Leave the maps alone

After nearly two years of inane battling in court by Democrats to undo the scrupulously fair judicially-ordered New York State congressional district maps drawn by Carnegie Mellon’s Jonathan Cervas, the bipartisan state Independent Redistricting Commission voted 9-1 yesterday to ratify the Cervas map, with only minor changes. Good.

The terribly wrong Democratic effort to kill the Cervas map infected the selection of the state’s chief judge and caused the Court of Appeals to twist itself into a knot, damage that may be long-lasting. And it was all for nothing.

The Democratic supermajority Legislature, led by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, has two choices under the state Constitution: Accept as is the slightly revised Cervas map or override it with a two-thirds vote in each house to draw their own. They should end this nonsense and approve the IRC’s map.

The only other acceptable option would be to say no to the small adjustments and put the original Cervas map back in place.

Cervas, an unbiased expert in district mapmaking, was hired to be the court special master by Acting Steuben County state Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister on April 18, 2022 when he threw out the Democrats’ atrociously gerrymandered monstrosity. After the state’s highest court upheld McAllister’s ruling on April 27, Cervas then finished his work on May 20. It only took him one month to produce the fairest, most competitive lines in the country.

The Democrats then lost a slew of races in November 2022 and with it control of the entire House of Representatives, not because of the maps, but because they had lousy candidates who ran lousy campaigns.

Just this Tuesday, Tom Suozzi showed them how to win with the Cervas map.

The IRC did some tinkering to the Cervas map, such as moving the town of Sennett in upstate Cayuga County into GOP freshman Brandon Williams’ district. Williams lives in Sennett. While New York requires state and local officeholders to live in their districts, that does not apply to members of Congress, but it does help politically to live in your district.

The IRC also improved the November prospects of Democrat Pat Ryan and Republican Marc Molinaro in the Hudson Valley. We understand the bipartisan motivation to help one Democrat and one Republican, however the state Constitution forbids drawing maps to aid incumbents, which is exactly what that move is about, as well as putting Williams’ house into his district.

As the Constitution says: “Districts shall not be drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.”

Still, the Williams, Ryan and Molinaro fiddling, while improper, was slight and we can live with it.

However we do wonder why Heastie’s IRC appointee Yovan Collado voted against the plan with no explanation, even as Heastie’s other appointee, Elaine Frazier, voted yes with all the other IRC panelists.

Heastie and Stewart-Cousins and their members have some time to think about what they will do. They are out of session until Feb. 26, but that should be decision day, as petitioning for the June primary starts the next day.

Unless they want to keep the Cervas map unaltered, they should accept the minor revisions, end the fighting and recruit better candidates.