Political Foozeball in Albany

Both houses of the State Legislature released their decennial redistricting plans today.

The Republican plan is focused on strengthening Republican districts -- and settling a few scores.

The sliver-thin GOP majority in the State Senate plans to merge four Queens districts now held by Democrats into two, throwing Democratic Senate Campaign Committee Chair Michael Gianaris into a dogfight with Latino incumbent Jose Peralta in a new Latino district.

Gianaris dismissed the Republican move as "petty".

About ten years ago, the GOP used the same strategy to try to take out Democratic State Senator Eric Schneiderman by merging his Manhattan district into the Bronx, but Schneiderman survived and went on to become State Attorney General in 2010.

The GOP also has it in for freshman Senator Tony Avella, a Queens Democrat, who it would pit against Democratic veteran Toby Ann Stavisky.

As forecast by True News, Senate Republicans have drawn a new Orthodox Jewish district in Brooklyn's Borough Park.

According to the Brooklyn Paper, the GOP map completely eliminates the South Brooklyn district of disgraced former Democratic State Senator Carl Kruger.

State Senator Eric Adams got dissed by the Republicans too. [Brooklyn Daily.]

The GOP plan would make it easier for Marty Golden crony Nicole Malliotakis, the Conservative Staten Island Republican who defeated Democrat Janele Hyer-Spencer in 2010, to retain her district by cracking it to exclude the Democratic-leaning Bay Ridge Towers. [Staten Island Live.]

The Democrat-controlled State Assembly would create three Asian majority districts, one in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, getting over on Peter Abbate.

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch said he suspected that, despite lawmakers' lip-service last year to an independent redistricting process, they have used redistricting to protect incumbents.

The proposed districts can be viewed here.

LATFOR Hearing on February 2

State Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, urged good government advocates to testify at the upcoming hearing in Manhattan of the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment (LATFOR) on the Republican proposal for Senate district lines. That hearing will be held at 250 Broadway, in 19th Floor Assembly Hearing Room on Thursday, February 2 @ 10:30 AM.

To present testimony, please fill out and send in this form by fax or mail, or contact Dina Weissman of the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research & Reapportionment at (212) 618-1101.

Krueger called the Senate Republican map a perfect example of the kind of "partisan dysfunction" that Governor Andrew Cuomo has promised to veto, pointing out the following as the "most egregious" examples in the Republican plan:

• adding a new Senate district, in violation of the state constitution, which establishes the maximum number of districts;
• pervasive, extreme variances in district size: 50 districts are either 3% bigger or smaller than the average size of the population, which would tilt the playing field in Albany toward Republicans;
• underrepresentation ("packing") of New York City and surrounding suburban areas and overrepresentation of more sparsely-populated Westchester districts, to justify the creation of that new upstate district, even though upstate has lost population while New York City and its suburbs have grown, as shown in this interactive map;
• breaking up ("cracking") Latino and Africa-American communities in Long Island's Nassau and Suffolk Counties:  more from Wall Street Journal about that;
• forcing six Democratic senators to run against each other, not just by coincidence;
• violating standards of compactness and contiguity in district creation, like splitting Rockland County in two, for partisan reasons.