Posts Tagged ‘Wall Street Journal’
Despite campaign promises by legislators and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to enact independent redrawing of election districts and opposition by some good-government groups, New York’s Legislature was expected to pass its own redistricting proposal Wednesday.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP0b86b4c3a25045a38b8eb3a16c68ff6a.html
New York Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries’s nascent congressional bid in Brooklyn appears back on track after a federal magistrate judge revised her proposal to redraw district lines late Monday night.
A proposal released by Magistrate Roanne Mann last week turned on its head what had been expected to be a competitive three-way Brooklyn Democratic primary by drawing Jeffries — and much of his political base in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill — out of the district currently represented by Rep. Edolphus Towns. Charles Barron, a city councilman from Brownsville, is also running.
read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/03/13/redistricting-revision-reverberates-in-brooklyn-harlem/
The Senate’s Republican leader and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo are on the brink of breaking campaign promises they made two years ago to overhaul legislative redistricting so that new boundaries are drawn without partisan gerrymandering, a former New York City mayor turned good-government activist said Thursday.
Ed Koch, founder of New York Uprising, bristled at reports of a political deal that could allow Cuomo to avoid vetoing a new map and start a two-year process for amending the state constitution to create an independent panel that would redraw election district lines beginning in 2022. The constitutional change is expected to leave the final say to Legislature because Cuomo and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos have repeatedly said in recent days that redistricting is constitutionally a legislative power.
“We now are at the moment of truth,” Koch said.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/APb80ae087f2724f45b13c7333b29238d7.html
A state judge is pressuring New York’s Legislature to agree on a redistricting proposal for Congress or face imposition of her own proposal, which would eliminate a Democrat’s seat in the Hudson Valley and Republican’s seat in Queens and Brooklyn.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said Tuesday that the proposal provides a template and impetus for a deal between the Assembly’s Democratic majority and Senate’s Republican majority that would avoid a court-ordered plan.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/APf3861beab07b4392b057fbd5668b33be.html
Albany lawmakers were set to unveil competing plans on Wednesday to redraw New York’s congressional districts, but the fate of the state’s Washington delegation may instead be up to a Columbia professor who has become a redistricting fix-it man.
New York is among a handful of states that hasn’t resolved its once-a-decade redistricting dilemma, and the process has been particularly difficult because two of its 29 congressional districts must be eliminated. The uncertainty has become a source of anxiety and distraction for members of Congress, who don’t know which voters they must target in the June 26 primary and the Nov. 6 election.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203986604577253863145969048.html
A federal judge on Monday prepared to take over New York’s redistricting process from the state Legislature, where it’s been delayed. The federal court in Brooklyn stepped in to make sure new congressional districts will be drawn if the state Legislature fails in the process required every 10 years with updated Census data.
Congressional redistricting is especially difficult politically this year because two congressional seats will be lost because of New York’s slow population growth compared to other states.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP56b17fdcef36424cb8d1d56ed6d478c1.html
A federal appeals court is refusing to dismiss a challenge to redistricting in New York.
State legislative leaders have argued that it’s too soon to intervene in their constitutionally delegated role in drawing district lines.
The three-judge federal panel has set a conference Monday in Brooklyn with attorneys for all parties, directing Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann to report and make recommendations.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP82384e4bc2844fd1bc6af943f0f1fb8e.html
Democratic Sen. Michael Gianaris told a packed redistricting hearing Tuesday that the Senate’s Republican majority has brought “shame” to New York by proposing blatant gerrymandering in a continuing plot to protect its power.
In the sometimes raucous redistricting hearing in Queens, Gianaris accused the Republican senators of presenting intentionally atrocious lines statewide earlier this month to intentionally draw Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s veto. Gianaris said that will be followed soon by slightly improved lines, which would go to Cuomo or the courts. Gianaris doesn’t predict what would happen next.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/APecbd6480a4714c23af61949d3876a87a.html
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday he will veto the new legislative district maps proposed by the state Senate and Assembly majorities. That throws the process into likely negotiations to revise what Cuomo and good-government groups called partisan efforts to solidify the majorities’ power.
“The maps are unacceptable,” Cuomo said Friday after a fundraising event for the National Governors Association. “I think anyone who looks at the maps will see the political machinations. You don’t have to look hard.”
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/APe3af7ba8048443c6a3f707932f4d990d.html
New York’s primary for congressional races will take place on June 26, a federal judge ruled on Friday in response to a lawsuit that said the state’s primary, when it was held in early September, effectively disenfranchised New Yorkers serving in the military overseas.
Gary Sharpe, the chief judge of the federal district court in Albany, set the date because even though New York lawmakers acknowledged that the state’s primary violated federal law, they couldn’t agree on a replacement date. The Democratic-controlled Assembly wanted to hold it in late June, while the Republican Senate preferred August.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204661604577187400567106614.html
New York’s Senate Republicans, hoping to hold their slim majority, said Tuesday they plan to add a seat to the chamber under a redistricting process that one Democrat called a farce.
“This was done in the dark of night,” said Sen. Martin Malave Dilan, a Brooklyn Democrat. Dilan said the Republican action, which is expected to get final approval in coming weeks, shows the previous public hearings and actions of the bipartisan redistricting commission have been “a farce … it’s business as usual.”
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP5ce98f41582c4922927bfd93ad2a2afd.html
For seven decades, two African-American politicians—first Adam Clayton Powell Jr., then Charles Rangel—have represented Harlem in Congress, symbolizing the New York City neighborhood’s status as the de facto capital of black America.
Now, redistricting under way by the state legislature combined with a fast-rising Hispanic population are threatening to overturn that history. There are more Hispanics than blacks in Mr. Rangel’s district, raising the prospect that Harlem’s roughly 200,000 African-Americans will lose their dominant role in choosing the district’s member of Congress.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204368104577136581976764726.html
ALBANY, N.Y. — Senate and Republican leaders have struck a deal to count 46,043 of the state’s 58,000 prison inmates as potential voters back in their home neighborhoods for the purpose of redrawing election districts, an assemblyman said Thursday.
John McEneny, an Albany Democrat, said the deal struck in the last 48 hours with the Senate is the result of extensive computer analysis and negotiation over which prisoners could be clearly identified with their previous voting districts.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP0b1e752fabe1419390cfd80ba78391e1.html
ALBANY, N.Y. — The traditionally secretive process the Assembly and Senate majorities use to redraw election districts appears to be getting some public disclosure now that a key assemblyman and the Senate majority are open to considering redistricting proposals from a good-government group.
In addition to considering the proposal by Common Cause-NY on Wednesday, Assemblyman John McEneny said there will be public hearings in January.
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP4cd601916fba4444a2e5fbbc4bbbfd37.html
ALBANY, N.Y. — A state court ruled Friday that prisoners must be counted among voters back in their home neighborhoods rather than in upstate prisons for the purpose of redrawing state legislative districts, a likely blow to the slim Republican majority in New York’s Senate.
Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP9d72339fffd24826a646deb97baed492.html
