From the Census figures it looks like NY will lose a House seat….
BUT?
The state’s Democrats control the whole redistricting process and seem to be working towards locking Republican House makers in the state out of safe GOP districts , by carving them up to Democratic advantage….
Democrats KNOW there are in trouble for next years midterm elections….
And following the Republican’s….
They just COULD push a lot of Republican US House members out of their jobs….
There would be a outcry from Republicans, of course…
But one can see the same thing happening to Democrats in some states like Texas by Republicans….
Will things go off the rails?
“New York might be the biggest redistricting weapon for either party in the country,” said Dave Wasserman, a national elections analyst with the Cook Political Report.
Wielding it will almost certainly raise howls of protest from Republicans and expose Democrats to legal challenges and political charges that they are hypocritically turning their backs on the party’s promise to end gerrymandering, the practice that allows politicians to draw legislative lines in their party’s favor.
Just Monday, Chuck Schumer, the state’s senior senator and the Democratic majority leader in Washington, sought to rally senators on Capitol Hill in favor of a sweeping national elections bill that would override state laws like New York’s and outlaw “vicious gerrymandering, which further threatens to divide our politics.”
Yet with Republicans preparing to use their control of states like Texas, Florida and Georgia to pile up a dozen or more new red seats, Democrats seem intent on using New York’s laws to their advantage. Mr. Wasserman said that New York’s gains would likely be greater than others whose process was under single-party control, such as Texas, because those states have already been more thoroughly gerrymandered.
Top officials in Albany have privately indicated to Democrats in the congressional delegation that they intend to consult with them on how to draw the new maps, according to two Democrats directly familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to detail the private conversations. Though the Constitution gives the commission the first shot at drawing maps, lawmakers in Albany have broad leeway to disregard the panel’s work and create their own….