative upstate district, and even though Eric Massa won it in 2008, it was with a very narrow margin against an extremely scandal-plagued incumbent, and we lost it by 13 points last year so it's the obvious choice to go. Maps and details follow:
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