Democratic state lawmakers are pushing a plan that could allow them to redraw New York’s congressional districts, but any change would almost certainly not take place before the forthcoming midterm elections.
As Texas and other red states consider rejiggering their maps to benefit Republicans, Assemblyman Micah Lasher (D-Manhattan) and Sen. Mike Gianaris (D-Queens) announced plans to amend New York’s constitution to potentially permit redistricting more often than once a decade.
“Republicans in TX and elsewhere are taking us into a new era of continuous, partisan redistricting,” Lasher tweeted. “(It’s) time we show up to the fight.”
“If red states are intent on corrupting the redistricting process, New York will respond,” added Gianaris.
Critically, any such amendment would have to be passed in two consecutive sessions of the state legislature so the plan has no chance of being enacted until after 2026.
New York Democrats now hold a 19-7 edge in the House congressionial delegation.
They hope to hold all their seats in the midterms and are aiming to flip the evenly matched Westchester County-based battleground district held by Republican Rep. Mike Lawler.
But any further gains would likely depend on dramatically redrawing district lines, like adding deep-blue parts of Brooklyn to Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ Staten Island-based district and rejiggering things on Long Island and upstate.
Gov. Hochul and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader who would become Speaker if Democrats flip the House in 2026, have both said they’re open to exploring options for a redraw.
New York’s constitution calls for redistricting only once a decade. Under the current rules, the only way to get around and potentially redraw the map sooner would be if a court orders a new map, perhaps in response to a new lawsuit claiming the current map is illegal, which seems far-fetched.
Republicans hope to rework the Texas map now and implement the changes in time to pick up at least five Democratic held seats in 2026. They want to do the same thing to pick up a couple of seats in Ohio and potentially one in Missouri.
President Trump and his Republican allies hope those moves, which Democrats call partisan dirty tricks, will be enough to allow them to keep control of the House of Representatives and withstand what is widely expected to be a blue-leaning political environment.
If Republicans succeed in further gutting the Voting Rights Act, they might be able to scrap several Black-held Democratic seats in the deep South, a move that would further exacerbate the nation’s bitter partisan and racial divide in future electoral cycles.
Aside from New York, Democrats in California, Illinois and New Jersey are mulling the possibility of redrawing their congressional districts to counter what they call Trump’s power grab in red states.
But most of the blue states have similar rules making it tougher for the party in power to gerrymander the seats to their advantage.