Michelle L. Price
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — New Yorkers are proud of their metropolis’ vibrancy, feel completely different on the next block, and visitors walking through Chinatown will soon find themselves in Little Italy, a community that can be a way of life or worldview.
Even for locals, figuring out the city’s intricacies is difficult — and complaints flood in, claiming that two outsiders redrawing New York’s congressional district screwed up by connecting and dividing up neighborhoods they didn’t understand did this work.
This spring, a rural judge who sat about a five-hour drive from New York City took over the reorganization of the state’s political district map after the court sided with the Republicans and ruled that Democrats who control the legislature engaged in illegal gerrymandering. place.
Judge Patrick McAllister hired a redistricting expert in Pittsburgh to quickly develop a new map. After unveiling the newly proposed congressional districts on May 16, New Yorkers sent more than 2,000 letters to the court, pleading with the judge and his out-of-state experts to make changes before the map was finalized.
Letters poured in from across the state, but some of the most specific complaints came from New York City, with some complaining that the maps would divide culturally united communities and diminish the voting rights of communities of color.
Among other things, the new map will draw the districts of four black members of Congress into a new district, which could force them to either compete against each other or try to be elected in districts they don’t live in.
“It would make Jim Crow blush,” U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, said of the map.
He said it would destroy the Bedford-Stevenson community in Brooklyn that he represents. The community is a center of black culture and was represented by Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress.
Jeffries was outraged at the idea that the city’s new map was created under the oversight of a court in Steuben County in western New York along the Pennsylvania border.
“I don’t know where Steuben County is. Didn’t know it existed. Neither did the vast majority of New Yorkers,” Jeffries complained. “It’s in Bath Village. Near Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Toronto, Canada.”
Overall, the map produced by Jonathan Cervas, an outside expert on the court, is more pro-Republican-friendly and more competitive than previous maps drawn by the state legislature, including New York centered on Staten Island. City area, which is more favorable to Republicans.
The fast-tracked timeline, with the public comment period on the draft map closing on May 18, is designed to give candidates enough time to campaign in new districts for August’s already postponed primary.
Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy, declined to be interviewed or to respond to some criticism, but he did send an email saying he promised to review email comments sent to the court and his own Email addresses that some New Yorkers have tracked down.
“My team and I will review each of these and give each of them full consideration and consult with Judge McAllister,” he said.
The letter listed a number of sins in demarcating the boundaries of the region. Some Manhattanites oppose the proposal to merge the Upper East Side and Upper West Side neighborhoods separated by Central Park.
These communities have long been in different congressional districts and are currently represented by Democrats Rep. Jerry Nadler and Caroline Maloney, who have each served in the House for nearly three years, and may now be, if the boundaries are not changed. compete with each other.
The Upper East Side is primarily residential and one of the most affluent areas in the city, while the Upper West Side, while also primarily residential, is also known for cultural and intellectual institutions such as Columbia University, the American Museum of Natural History, and Lincoln Center.
“If there were two communities of different interests, it would be Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Upper East Side,” Monica Attia wrote in a letter to the court seeking to separate the two areas. “Beyond a huge man-made park, we are two distinct communities with their own stories, characters and local common interests.”
A Staten Island man says his borough — now the only Republican-represented borough in Congress — should not be connected to the area that spans the East River and connects it to Brooklyn’s Red Hook and Sunset Park Connected, it is home to many Chinese and Latin American immigrants.
“These communities have little in common with ours,” Al Carbonella wrote.
Anand Modi, a resident near Prospect Park in Brooklyn, said a proposed district line would bisect a major commercial street in his neighborhood, leaving residents confused.
“I would walk across the street and talk to my neighbors about the upcoming election and find it pointless – despite living close enough to have a conversation without leaving our respective porches, we would have different representation in Congress, ” Modi wrote.
On the other side of the park, a woman invited the court and experts to see for herself why a local thoroughfare as a dividing line makes sense.
“Come to St. Marks Place or Flatbush Avenue for a short walk and you’ll see and feel what I’m describing here,” wrote Julia McEvoy.
In the Bronx, some residents complained that the new borders could reduce the voting power of black communities.
“This seems well thought out, as the new map will strengthen the voting rights of wealthy white suburban residents,” wrote resident Rodney Callahan.
New Yorkers are also generally opposed to the entire process because of the limited window for submitting feedback to remote courts.
One person summed it up with a simple email: “NO!!!!!!!”
The redistricting process was once expected to be carried out by a bipartisan committee that was ultimately unable to agree on a map. It was later transferred to the Democratic-controlled legislature, which proposed maps that were rejected by a court in April, ruling that they were unconstitutional.
Before the map was released, initial public feedback was limited to written comments submitted to the court and a one-day hearing in May in which people had to travel to Bath, about 280 miles away, to comment.
Jeffries pointed out that the county has no airport, Amtrak does not offer train service there, and the only bus route requires someone to leave New York City around 1 a.m. to arrive in the early hours of the morning.
