Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Pearlman should have rejected a ludicrous lawsuit claiming the city’s Staten Island congressional district, held by Republican Nicole Malliotakis, is discriminatory against minority voters and needs to be redrawn.
Instead Pearlman blindly accepted the bill of goods offered by the Democrats who concocted this specious case and ordered the 10-member bipartisan state Independent Redistricting Commission to produce a new map by two weeks from today, Feb. 6. Will some higher court, either the Manhattan Appellate Division or the state Court of Appeals, New York’s highest bench, please stop this nonsense? Otherwise, the U.S. Supreme Court will have to get involved.
The lines of the Malliotakis district are fair and were fairly drawn by an unbiased nonpartisan expert from Carnegie Mellon, Prof. Jonathan Cervas. They were also approved by the IRC and the state Legislature, which is run by Albany Democrats. If the Democrats want to beat Malliotakis, then start by finding a strong candidate and running a good campaign. The decision belongs to the voters, not the mapmakers.
This is all just a ruse by Democrats to have a mid-decade redistricting of New York’s 27 congressional constituencies to match what partisan Republicans and partisan Democrats are doing in Texas and California and elsewhere, maximizing the gerrymandered advantage, a stupid and destructive tit for tat war that was started by the GOP and Donald Trump in the Lone Star State.
However the New York State Constitution happily and explicitly forbids such gamesmanship and amending the state Constitution can’t be done before this year’s midterms. So the only way to empanel the Independent Redistricting Commission is by court order, which brings us to Pearlman, who went for the bait.
The Cervas statewide map is highly competitive while being compact and contiguous and not favoring either party. If every state had such maps the country would be blessed.
Pearlman was suckered by the Democrats who wanted the Staten Island district to connect with Lower Manhattan, rather than southern Brooklyn, even though the last Staten Island/Manhattan House district was more than 40 years ago. It’s a very bad idea, but even if it made sense, a single congressional district can’t be redrawn. There would have to be changes to other districts, as every district in the state must have the exact same population. And the numbers being used come from the 2020 census, which are long outdated.
It’s also too late, as petitioning for the June primary begins next month. But this is the only way for the Dems to redraw in New York before the 2026 midterms, so to hell with everything else.
The only reason the once-a-decade IRC should awake before 2032 is to redraw the state Senate lines for all 63 senators. Based on the Court of Appeals ruling in the 2023 Hoffmann case, the Cervas map for Congress and the state Senate was only good for the 2022 elections and the IRC needed to approve it again to make it permanent. The IRC did so for Congress (with a few microscopic changes), but did not act again on the Senate map, so the Senate districts remain constitutionally problematic.
The IRC says they can’t reconvene without a court order. Well, they now have an order to assemble. If they won’t approve the Senate lines on their own, will someone who believes in constitutional order please file papers with the court to make the IRC ratify the Senate map?
But as for Staten Island and Malliotakis, leave the lines alone.
