State legislature shares Congressional redistricting map
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New York’s 3rd Congressional District, shown in bold lines, would stretch from Suffolk County, to Queens, to the Bronx and finally to Westchester under the State Legislature’s proposed redistricting plan. Map via Redistricting and You/CUNY Graduate Center
By Jacob Kaye
After the bipartisan committee tasked, for the first-time in state history, with drawing the state’s once-in-a-decade redistricting lines failed to meet their deadline, the map drawing powers fell to the Democratic-controlled State Legislature, which released its plans for New York’s Congressional districts over the weekend.
While many Queens voters will see their districts mostly keep their form, for some, there will be changes. For the past 10 years, the World’s Borough was represented by seven different Congressional representatives. Under the proposed maps, Queens would be represented by 6 congresspeople – Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who currently represents a small sliver of Southeast Queens, would have his district move further west into Brooklyn, losing its portion of Queens.
The western move is a theme throughout the maps proposed Saturday, Jan. 30, by Queens State Senator Michael Gianaris. The purpose for the western-shift is simple, according to some political analysts.
“If it looks like gerrymandering and sounds like gerrymandering – it’s most likely gerrymandering,” said Brian Browne, an adjunct professor of political science at St. John’s University.
Though New York State lost one Congressional seat as a result of the 2020 Census, that loss came in Upstate New York – the 22nd District, which is currently represented by Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney, was eliminated in the proposed map, which is expected to pass. In all, Republicans stand to lose half of their delegation in the state, with a handful of districts shifting to include more Democratic voters.
In Queens, the 3rd Congressional District, currently represented by gubernatorial candidate Tom Suozzi, makes that shift. Under the current lines, which covers the northwestern portion of Suffolk County and a section of Eastern Queens, around 45 percent of voters in the district cast ballots for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Under the proposed maps, the number of Trump voters would be reduced to around 43 percent, according to maps from the CUNY Graduate Center.
However, New York’s proposed 3rd District doesn’t just extend further into Queens – it stretches north into the Bronx and continues into Westchester, stopping at the Connecticut-New York border.
The new district could prove difficult to represent, according to Browne.
“Any district that spreads across five counties and includes a bridge to go into the Bronx is going to be some tough campaigning and some tough representation for whoever gets elected to that seat,” Browne said. “Talk about different political responsibilities, realities, climate and issues. Suburban Suffolk County is linked to the Bronx – that's going to take some real creative representation.”
Melanie D’Arrigo, a progressive Democrat running for the seat blasted the proposed maps in a statement.
“We cannot stay silent as we watch the state legislature publish a map that extreme gerrymanders our district,” D’Arrigo said. “There is no discernible reason to draw a district that leapfrogs the Long Island Sound in an attempt to loosely tie together Long Island, Queens, The Bronx, and Westchester.”
“How is this fair to the people who live in any of these counties? Constituent services will be more difficult, more expensive and less efficient: the needs of someone living on the border of Connecticut being wildly different from someone in Huntington,” she added. “All of the voters at stake deserve real representation, not to be used as political pawns.”
Betsy Gotbaum, the current executive director of good government group Citizens Union and the former New York City public advocate, said the main issue with the way the 3rd District was drawn – as well as the rest of the state’s lines – is that there were no opportunities for public participation.
“There was no public input,” Gobaum said. “We don't really know what groups of people really wanted once the commission couldn't come to any kind of a conclusion and then the legislators took it over. We don’t know.”
Democratic members of the New York Independent Redistricting Commission, whose membership is split evenly between the two parties, told lawmakers a few days before their final deadline that they would be unable to present a final draft of congressional, State Senate and Assembly lines.
Democratic members of the commission, which was created in 2014 to serve as a bipartisan body to create the maps, blamed the Republican members for not coming to the table to negotiate maps. The Republicans said it was the Democrats who wouldn’t budge.
After a handful of public hearings and opportunities to submit maps to the commission, the power to draw the lines fell to the legislature.
Though the proposed 3rd Congressional District differs greatly from the current lines, nearly all of Queens’ other congressional districts have remained intact. In some cases, the lines have only shifted to seemingly provide an advantage to the incumbent.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s district, which currently runs from Northwest Queens into Manhattan, shifts further into New York County under the proposed maps, losing some of its Queens ground where a large portion of progressive voters in the district live.
Maloney is currently facing a progressive challenger in Rana Abdelhamid, a nonprofit executive from Queens, and has faced progressive challengers in her past two election cycles.
In 2020, Maloney won seven of the eight Manhattan assembly districts within her congressional district over primary challenger Suraj Patel, who also challenged Maloney in 2018. However, she didn’t win a single assembly district in either Queens or Brooklyn.
Neither Maloney nor Abdelhamid responded to requests for comment.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez picks up the progressive Queens voters Maloney loses under the proposed maps. She also picks up voters in Whitestone, who recently elected Republican Vickie Paladino to the City Council. However, the proposed map brings more Democratic voters into the district.
Reps. Grace Meng and Gregory Meeks, who chairs the Queens County Democratic Party, see very little change to their districts under the proposed maps.
Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant and political science professor, says the new lines do Meeks and the Queens Democratic Party a favor.
“It makes Meeks even stronger,” Sheinkopf said. “He doesn’t lose anything. It looks like he's more powerful because he didn't lose.”
With two potentially two congresspeople with Queens districts extending into other boroughs, Sheinkopf said Queens voters can look at the redistricting as a victory.
“If you look at the history of the Queens organization, one of the reasons it was able to survive so well is because the county leader in Queens at the time, –[former Rep. Joe] Crowley had his district over two boroughs,” Sheinkopf said. “Whoever gets elected [to NY-3] is going to have to depend on Queens, which makes Queens more powerful.”
“Two people to Congress, people outside the borough itself, have to depend on Queens to be reelected. Therefore, it gives Meeks much more patronage power, and more capacity to exert electoral power and influence,” he added. “Queens wins.”
The State Legislature has yet to release electoral maps for the State Senate and Assembly, which they are also responsible for drawing.
