New political calculations for LI

Bruce N. Gyory is a political consultant with Corning Place Consulting and an adjunct professor of political science at the University at Albany.

The Census 2010 data for New York confirms that Long Island will be facing a new blend of politics over the next decade. We already know that independent voters will have a huge role to play, given the rough parity in registration between Republicans and Democrats here. What's new is that the combined power of minority voters will have a larger and broader role in the politics of Nassau and Suffolk counties. This will create a whole new strike zone for Long Island's political leaders.

The population on Long Island is now 2.8 million, a 2.9 percent increase from 2000 (almost all the growth comes from Suffolk). Islandwide, non-Hispanic whites, who made up more than 76 percent of the overall population in 2000, declined to a 68.7 percent share. The minority population -- combining black, Hispanic, Asian and biracial people -- is now 31.3 percent.

The Hispanic share of Long Island's population grew to 15.5 percent in 2010. And a telling talisman of the growth of the Long Island Hispanic population is that four communities on Long Island now have a Hispanic majority: Brentwood, North Bay Shore, New Cassel and Central Islip. Twenty years ago there were none.

While Long Island continues to have a higher percentage of non-Hispanic white residents, these numbers do reflect statewide trends. Hispanics are 18 percent of New York's population; and the aggregate minority share for the state is nearly 44 percent.

These minority gains, both on Long Island and throughout New York, will influence our politics as population increases lead to registration and voting. In 2010, exit polls showed 29 percent of the state's vote was cast by minorities, and that percentage will hit at least 35 percent by 2020.

With Long Island's white population declining, with its Hispanic and Asian populations growing at a brisk pace, and with more and more minorities among Long Island's children, the nonwhite influence in New York's suburban politics will only grow over the next decade.

Today, slightly less than 20 percent of Long Island's voters are from minority ethnic groups. By 2020 -- as younger Hispanics and Asians on Long Island join blacks in the prime voting age groups, and as the Hispanic and Asian communities establish their own political momentum -- it's likely to be 30 percent.

So a key question will become whether the Republicans in New York's suburbs can prevent Hispanics and Asians from joining blacks in voting for Democrats in landslide margins. As the minority vote's share on Long Island crosses 25 percent, the new political reality will take hold.

That reality is what I call the Double 75 rule: When the white vote drops to 75 percent or less of an electorate and the Democrats can garner 75 percent or more of the aggregate minority vote, then the Republicans have no margin for error.

Former Gov. George Pataki, in 2002, and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg confronted this reality and worked hard and effectively to win minority votes, especially among Hispanic and Asian voters. Will other Republicans follow?

The real lesson in the census data for Long Island's politics is that the growth of minority voters will lead to the politics of blending. Success will come to those who can knit multiracial, multiethnic alliances across Long Island's towns, where the ability to develop issues that unify disparate constituencies becomes the tie that binds voters to candidates. The race card -- played from either side -- will no longer be the trump card.

The future of politics on Long Island will be held by those who learn how to turn the double play: garnering the lion's share of independent voters, while gleaning the growing harvest of minority voters. Certainly by the next census -- but probably as soon as mid-decade -- only those who can turn both ends of this double play will get up to bat governmentally on Long Island.