As New York’s Independent Redistricting Commission considers new electoral maps, the leaders of three Capital Region cities gathered this morning, pushing the IRC to keep Albany, Schenectady, and Troy together in the same Congressional district.
In the rotunda at Schenectady City Hall Wednesday, Mayor Gary McCarthy was joined by Mayors Kathy Sheehan and Patrick Madden of Albany and Troy, respectively. All are Democrats.
Currently, all three cities are represented in Washington by Democrat Paul Tonko of the 20th House District. But with New York losing a Congressional seat due to the most recent Census, the map will change.
New York’s Independent Redistricting Commission is considering two Congressional maps – one that favors Democrats, the other Republicans. But the map that includes more Democratic-leaning districts carves Schenectady out of the Capital Region, and moves it to the district that is currently represented by Democratic Representative Antonio Delgado of the 19th district.
McCarthy says the mayors want to keep the tri-city area together.
“We’re fortunate to have strong leadership in our current Congressman. That district, there’s a lot of commonality in it. It meets the criteria of redistricting. And I believe it creates a platform for continued success,” said McCarthy.
Rep. Tonko has also been vocal on the issue. Tonko, who hails from Amsterdam, risks being redistricted out of representing the heart of the Capital Region.
Troy Mayor Patrick Madden says the three cities — which are counted together as a metropolitan area — share families, businesses, social and economic interests, a public transit system in the Capital District Transportation Authority, and even the Tri-City Valley Cats baseball team, where giant-headed mascots of the mayors run the bases.
At a time where communities advocated for and are now receiving federal coronavirus relief aid, Madden said a split would “dilute” the voice of the area in Washington.
“The communities of Albany and Schenectady and Troy, we’re strong partners. We collaborate often on common issues that impact our communities. As mayors, we’re constantly in conversation about the challenges that we share. These conversations reinforce the importance of a shared Congressional representative,” said Madden.
In the early months of the pandemic under the Cuomo administration, Mayor Kathy Sheehan served on the regional control room for the eight-county Capital Region, though Madden and McCarthy did not.
Using it as an example of their unification, Sheehan said she’d speak with her counterparts in Schenectady and Troy after the weekly control-room call with state leaders.
“We met on a Zoom call, as everyone met back in those days, to talk about what we were experiencing, what we were hearing from our businesses, what we wanted to communicate back to the state – make sure that the state knew and understood the challenges we were facing. And, again, it was an area where many of the concerns that we had for the cities of Albany, Schenectady and Troy were very much aligned: feeding people, making sure that we have the infrastructure and support in place to make sure our families were taken care of,” said Sheehan.
The deadlocked IRC currently has until January to come together on new maps. But a new state law would give more powers to the state legislature to draw its own maps if a decision is not reached by the IRC.
Mayor McCarthy said he supports Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul decision to sign the Democratic-backed legislation last week.
“I would hope the commission is able to come to an agreement on the Congressional districts and also the Senate and Assembly districts. But we see too many things, both in Washington, Albany, where sometimes at the local level we don’t see the logic in the action and things get deadlocked and pushed back. And so I think the governor has acted appropriately to put that responsibility back and put that pathway there that’s going to allow the districts to be in place so that we can move forward in a timely manner with the 2022 elections,” said McCarthy.
Republicans and Conservatives, however, have criticized the new law as going against the will of voters who rejected an Election Day ballot measure that included similar language.
