Democrats may have turned NY redder

Daily Point

Court-ordered House of pain for Democrats

If the drafts of New York congressional maps released Tuesday by a court-appointed special master show any clear impact, it lies in how the Democrats’ overreach in trying to draw lines to the national party’s advantage backfired.

One regional Democrat versed in the details said that in a “good year” for the party, the map rejected by the state’s top court could have helped give the state’s House delegation a 22-4 or even 23-3 Democratic majority. Democrats currently have a 19-8 edge but the state will lose one seat because of population shifts.

The 26 newly cast districts, in what’s widely expected to be a “bad year” for Democrats, could shrink that margin to 16-10, the same partisan told The Point. That’s especially explosive in a year when a House majority could hinge on a mere handful of seats nationwide.

David Wasserman of the widely quoted Cook Report tweeted: “With so many competitive seats, it’s not hard to envision a 16D-10R (or even 15D-11R) split on a great GOP night, which is a far cry from the 22D-4R rout Dems initially tried to gerrymander.”

The revised map shows that with the Democratic legislature’s manipulations removed, Long Island’s 1st Congressional district, now represented by Lee Zeldin, would retain a solid east-to-west shape, all in Suffolk and better for Republicans. CD2, now represented by Andrew Garbarino, would no longer become a concentrated well of GOP voters as it includes more of Huntington.

CD3, now represented by Tom Suozzi, won’t wind its way around Long Island Sound into Westchester as Democrats planned. Now it would extend from the Sound south to the ocean and hypothetically become more winnable for a Republican. Meantime the Westbury home of Nassau Legis. Siela Bynoe, who had been seeking the open seat in CD4, now appears to be in CD3, where a crowded primary is already taking shape.

Bigger challenges could await incumbent Democrats off Long Island. By uniting part of Manhattan’s Upper West Side with Upper East Side, veteran Congress members Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler would go in the same district, with potential complications for Rep. Nydia Velasquez. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, touted as a possible future speaker, lands in the same Brooklyn district as Yvette Clark. Further north, Sean Patrick Maloney, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, finds that his CD17 district mostly contains what had been that of incumbent Mondaire Jones. And the homes of Jones and freshman Jamaal Bowman now are currently in the same district. Those changes could be of more consequence to the delegation numbers.

New York’s top court found that the process followed by the Independent Redistricting Commission and the State Legislature in tandem did not meet muster under anti-gerrymandering constitutional language approved by state voters at the polls in 2014.

Under the court’s redrawn map, only 15 counties are split into different CDs compared with the legislature’s 34; it is better by a couple of accepted measures; eight districts are deemed by past election results to be “competitive” as opposed to three on the rejected map. Democrats are now saying they will argue before State Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister, who ordered the special master’s revisions, that guidelines about trying to keep incumbents in their own districts were ignored.

The court deadline is Wednesday for public comment on the special master's House and State Senate lines. McAllister is due to approve a final version on Friday.

Nobody can know yet if this assists a Republican ‘red wave’ in the fall. But at least some Democrats in Congress are bound to sing the blue-state blues.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Pencil Point

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Final Point

MacKay’s new gig

Frank MacKay, the former state Independence Party chairman who has also hosted and produced his own radio talk show for years, has a new job, and a new home for his show. WABC 77 owner John Catsimatidis announced Monday that MacKay has been named president of the Long Island division of the company.

“WABC is very excited for Frank MacKay to bring his knowledge of Long Island, politics and radio to the WABC family,” said a spokesman for the company. “We look forward to him having an impact on Long Island and beyond.”

Catsimatidis, the supermarket magnate and Republican, bought 107.1 WLIR, based in Hampton Bays, in 2020 to enhance WABC’s reach on the Island. Now, MacKay told The Point, his show will be running on WLIR and he will also be doing some work for WABC 77, where he had appeared from 2 to 3 Monday morning.

MacKay’s long-running show ran on “LI News Radio” 103.9 WRCN Riverhead until a week ago.

That show, which MacKay told The Point often has and often will focus on entertainment and sports celebrities, also gets very political, and in the past couple of years, has had a lot of influence on local affairs.

In particular, his focus on the Gilgo Beach killings and some of the conspiracy theories surrounding them led to renewed effort to solve the mystery.

His show also gave a platform to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney and detractors of former DA Tim Sini.

MacKay said he’s excited. His show, in a two-week hiatus for the transition, will resume next Monday and air at 8 p.m. for one hour, Monday through Saturday on WLIR.

And MacKay said he’s out of the Independence Party business, having resigned his chairmanship on Jan.1. State election law changes a few years ago made it far harder for such parties to gain automatic ballot access, and though MacKay said he understands other members are trying to petition the party onto ballots for the governor’s race this year, he’s not involved.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller