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Lawmakers to vote on legislative redistricting proposal after IRC deadlock

 The New York State Capitol in Albany
Lucas Willard
/
WAMC
The New York State Capitol in Albany

The Democrat-controlled New York State legislature today approved new Congressional districts after the state's Independent Redistricting Commission failed to come to an agreement on new electoral maps. On Thursday lawmakers will consider state legislative districts.

New York’s state legislative districts are being remade as part of a new redistricting plan set for a vote on Thursday. Some of the state’s 63 Senate districts will look very different from their current configuration, after the legislature redrew lines in a closed-door session when an independent redistricting body deadlocked.

Among Republican incumbents who would see significant changes to their districts is Senator Daphne Jordan of the 43rd District.

Jordan’s hometown of Halfmoon in Saratoga County is now slated to be a part of a new 46th District, which would include Schenectady, the City of Troy, and Saratoga Springs. The new district would favor Democrats, according to the Center for Urban Research at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Jordan says she plans to seek re-election in the new district.

“While I am going to be picking up new areas, I will represent them just as I represent the towns that I already have,” said Jordan.

The new 43rd District would stretch along the eastern edge of New York from Rensselaer County to Dutchess County, including the City of Poughkeepsie, favoring Democrats.

Jordan says New York voters who seeking a fair redistricting process are not getting what they wanted in 2022.

She points to the statewide referendum that created the IRC, which was passed by voters overwhelmingly in 2014, and to the skepticism shown by voters who defeated a November proposition to streamline the redistricting process in case the IRC could not come to an agreement by handing it to the legislature. Both chambers in Albany are controlled by veto-proof Democratic majorities.

“What the voters wanted in 2014 and what the voters voted for by defeating the bill that was sponsored on the ballot this year is not what the voters are getting,” said Jordan.

Republican State Senator Jim Tedisco’s 49th District is large as it stands today. The Glenville resident who has long represented the Schenectady area would see a new 51st District run from Schenectady – minus the city of the same name – to Chenango County in Central New York. The new 47th would wrap from Saratoga County to the Canadian border.

Tedisco had hoped the IRC could come to agreement on the new legislative maps.

“Well, when my colleagues, all collectively, voted together to say, ‘We’ve had enough of this and we want independence,’ I thought they’d live up to that the constituents they promised to have that,” said Tedisco. “And clearly what happened here, they could have come to fair agreement. They know what fairness and parity looks like, and they know what gerrymandering looks like. This is the ultimate gerrymandering,” said Tedisco.

Republicans say they anticipate a lawsuit over the issue. But the seeds of this process were planted last time.

Democratic State Senator Neil Breslin, whose new 45th District would drop the City of Troy but extend further south into Albany and Rensselaer Counties, points to when a Republican-led Senate walked back campaign promises and drew legislative maps in 2012 after the legislature could not come to agreement. That set the stage for establishing the commission that deadlocked again this time around.

The 44th District Democrat said he had been hoping for a compromise.

“That didn’t happen, so it goes to a Democratic Assembly and Senate. And it’s ripe for allegations of improprieties. But I don’t see those improprieties,” said Breslin. “And it’s like, where were you, Jim Tedisco and others, complaining about cutting up my district for the Amedore district, the new district, so it would protect the Republican minority 10 years ago, in a district that ran from Amsterdam to Kingston?”

Breslin is referring to former New York Republican Senator George Amedore. His former 46th District seat, added as the Senate’s 63rd seat, is now represented by Democratic Senator Michelle Hinchey.

Lucas Willard is a reporter and host at WAMC Northeast Public Radio, which he joined in 2011.
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