Organizers claim legislature ignored public calls for unified redistricting
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The state legislature released its Senate and Assembly redistricting maps this week, which advocates say failed to consider public input about keeping communities whole. Richmond Hill, pictured here, was formerly divided into seven Assembly districts. It’s now divided into three.
Map via Redistricting and You/CUNY Graduate Center
By Jacob Kaye
A few days after the state legislature released its plans for the reconfiguration of congressional lines throughout New York State, lawmakers released redistricting proposals for the State Senate and Assembly.
The maps, released Tuesday afternoon, keep many of the Senate and Assembly lines mostly the same in Queens, much to the dismay of a number of advocates who spent months testifying to the failed New York Independent Redistricting Commission about how the lines used for the last decade gerrymandered and weakened their communities’ voting power.
“We're very disappointed,” said Heather Beers-Dimitriadis, the co-chair of the Central Queens Redistricting Coalition, which was fighting for a unified district in Central Queens.
The redistricting process, for the first time in the state, was supposed to be led by the New York Independent Redistricting Commission – a bipartisan body comprised of five Democratic and five Republican members.
The process involved a number of public hearings, portals to submit recommendations and several rounds of draft maps. The NYIRC did all that but failed at the last moment.
Instead of submitting one set of maps at the deadline for the drafts, the commission submitted two – one from the Democrats and the other from the Republicans. Then days before the final maps were due in late January, commission members told the legislature that it had failed to reach a consensus and wouldn’t be submitting maps at all.
That’s when the power to draw the state’s electoral lines for the next decade fell into the hands of the legislature, which was tasked with drawing the maps prior to the creation of the NYIRC.
“It's probably the continuing influence of the Queens machine,” said Michael Krasner, a political science professor at Queens College. “My impression is that the lack of change serves their interests – it protects their incumbents. That's what they wanted and, to a considerable extent, it seems like that's what they got.”
In Queens, a number of advocates told members of the commission, and, later, members of the legislature, that voters in neighborhoods including Richmond Hill, Ozone Park, South Ozone Park, Rego Park and Forest Hills have had their voting power diluted for the past decade because of electoral lines that divide communities.
The maps released this week ignore their requests, they say.
"Many of us are feeling infuriated and heartbroken by the maps that were issued by the NYS Legislature for the Richmond Hill, South Ozone Park and Ozone Park neighborhoods of South Queens,” said Aminta Kilawan-Narine, the founder and executive director of the South Queens Women’s March. “We will continue to be egregiously divided in the State Assembly and the State Senate.”
“These lines were decided in backroom conversations with no opportunity for public input, running afoul of the very democracy many of our community members migrated to this country for,” she added.
Assemblymember David Weprin has represented the eastern half of Richmond Hill, which was divided into seven assembly districts, since 2010 and opened a satellite office in the neighborhood not long after being elected. Under the new maps, he picks up more of the neighborhood’s northern and southern regions.
Weprin told the Eagle that he sees the maps as a victory for the neighborhood, which is now divided into three assembly districts – the others are currently represented by Assemblymembers Jenifer Rajkumar and Khaleel Anderson, respectively.
“I think that's a very positive thing,” Weprin said. “We kind of heard the voices of the South Asian, Indo-Caribbean community making that argument and feeling that they weren't represented by those seven members.”
Richard David, a district leader in the South Queens area, said he disagrees.
“At the heart of our concern was the division of the community, which remains, and, in fact, it's right down the middle,” David said. “When you acknowledge that Little Guyana and Little Punjab are actually in three districts, I don't think that that's much progress.”
“Numerically, someone can say we went from seven to three but that's actually misleading,” he added. “If the heart of the community remains divided in three places that's still a significant division.”
As was said during numerous testimonies throughout the redistricting process, David said that the divided representation not only dilutes a growing block of voters, it also prevents resources from coming into the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean community that lives there.
“When you looked at COVID advocacy and getting health centers here, we were the last, although we had among the highest infection rates concurrently at the peak of the virus,” he said. “People paid with their lives – that's what's at stake here.”
Beers-Dimitriadis, of the Central Queens Redistricting Coalition, said she spent 500 to 700 hours organizing around redistricting in her neighborhood and in Queens, in general, all for her work not to be recognized by the legislature.
“Me, and a lot of other community organizers, chose to prioritize redistricting above the 10,000 other things that we would have normally been focused on within our community,” said Beers-Dimitriadis, who was recently named the chair of Queens Community Board 6. “We are greatly disappointed.”
Both David and Beers-Dimitriadis said they were surprised to see South Queens and parts of Central Queens continue to be divided in the way that they have been after the NYIRC, both its Democratic and Republican members reflected the advocates’ requests in their maps.
“My understanding is the maps [the legislature] worked off of were the current maps, and then they built from there,” Beers-Dimitriadis said. “Why they didn't at least work from the areas for which [the NYIRC] had 90 percent agreement, I don't understand.”
Organizers who testified at hearings also advocated for unification in Northwest Queens, particularly in Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and Corona. Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas lost half her district in the new maps – the district now goes from Jackson Heights to northern Astoria, instead of south to Woodside.
González-Rojas declined to comment for this story.
Most other Assembly and Senate lines reflect the same borders that have been intact for the past decade.
The maps, which the lawmakers will vote on Thursday, do feature one large change – a new Senate District in the World’s Borough. Senate District 17, which is one of two new districts to come to New York City, will cover the southern portion of Long Island City and extend east along the Queens-Brooklyn border, covering neighborhoods including Sunnyside, Woodside, Woodhaven, Maspeth, Ridgewood, Richmond Hill, Glendale, Ozone Park and Greenpoint.
The new district was added because of population changes in New York City – those same population changes led to the loss of a congressional district in Upstate New York. District 27, which pulls from districts currently represented by State Senators Michael Gianaris, Joseph Addabbo and James Sanders, has a plurality of Hispanic residents.
Around 38 percent of the district’s residents identify as Hispanic, around 31 percent are white, around 19 percent are Asian and around 4 percent are Black, according to 2020 Census numbers.
Less than 24 hours after the new maps were released, Kristen Gonzalez, a 26-year-old Long Island City resident and Democratic Socialists of America member announced her bid for the seat. Gonzalez is currently the only person to have announced a campaign for the wide-open district.
The candidate, who works as a product manager at a tech company, said that her decision to run was based entirely on the map. She had previously been recruited by DSA to run for what they suspected correctly would be a new district in the area. If the new district wasn’t created in Long Island City, she wouldn’t have run, she said.
“It's a Latino majority district and it'd be historic having a Latina representing Long Island City or Ridgewood in the State Senate,” Gonzalez told the Eagle. “It's a chance for historic representation, not only based on the district’s demographics, but also based on experience.”
The Assembly and Senate maps come several days after the state legislature released it’s Congressional maps, which many saw as gerrymandered in favor of the state’s Democratic party.
Krasner said the gerrymandered maps may prevent the national Republican party from implementing policies that he’s as anti-democratic.
“Given what's at stake nationally, being short term anti-democratic to serve the larger democratic purpose against us, I think is totally justifiable,” he said, adding that the lawmakers’ approach to the Congressional maps may have influenced their approach to the state lines.
“They may have just got swept up in the partisanship of it and said, ‘Well, we can go ahead and do this for the Congressional districts, then we can go ahead and do it for the state legislative districts,’” he said.
Queens Senator Michael Gianaris, who led the legislature’s redistricting process defended the maps this week on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show.
“The important thing to realize is New York is a deep blue state,” Gianaris said. “We all know this, it's well known nationally. It shouldn't be a surprise that when maps are doing fairly, there's going to be a result that reflects that reality on the ground.”
“We have very strict rules here in New York that we operate under when these lines are drawn,” he added. “Among them is the lines are not drawn for the purpose of benefiting a party or a particular individual. We believe we have complied with those rules.”
