Newly unified redistricting commission releases a reshuffled Queens Assembly map
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A draft map of Queens’ Assembly districts released by the New York Independent Redistricting Commission on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022. Map via NYIRC
By Max Parrott
Members of the New York Independent Redistricting Commission met Thursday to vote on a set of new state Assembly lines and, for the first time in the commission’s short history, Republican and Democratic commissioners were able to agree on one map.
Though the commission’s mood may have calmed down from its acrimonious past, the draft Assembly map that it passed along to undergo a lengthy public input process over the next few months is sure to cause some shake ups and tension among Queens’ legislators. But the map is far from final.
In addition to producing a new Assembly map, the meeting yielded a new set of leaders. After its former chair David Imamura resigned to seek political office, the commission replaced him in an uncontested vote with its newest member, Ken Jenkins, a Democratic deputy Westchester county executive who was appointed to the body by state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.
The commission was formerly gripped with hostility between its evenly numbered Republican and Democratic members, who could not reach agreement on any of the three maps it was tasked with creating last year following the 2020 Census. The commission failed to meet its deadline, and passed on its responsibilities to state lawmakers, led by state Democratic leaders, whose maps were ultimately thrown out by the state Court of Appeals for being impermissibly partisan.
Unlike the Senate and congressional maps, which the state court ordered to be redrawn and their elections pushed back, the Assembly map that the state legislature drew was allowed to remain until after the 2022 elections, at which point the commission would again take up drawing duties.
This go-around, the commission found a sense of bipartisan consensus in a power sharing agreement. Charles Nesbitt, a former Republican state legislator, won the uncontested vote to serve as the commission’s vice chair.
“I would say that this is a significant moment, maybe even an historic one in which a single map is being produced by the commission,” said Nesbitt. “I think that in itself signals an era of cooperation and productive work by this commission that is important for all the state of New York.”
With the release of the draft plans to the public, the commission has set a statewide public hearing schedule on the new districts, which will begin in January. The public hearing for the Queens Assembly districts is set for 4 p.m. Feb. 16 at Queens Borough Hall.
Shifting districts in Queens
Though the commission said it used input from its previous public hearings held last year to draw an Assembly map that holds similarities to the one it previously released, the Queens portion stands in sharp contrast to the current iteration of the map drawn by the legislature.
One similarity to the commission's old map is a consolidated South Asian Assembly seat, which encompasses Richmond Hill and a large chunk of South Ozone Park. The area was a target for South Asian activists hoping to expand electoral power in previous public hearings.
Next to that district however, the map combines large portions of Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar’s current Glendale and Woodhaven-centered district and Assemblymember Stacey Pheffer Amato’s Howard Beach and East Rockaway district, which is still being litigated in a neck-and-neck race with her Republican challenger Thomas Sullivan.
Western Queens assemblymembers are also going to face some large-scale changes.
The commission pushed together Districts 34, 35 and 39 — three heavily Latino districts extending over most of Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, East Elmhurst and Corona — into two districts among those neighborhoods.
Further south, the map created another new district – District 38 – without a clear incumbent that snakes all the way from East Williamsburg and part of Long Island City through Ridgewood into Middle Village and Rego Park.
The map largely breaks the progressive stronghold of Astoria into two districts — one of which crosses the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge to encompass Roosevelt Island and a small section of Midtown East. Democratic Socialist of America-backed legislator Zohran Mamdani would have to decide whether to pursue this new Manhattan hybrid district or aim for the northern Steinway area of the neighborhood, which includes a large portion of the area he currently represents.
In Eastern Queens, the map eliminates the northern Bay Terrance and Whitestone portions of Assemblyman Ed Braunstein’s district to push it further south in Glen Oaks and West with a large portion overlapping with Assebmlymember David Weprin’s section of Terrace Heights and Oakland Gardens.
The western portion of Weprin’s current district was also shifted to be included in the proposed District 28. The district, which includes parts of Forest Hills and Kew Gardens, includes areas that are currently represented by Assemblymembers Andrew Hevesi, Daniel Rosenthal and Weprin.
The full hearing schedule can be found on the commission’s website at nyirc.gov/meetings.
