News
Albany Redistricting Plan Faulted as Unfair to Minorities
The New York Times – A proposed redrawing of New York State’s political districts came under intense criticism on Monday, as civil rights leaders said the maps did not fairly represent blacks and Hispanics in an increasingly diverse state, and Democrats said they would file a lawsuit asking a judge to intervene.
The proposed State Senate and State Assembly maps, released on Thursday, are being disputed by good-government groups, newspaper editorial boards and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who called into an Albany television program on Monday to declare the proposal “hyperpartisan,” and vowed to veto it.
The critics say that many of the proposed legislative districts seem to have been drawn to protect the interests of incumbents, and that the Legislature has not yet proposed a new map of Congressional districts, even though a judge has ordered that the primary elections for House races be held in June instead of September.
But among the strongest objections are those being raised by groups representing minority voters, who had hoped that the decennial redistricting would give them more political clout.
Hazel N. Dukes, president of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, described herself as “distraught” over the proposal and accused Republicans of advancing an “agenda of excluding the African-American community along with other minority groups to maintain their political power.”
“They have just gone out for blood,” Ms. Dukes said. “If the governor doesn’t veto this, I think our next step will have to be in the courts.”
The proposed lines were drawn by Albany’s majority parties: the Senate Republicans and the Assembly Democrats. The lawmakers in charge of the task force that drew the maps defended their proposals at a hearing on Monday. State Senator Michael F. Nozzolio, a Republican from the Finger Lakes region, described the map-making as “the most open, transparent process” the state had ever followed.
“These decisions have been made on the basis of openness, fairness and the legalities of complying with a very complex number of laws and requirements,” Mr. Nozzolio said. To one volley of criticism he responded, “For every detractor, I’m sure there’s also someone who is supportive.”
But Frank B. Mesiah, president of the Buffalo branch of the N.A.A.C.P., wrote Mr. Cuomo on Friday to ask him to stop the plan. He described it as “ensuring the black vote would be neutered and ineffective when it came to electing one of their own” in western New York.
The Rev. Al Sharpton said he would ask Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general, to review the state’s entire redistricting plan. Mr. Sharpton said he was “very concerned” that despite the overall increase in the state’s minority populations, lawmakers seemed reluctant to draw districts in which minority voters made up a majority of the population.
“They’re trying to fit a size 12 foot in a size 10 shoe,” he said. “We cannot allow that to happen, where we just say, ‘These are the traditional black and Latino seats.’ "
Civil rights advocates complain that in Buffalo, for example, a Senate district once represented by black Democrats has been redrawn to benefit the white Republican incumbent; that Rochester, where blacks make up 42 percent of the population, has been split among three Senate districts, making it unlikely for a black candidate to win in any of them; and that in the New York City area, the maps do not adequately reflect the growth of the Hispanic population.
A coalition of groups representing the city’s Asian-Americans are to gather on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday. The coalition described the new maps as presenting “extremely mixed results,” applauding the creation of an Asian-majority Senate district in Queens but describing its boundaries as nonsensical. And the N.A.A.C.P. is planning rallies in Nassau County on Tuesday and in the city on Wednesday.
State Senator Martin Malavé Dilan of Brooklyn, the Senate Democrats’ representative on the redistricting task force, is a plaintiff in the Senate Democrats’ lawsuit, to be filed on Tuesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. It challenges the plan to increase the number of seats in the Senate to 63 from 62, which Republicans say is required by a complicated formula in the State Constitution. Democrats accuse the Republicans of trying to increase the size of the body to improve their chances of maintaining their narrow majority.
And Assemblyman David F. Gantt, Democrat of Rochester, said he would file a lawsuit seeking to challenge the plan to distribute that city’s population across three largely suburban and rural districts; he called it “crazy.”
“For the city of Rochester to get anything looked at by the Senate, you’ve got to have a representative there,” he said. “This is about taking care of the interests of the city of Rochester and the minority communities that live there.”
By Thomas Kaplan