Greenbaum: Target now on Weiner's district

Mark Greenbaum, a freelance writer in Washington, is a frequent contributor to Salon.com, where this first appeared.

In the wake of Rep. Anthony Weiner's unprecedented news conference Monday, most commentary is focusing on what is almost undoubtedly the end of his quest to be New York's mayor and his possible fate before the House Ethics Committee.

But assuming he sticks to his decision not to resign, Weiner has a more immediate problem: He could find himself without a district next year.

Because of stagnant growth, New York will lose two of its 29 House seats in reapportionment. For some time, Albany Democrats had planned to draw new lines that eliminated exclusively GOP seats, but their narrow loss of the State Senate last November scuttled plans for a harsh gerrymander. Consequently, it's a near-certainty that the final map will eliminate one Democratic and Republican seat.

While there are 20 Democratic seats, legal and geographic considerations limit the number that might actually be targeted -- and Weiner's 9th District is among the few that could be at risk.

With four of the seven Republican-held seats upstate, the lost GOP seat will almost certainly come from this group (Seaford's Rep. Peter King is immunized by his seniority). This is bad news for Democrats like Weiner because, given the dire economic straits of the region, state legislators are unlikely to allow both axed seats to come from there. That means the Democratic seat will have to be slashed from downstate.

But where?

Cutting a Long Island seat would be difficult because of the complexities involved in shifting lines west, thereby insulating Southampton's Tim Bishop and Huntington's Steve Israel. Plus, the Voting Rights Act protects minority seats like those held by Charlie Rangel of Manhattan, Jose Serrano of the Bronx, and Ed Towns of Brooklyn.

Realistically, this means the eliminated district will probably be one of the city's majority-white seats.

The smart money had generally been on members like Gary Ackerman, whose district includes the North Shore of Long Island and parts of Queens, or Manhattan's Carolyn Maloney to lose this game of musical chairs. Both are well into their 60s and are seen as being in the twilight of their careers.

But Weiner's embarrassing scandal changes this calculus and puts the biggest target squarely on his back.

For one thing, Weiner's district would be easy to carve up. Occupying narrow swaths of Brooklyn (Midwood, Sheepshead Bay) and Queens (Forest Hills, Kew Gardens and Howard Beach), it could be broken up and dispersed among his Democratic neighbors in short order.

Politically, this would make much sense. Weiner's district is one of the city's least liberal, and is actually trending away from Democrats. No district in the nation swung more from Democrat to Republican between 2000 and 2004 -- a whopping 25 percent -- and Barack Obama actually did worse there than John Kerry. Given Weiner's problems, Republicans could wage a serious campaign against him next year, providing a clear incentive for Democrats to dismantle his seat.

But more important, Democrats may now have the excuse to rid themselves of Weiner, who has always been a cold lone wolf among his fellow delegation members. His aggressiveness and political savvy have made him a well-known figure and a fixture on the national cable circuit, but that stardom has irritated his colleagues.

This could now come back to haunt Weiner. Folks like Ackerman and Maloney, who have faced speculation on the loss of their own careers, will have no compunction turning on Weiner now, especially if it will guarantee the preservation of their own seats.

If Weiner's seat is chopped off, his plight would have parallels to that of Stephen Solarz, the late Brooklyn Democratic congressman whose seat was eliminated after the 1990 census. While Solarz wasn't tripped up by a sex scandal, he had (like Weiner) become well-known nationally, stoking the ire of some of his Empire State colleagues, who had no qualms about eliminating his seat.

If the same fate befalls Weiner, he'll have his own brash personality and personal foibles to blame.