NY Dems move closer to harvesting one more House seat

Daily Point

Muddling of the maps gains momentum

New York State moved an interim step closer Thursday to an 11th-hour scrambling of its congressional map in the do-or-die midterm election in which Brooklyn Rep. Hakeem Jeffries strives to become House speaker against what's now a thin Republican majority.

As many had expected, the Appellate Division in Manhattan gave the go-ahead to a lower court ruling that a fourth map in four years be written. The Democrats' goal in court is to rearrange the current Staten Island-Brooklyn district of Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis to include part of Manhattan.

The result for the party if its efforts succeed could be not only to break the GOP grip on the 11th Congressional District but to allow Democratic rivals Rep. Dan Goldman and former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander to run for separate House seats rather than compete in a primary in what's now Goldman's 10th District.

If this order is then upheld by the state Court of Appeals — and not stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court as the Republicans have requested — the complications could be daunting as the clock ticks down to begin circulating nominating petitions next week.

For one thing, the evenly bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission is likely to deadlock in any bid for agreement on a new map. Would a court have to order a special master for details of the midcycle rewrite, and how long might that take? The process has already been pushed and pulled in this decade, the first under the IRC.

Also in play: Reshaping one district means moving the lines of adjacent districts.

A key part of the legal fight involves CD11's demographics. Trial-level Justice Jeffrey Pearlman essentially had said that the district — although approved for the 2024 elections — should be considered unconstitutional, in that its lines dilute the collective power of Black and Latino voters. But Republicans — including President Donald Trump's solicitor general, D. John Sauer — argue it's the Democrats who are trying to racially engineer the district to their advantage.

Sauer argues in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court that this would be an "open and unabashed racial gerrymander, directing the state to replace a district where the candidate backed by white voters usually wins with one where the candidate backed by black and Latino voters usually wins."

Now that an automatic stay has been lifted in state court, the GOP is relying all the more on a federal stay to order the current map kept through November. This strategy recently failed for the GOP in California. The way it works: Justice Sonia Sotomayor is the Supreme Court circuit justice for the Second Circuit, which includes New York. So she is responsible for handling emergency applications such as these.

State Sen. Michael Gianaris, the Albany chamber's deputy majority leader from Queens, has put forward a bill to start amending the constitution to allow redistricting if another state has acted to draw congressional lines more than once in less than 10 years. That would essentially affirm what is already going on. Gianaris recently announced he isn't seeking reelection, and Albany Democrats have not yet settled on a successor on guiding redistricting. 

That's just another question mark looming on this topic.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Not the best idea

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Final Point

What's new at SUNY Old Westbury

SUNY Old Westbury President Timothy Sams visited the Newsday editorial board Wednesday to discuss what's happening at one of the most unique and diverse schools — 72% of students being people of color — in the state's system.

A Syracuse native, Sams accepted the job five years ago without visiting the campus because of COVID-19 restrictions, arriving to a place that was the site of an emergency hospital and then a vaccination center for 18 months, events that had a lingering effect not only on the physical facility but its students as well, he said.

Sams said STEM, business and education are the top majors, which made securing funding to overhaul its outdated natural sciences building a top priority. "It had labs that were not as good as some of the high schools on Long Island," Sams said. With a $200 million grant from Gov. Kathy Hochul, a partial renovation will be completed next year, followed by the construction of a building extension. And last week, the school announced a pathways partnership with SUNY Downstate to allow its biology majors to obtain nursing degrees at the Brooklyn school.

Sams also shared the school's new 2026-2031 strategic plan, which outlines goals to help make SUNY Old Westbury a "center for academic excellence, innovation, inclusion, social justice, and sustainability." It looks to expand student research opportunities and "creative activities" and hopes to expand fundraising by 10%.

To marry the school's 1965 mission statement of bringing about a "more just and sustainable world," Sams seeks to teach artificial intelligence with an ethical orientation. "It's here. If we don't educate on how they will use it, we're not preparing them to succeed when they leave," Sams said. He insists students be reminded to widely share their knowledge of this technology already shape-shifting the world. "I will not allow this revolution to leave these communities behind."

Another priority of the president is to create, by 2028, a business incubator in cooperation with several Long Island companies that will allow students to develop their entrepreneurial ideas, graduating with plans for their own business.

But Sams' biggest challenge will be competing for students in the very competitive Northeast, as demographers warn of a coming "enrollment cliff." Old Westbury currently has 4,700 students, 800 short of its full capacity. The school's strategic plan indicates a goal of increasing SUNY Old Westbury's international student population by 6% by 2031, while also strengthening the "student experience." The pitch is that Old Westbury, which prioritizes teaching financial literacy, has the lowest fees of any SUNY school, a low student loan default rate, and a higher median salary for its graduates after about five years in the workforce.

"Students know value," Sams said. "We will tell them not only will you get a job, you will get a job paying more money."

— Rita Ciolli rita.ciolli@newsday.com

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