Who's Afraid of New York's New House Map?

Mr. de Blasio is 6-foot-5, so we’ll give him stature, and he’s bought historical past all proper: New Yorkers would possibly recall his mayoral behavior of displaying up late. Or the Groundhog Day that he dropped the rodent-of-honor, which died quickly after of inner accidents that the zoo insisted have been unrelated. Two extra candidates, together with Rep.

Mondaire Jones,

even have their hearts set on the tenth district, and it may very well be a crowded debate.

On the opposite hand Rep.

Hakeem Jeffries,

the No. 5 House Democrat, continues to be caught within the denial stage, or possibly it’s anger. He informed

CBS

over the weekend that the judiciary “hijacked” redistricting. Last week he complained that the court docket’s map “degraded” the black and Hispanic populations of 4 districts, which he implied was an intentional scheme: “Are you kidding me? That doesn’t happen by accident.”

The state court docket that supervised the political cartography printed a memo Saturday that rebuts these sorts of partisan arguments. “Race-based districting is strictly prohibited by the U.S. constitution,” writes

Jonathan Cervas,

the particular grasp who drew the map. “Therefore I did not use race as a preponderant criterion.”

Justice

Patrick McAllister

provides just a few phrases of his personal. “The court is not politically biased,” he writes. He believes the brand new districts are “almost perfectly neutral,” favoring neither Democrats nor Republicans. They additionally give no particular standing to incumbents. “Neither the court nor the special master,” the decide says, “received any information concerning where any candidate or potential candidate lives.”

The fact, as a matter of political realism, is that Democrats by no means wished “fair” districts in New York. They wished a gerrymandered map that may assure them additional House seats, and the try blew up of their faces.