NY need not travel Texas' low road on congressional redistricting
Gov. Kathy Hochul with Texas Democratic legislators at the State Capitol in Albany. Credit: Aidin Bharti/Office of Governor /Aidin Bharti
President Donald Trump, who’s hell-bent on keeping the House of Representatives under his control for the second half of his final term, has GOP loyalists in Texas working this week to harvest five more congressional seats through the time-worn abuse of process known as gerrymandering.
New York shouldn't take the bait.
Gov. Greg Abbott has swiftly acceded to the Trump fix for 2026. The Texas legislature on Monday advanced toward manipulating district lines anew in the party’s favor.
Redistricting and reapportionment are supposed to occur once a decade to adjust to the latest U.S. Census results. But in this time of extreme efforts to accrue more power to the White House, Republicans are looking to indefinitely obliterate Democratic dissent and disloyalty by their own. The GOP now holds the House by a thin 219-212 margin.
Does MAGA expect the Democrats not to react to its messing with Texas? Democratic lawmakers physically left the state over the weekend to deny the GOP majority a quorum to enact its off-cycle power scheme. Their absence may make strategic sense, and Abbott’s threats of prosecution may prove hollow. But Trump and Abbott could legally get their way in the coming weeks.
Gov. Kathy Hochul drew attention Monday by meeting in Albany with some of the expatriate Lone State Democrats. “If Republicans are willing to rewrite the rules to give themselves an advantage, then we have no choice, we must do the same," Hochul said in solidarity with the national party and 2028 presidential hopefuls, Illinois Gov. Jay Pritzker and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
More than a decade ago, New York State approved a constitutional amendment creating a bipartisan redistricting commission. In the 2020s, a deadlock on the panel, and the Democratic legislature’s takeover of the process led to lawsuits, a court-drawn map, jockeying over court appointments and ultimately, a modification of a gerrymandered Democratic map.
The bottom line: GOP nationally won the House in 2022 and 2024, in part by picking up seats in New York. The delegation now has 19 Democrats and seven Republicans.
On Monday, Hochul said of the Texas gambit: “I’m tired of fighting this fight with one hand tied behind my back. With all due respect to the good government groups, politics is a political process.” But moving to change the constitutional prescription at this point — and killing the commission as Hochul hints — won’t help the general public in the long run.
Nor might it even help the Democrats in the short run, which would seem to be the point. Last week, State Sens. Micah Lasher and Michael Gianaris, the author of the previous rigging scheme, proposed a state constitutional amendment allowing off-cycle redistricting “specifically when another state has already done so.” But the earliest voters could decide on the amendment is 2027.
There’s no valid urgency for New York to change its system. Doing so would only cost this state credibility among our citizens.
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