Tripping on the lines: New York’s overreaching Democratic redistricters have only themselves to blame for Tuesday’s results

Early this year, Hudson Valley Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, heading the House Democrats’ national campaign effort, urged his Albany pals to use the decennial redistricting, led by state Sen. Mike Gianaris, to squeeze Republicans. Who cared that the people of New York, in a 2014 amendment to the state Constitution, created a bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission?

So, after the commission produced two sets of maps, Gianaris and his fellow Dems set aside both plans and brazenly drew lines whittling Republican-leaning districts down to four. That was a 15% GOP share of 26 seats despite 37% of voters here having chosen Donald Trump in 2020.

Thank goodness that billionaire Ronald Lauder funded a Republican lawsuit that challenged the scheme as a clear violation of the Constitution’s process as well as its explicit ban on partisan gerrymandering — and the state’s highest court agreed, throwing it all out and ordering a special master to draw fair lines. Jonathan Cervas did yeoman’s work, just as Nate Persily did when he drew the state’s fair congressional lines under court order a decade ago.

The outcome — all set in motion by the greedy, unconstitutional overreach — is upon us. Republicans, boosted by Lee Zeldin’s stiff challenge to Gov. Hochul, won at least 10 of the 26 House seats (38%) and maybe even 11 (42%). That was the largest GOP gain of any state in the country and may be decisive in Republicans retaking the House majority.

Voters should choose elected officials, not the other way around. It is genuinely problematic that many more Democratic-leaning states have given redistricting duties to bipartisan or nonpartisan panels, even as red states let self-serving politicians keep rigging the lines. That asymmetry skews the makeup of Congress.

But two wrongs don’t make a right. New Yorkers chose fair redistricting; they wrote it into their Constitution. The law must be followed.

Tuesday night, Maloney himself lost reelection. In earlier primary reshuffling, the Dems also lost veteran Carolyn Maloney and freshman Mondaire Jones. Next time, maybe go with the independent commission?