Re-do the state Senate maps, too

The darkest week of the year, with much of New York taking off, sees the return Thursday at noon of the state Independent Redistricting Commission, the 10-member bipartisan panel that botched their debut last year and now has been reanimated to try again to draw maps because a single judge retired and her replacement wants a do over.

The judge who retired, former state Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, was replaced by new Chief Judge Rowan Wilson on the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest bench.

Last year, DiFiore wrote a 4-3 court decision that the IRC had failed to produce a second set of maps for Congress and the state Senate for the Democratic-controlled Legislature to review and legislators should not have gone ahead and created their own maps (the congressional map Dem lawmakers drew was also gerrymandered to the hilt in breach of the Constitution). DiFiore’s ruling ordered that the task go to a court-appointed special master.

This month, Wilson wrote a new 4-3 decision that the IRC still must make its second round of maps for Congress and to do so by Feb. 28.

While Wilson was on the court last year and in the minority, a new judge, Caitlin Halligan, should have been the tiebreaker, but she took the coward’s way out and skipped the case for some nutty reason. Wilson, using his power as chief to name a fill-in, then picked a lower court jurist, Dianne Renwick, who had already ruled his way in a similar matter for the Assembly maps.

We’ve said that the IRC, consisting of Charlie Nesbitt, Ross Brady, John Conway, Lisa Harris and Will Stephens on the GOP side and Ken Jenkins, Yovan Collado, Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina, John Flateau and Elaine Frazier on the Democratic side, should simply approve the current congressional maps drawn by the special master.

Under the Constitution, if the Legislature then rejects the IRC map, there must be a two-thirds vote to approve their own. While the Democrats have long had such an Assembly supermajority, they hold a two-thirds margin in the Senate by one seat, 42-21, and Syracuse Sen. John Mannion’s reelection last year was 61,579 to his GOP opponent’s 61,569, 10 votes out of 123,148 cast, an edge of .008%.

And talking about closeness, New York only failed to keep its 27th congressional seat for a lack of 89 residents in the 2020 census. The count was 20,201,249, so another 89 would have been just .0004% more.

While Wilson’s decision was about Congress, the exact same reasoning applies to the Senate maps. If such court-drawn maps for Congress are an affront to the Constitution and the people of New York, then so are the court-drawn maps for Senate (which is the body that confirms Court of Appeals judges).

Someone should file a suit demanding that the IRC produce a second map for the state Senate. As Wilson wrote, “the IRC’s constitutional obligation may be enforced at any time,” as long as there’s enough time for the IRC to act. There is, as candidates can’t start collecting petition signatures for June’s primary until Feb. 27.

It doesn’t even need a lawsuit, as the IRC can just issue the second Senate map immediately. Just take the existing, highly competitive map, which no one objects to, and give it their stamp and send it to the Legislature. Wilson’s decree must be obeyed.