First off, as this is my first diary here on Daily Kos, I wanted to write about an issue that I care about, and I wanted to discuss an issue that is important for my state and my country. I have been a member of the community here since early 2008, and I have enjoyed the illuminating analysis by fellow Kossacks.
What better way to get started than to discuss a very important political event that occurred yesterday: the New York State Senate coup attempt by the oh-so-corrupt New York GOP. Jake McIntyre had some excellent analysis on why this is such an important development; of course, anytime that a corrupt political party attempts to ignore the will of the people it warrants major attention.
I think that this "coup" forces one to think about the redistricting process that will occur with the 2010 Census.
Let's get down to the nitty gritty:
During the last redistricting round, the Republican-controlled New York State Senate and the Democratic-controlled New York State Assembly decided to protect congressional incumbents by drawing disgusting oddly-shaped districts. My favorite of all is New York's 20th congressional district.
The district - represented by newly-elected Scott Murphy (D-Glens Falls) - encompasses land past Westchester all the way up to the Adirondacks. This district would be somewhat acceptable if not for the odd turn it takes around Albany. The Republicans, when they negotiated the creation of this district, wanted to protect Rep. John Sweeney and create a district that would be in Republican hands forever. Before this past election, this district had a Cook PVI of R+3. Indeed, the GOP drew the district to go around Albany, an undoubtedly Democratic-leaning city, thus gerrymandering the district and making it chock-full of Republicans.
During the 2008 election, I worked for Former Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand in the bottom part of the district. Even though she was quite popular in this very conservative district, we still had to work for each vote she got due to the outrageous Republican voter advantage in the district. Fortunately, we prevailed, but the outrageous gerrymandering of the district made it very hard for us.
Unfortunately for the Democratic voters of New York's 23rd and 26th districts, they too are stuck with badly-gerrymandered districts. Adding insult to injury, they both have Republican representatives to this day. The 26th has such an odd configuration because the State Senate wanted to pack all of the Democratic voters into Louise Slaughter's Rochester-based 28th district. The 28th is known as the "earmuffs" district for the lap around the 26th's Republican bastion. (Peter King's Long Island district would also fall into the category of a weirdly-drawn district favoring a Republican, but his district would be harder to redraw in favor of a Democrat due to the Republican-leaning blue collar suburbanites of Long Island.)
Need another example about how poorly these districts are? Take a look at Republican-leaning 24th, which was drawn to protect Republican Sherwood Boehlert.
Now that we've established how poorly drawn these districts are, the question is what do we do about it? Well, since the vast majority of people reading this diary are probably not in the New York Legislature, we can petition our state government to draw fair districts. Yesterday's Senate brouhaha highlighted that the state GOP is desperately trying to save their brand, even by ignoring the will of New York's voters.
New York is on pace to lose a congressional seat next Census, per Nate Silver. It is very important for a fair redistricting process to allow New York to have its proper say in the United States Congress. Although the partisan in me says that we should eliminate at least one of the two remaining Republicans (assuming John McHugh gets confirmed as the Secretary of the Army) with the elimination of one of the districts, I would like fairly-drawn districts the most.
Admittedly, I've tried to draw my own version of what the map should look like after the 2010 Census. It would be way too much work to do that right now, but I will probably do that a little later once school officially ends for the year. In my map, though, I will definitely refine Arcuri's district, Slaughter's district, and Murphy's. I would also change NY-23 and NY-29 (Eric Massa's "Southern Tier" district which is gerrymandered to hold a massive amount of Republican votes).
One thing people forget when it comes to redistricting in New York is that the population loss comes from Upstate New York. It would be a mistake, however, to forget that New York City's districts are also badly drawn. There is no reason, at least to me (and I would love to get corrected), that Jerrold Nadler should represent the entire West Side and parts of Southern Brooklyn. There is no direct correlation between the two. Carolyn Maloney's Upper East Side district is also oddly-shaped.
The redistricting process is one that I will focus on heavily in the coming years. If the Democrats hold the assembly (they will), the governor's mansion (they probably will if Cuomo gets in), and the Senate (less certain, but I think they will as New York is becoming even bluer), I strongly believe that we will get cleaner districts for the 2012 election.
The underlying moral is that we need to support and pay more attention to down-ticket races, and we also must make sure that the New York GOP does not get away with their unjust resolution to take control of the Senate.