Primaries drawn into disorder

Daily Point

Ballot dates and lines reach their final limbo

Now that the latest court ruling has reinforced the earlier voiding of House redistricting maps, the state of the state’s elections carries multiple anxious questions into next week.

What course will the highest court, the Court of Appeals, soon follow? Will primaries slated for June 28 be delayed, and if so, could state and federal primaries be held on different days as has happened before? How would that affect voting patterns? Will nervous candidates who already filed petitions have to shift their ambitions? And so on.

The high court hears arguments in the case Tuesday morning.

On Thursday, the midlevel appellate panel ordered lawmakers to redraw maps by April 30. But Democrats who control the governor’s office, the Assembly and the State Senate made it clear they won’t bother to do so unless and until the top court says they must.

The five-member appellate panel in the Fourth Department in Rochester agreed that the maps were unconstitutional. All but one of the judges found this was not because of the flawed process that produced the maps, as earlier argued, but because the lines themselves violate an anti-gerrymandering provision enacted a decade ago.

The “independent” redistricting reforms were negotiated by the offices of then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and then-Senate leader Dean Skelos. On Monday, Cuomo boasted in a published opinion piece that back in 2014 “we took the unusual step of amending the state Constitution to mandate the process be free from partisanship.”

But looking back, the legislative negotiations that produced this “unusual step” left the state with a bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission that was destined to deadlock and send the drawing process to the legislature — where ultimate authority over the lines rested as before.

Whether the powers in Albany will make changes for the next 10-year cycle is another unanswered, longer-term question.

But first up next week is the question of how broadly the Court of Appeals will react. The appellate division found the lower court judge Patrick McAllister in Steuben County “erred in concluding that the process used by the legislature to enact the 2022 maps was unconstitutional.” Also, it erased McAllister’s rejection of State Senate and Assembly maps, and Democrats underscored the part of the decision that effectively upheld the legislature’s right to draw the maps this year.

But more importantly, the panel said McAllister was right to cite partisan bias by the legislature based on a key provision of the 2014 amendment that “districts shall not be drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.”

The court accepted computer models from a GOP-hired expert, Sean Trende, who has been an expert witness in cases in other states. Trende’s research satisfied the judges that Republican voters were placed into “a few Republican-leaning districts, while spreading Democratic voters as efficiently as possible,” the new opinion states.

That leaves a thicket of legal issues for the top court to consider quickly, with a dramatic election year that can’t stay in limbo for too long.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Talking Point

Congressional chaos

The fate of New York’s congressional district lines is up in the air pending a gerrymandering case scheduled to reach the state’s highest court next week. What will that mean for congressional candidates on Long Island and beyond?

So far, plenty of confusion. “No one knows what to think,” one Democratic source told The Point.

Some campaigns are preparing for a few potential possibilities for the road ahead, multiple Democratic and Republican sources tell The Point: Perhaps the congressional primary could be shifted further into the summer to give more time for new lines to be drawn. Or the lines could stay the same this cycle but be changed soon after. Or everything could stay as is.

Complications abound, particularly with the time shift possibility. Would that mean a new period for candidates to collect the traditional signatures to get on the ballot? Would more hats get thrown into the ring?

One possibility that appears to be making the rounds: If a new petitioning period is indeed required, might the candidates who have their parties’ backing be able to get a primary ballot line automatically, while other candidates are forced to collect their own signatures once again?

And if the lines are indeed shifted, that could have huge impacts on the Long Island races. The 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts are particularly divergent from the old maps, with CD1 going from Orient to Plainview, and CD3 rounding Long Island Sound and spanning five counties. Candidates like Jackie Gordon and Alessandra Biaggi had already been unexpectedly shifted into new districts — they and others could be affected by line changes once again.

Then there’s the question of how a shifted primary extending the race would help or hurt particular candidates.

“That always allows for new events to take place, new things to happen,” says Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist not retained by any of the congressional candidates this cycle.

More time could help a nonparty pick gain traction, or it could be a “burden” for those outsiders who had already started spending their money with the late-June primary date in mind, said Gyory. He added that if the court took the big step of moving the primary back, there would be a “thicket of logistical issues.”

No kidding.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

Whack that growth

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Puzzle Point

In the news

Welcome to this week’s news quiz, based on recent events. As usual, provide the answer for each clue, one letter per blank. The first letter of each answer, taken in order, spells the name of the Midwestern state lawmaker whose now-viral response to a colleague’s personal attack included this passage: “I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense.”

A link to the answers appears below.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _   Sales of this formerly illicit substance became legal in New Jersey this week.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _   An Apple store in this city became the first company store to file to try to form a union.

_ _ _ _ _     _ _ _ _ _ _   The Food and Drug Administration announced it would begin an investigation of reports that eating this cereal had made some people sick.

_ _ _ _     _ _ _ _ _   Long Island municipality that approved a $75 million settlement with a developer over its plans to build a waterfront apartment complex.

_ _ _ _ _   Last name of the political power couple ending their podcast deal with Spotify and looking to sign a multimillion-dollar deal with another audio platform.

_ _ _ _ _ _     _ _ _ _ _   Tony Award-winner from “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “Tru” and later star in TV’s “Mad Men,” who died this week at age 90.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _   Location of Long Island’s first anaerobic digester to turn food waste into biogas, which broke ground this week.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _   Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a blockade of the last stronghold in this Ukrainian city so tight that “a fly cannot pass through.”

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _   Three Long Island farms received state licenses to start growing this plant this spring.

_ _ _ _ _ _ Three Long Island animal shelters are part of a group of East Coast rescue organizations that saved 20 dogs marked for death by gangs in this country.

_ _ _ _ _ _   One of three states visited this week by President Joe Biden to tout the bipartisan infrastructure law.

_ _ _ _ _ _   The Wimbledon tennis tournament announced it will ban players from this country this year.

_ _ _ _ _     _ _ _ _ _   Name of the special taxing district governing Walt Disney World that will be dissolved per a new law passed by Florida’s legislature in response to Disney’s criticism of that state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

_ _ _   Number of months CNN+ was on the air before Warner Bros. Discovery pulled the plug.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _   Giant retailer that agreed to buy green hydrogen to power the thousands of forklifts in its facilities and distribution centers.

Click here for the answers to the clued words and to the identity of the mystery lawmaker.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie

Correction

The Cedarhurst deputy mayor position until recently came with a salary of $15,000, until the village cut the pay to about $10,000. An item in Thursday’s Point had the wrong amount for the previous salary.