Columnist Karen Rubin: GOP redistricting plan threatens GN

The Island Now

Unless we are extremely vigilant and shame the Nassau County Republicans, they will redistrict Great Neck out of existence. We will no longer be an intact community with the ability to exert any kind of influence in county politics.  

Our school district will be sliced and diced and there will no longer be any districts where Jews have any kind of political clout at all (The Five Towns are being similarly disemboweled).

This is what will happen if the map proposed by Republicans – or one that is similar, because the Republican majority in the Legislature is producing another map – gets through the Nassau Legislature, which is only barely a Republican Majority, 10-9. But the Republicans have in mind a new map designed to give Republicans a permanent 12-7 Super Majority.

Republicans throughout the country have taken advantage of the 2010 Red Tide (when Democrats stayed home) to gerrymander everything from Congressional districts to local elections. 

Now, they are already gearing up for the 2016 election – not making the mistake of doing the dirty work only within the year of the Presidential election when the electorate would be fired up and pressuring the Justice Department to step in – by changing the rules so that each Congressional district gets its own electoral vote. 

That means that low-population areas (that is, rural, which in these states vote Republican) would have greater power with their vote over urban voters (someone calculated in Virginia, urban voters would count as 3/5 of an American). 

So much for one-person, one vote. Obama would have lost the election, even while getting 5 million more popular votes. We are back to “nullification.”

Republicans can’t win fairly, so they cheat. They purge voters, eliminate early voting, put fewer machines in Democratic districts, and when all else fails, they filibuster to make sure the majority doesn’t get its way.

That hasn’t happened in Nassau County, you say? 

Since Republicans took over, they have been methodical at shutting out Democrats from every action, turning everything into rancorous partisan battles. 

Even so, up until now, there is near parity between Democrats and Republicans – Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano squeaked through the last time by a few hundred votes when Democrats – particularly from Great Neck – stayed home. 

In the last legislative election, a few hundred votes made the difference between Democrats taking over the Majority or Republicans holding control, leaving a 10-9 split. Had Democrats taken over, they would have been the ones in control of redistricting

Now Nassau County is having its own redistricting drama. This process has been a sham from the start, beginning with the 2011 plan devised in secret by Republican state operative John Ciampoli – brought to Nassau as county attorney by Mangano for the express purpose of seizing electoral advantage. When Democrats successfully blocked that plan in court, the Republicans, with a wink-and-a-nod, created a Temporary Redistricting Advisory Commission, ostensibly to follow the “Ps” and “Qs” of the county charter to have an open process with public comment.

But the intention was never to actually come up with a consensus plan, or to bother to take into account the more than 150 people who made the effort to give testimony. That was obvious when just a couple of days before a hearing on Jan. 3 (failing the seven-day public notice required under Open Meetings law) and with only two days until the Jan. 5 deadline for the commission to complete its work, Chair Francis X. Moroney announced the public hearing, and told Democrats they had better have their own map ready too. 

He made no attempt during a seven-months long, $500,000 process to organize meetings between Republicans and Democrats.

What is more – and this is truly disgusting – the Republican commissioners never spoke up during the entire process, and couldn’t explain or answer a single question about how their map was formed. 

Those of us who were there suspect they never even saw the map before it was proposed at the hearing, nor did they care a whit to. Their job was simply to vote for the map, because the bigger plan was for neither map to get the required six votes to be “recommended” – their job was to get through the process so that the Republican Legislature (again, John Ciampoli), could either produce their own map or even dust off the Ciampoli map. 

And it will all be done in a rush, rush again, with March 5 as the deadline for the Legislature to adopt a new redistricting map.

Moroney, who has a new job as press secretary for the legislative majority, said that no “hearings” have been scheduled on the map – and there may well be a new one that no one has seen before – but hinted when action would be taken since a map first has to come through the Rules Committee and then be adopted by the Legislature. 

That means that it is likely they will bring up a map at the Feb. 4 Rules Committee Meeting and possibly even the meeting that day of the Legislature. Then, the Legislature would probably adopt the map at its Feb. 25 meeting, since no other meeting is scheduled before the March 5 deadline (unless the committee or legislature schedules a special session).

The public will have a chance to comment at both meetings (but as we have seen, the Legislature doesn’t make it easy, either making people wait hours and hours, or more ridiculously, forcing the public to comment within 30 minutes before the meeting, before they would even have seen the map). But Moroney says that at this point, there is no special hearing scheduled on any map, and the first the public would even see a map is at the Rules committee.

Needless to say, Democrats are not involved in this part of the process. Think of that. It is back to a back-room process of one party rule. Moroney says that the same consultants the Republicans hired to do their reprehensible January 3 map are the ones that are “reviewing” all the material – the 3 maps, including the Coalition map, and testimony – from the commission. No Democrats need apply.

At the hearing Jan. 3, members of good-government groups including the League of Women Voters of Nassau County protested, and the league offered their own map that had been created by a newly formed Nassau County United Redistricting Coalition, consisting of six good government groups including the league, Common Cause/NY, Nassau Chapter of NYACLU, LaFuente-Long Island civic Participation Project, Latino Justice PRLDEF, and Long Island Civic Engagement Table.

Now the coalition is trying to call attention to its map and doing as much as they can to shame the Republicans into holding public hearings before they adopt a map, and shame the Republicans from using their narrow majority to adopt such an obviously gerrymandered plan.

But they have no shame. They literally don’t care. At the Jan. 3 hearing, out of 69 speakers, 67 of them (a large number from Great Neck, from District 2, and Dave Denneberg’s district) blasted the Republican map, said it violated federal and state guidelines, but Moroney, who seemed to discount the numbers of people who turned out from a particular district as they were “cheerleading”, kept insisting that his Republican map would pass constitutional muster. 

He boasted that the only instruction the consultants had was to have a “blind eye” to incumbency. Actually, the only instruction the map-makers had was to gerrymander lines around incumbents.

The Republicans offered no analysis or back-up of the districts – and refused to say whether voting records and registration were considered by the map-makers.

What is interesting is that the coalition prepared its map in just a month’s time and at a fraction of the $500,000 which Nassau County taxpayers flushed away on the commission. (Moroney says the Republican consultants are the same ones used by the commission, and doing the work under the $95,000 contract.)

The coalition plan is an example of a map that works and offers a stark contrast to the Republican proposal – which demonstrates all the more how the Republicans really had to work to achieve their goals. Also, the coalition map has extensive explanation of the demographics, including an overlay that shows the minimal changes in geographic lines from each existing district. 

The coalition map shows that it is quite possible to create districts that are compact, contiguous and still fall within the mandated +/-5 percent of the targeted population of 70,573 (includes prison population).

The most damning fact about the proposed Republican map is that it displaces 680,000 people into new districts – that means that half of Nassau County’s 1,340,882 total population would be uprooted to new districts, an unprecedented proportion.

In contrast, the Coalition’s plan moves roughly 240,000 (and the Democratic plan moves the fewest because it was designed to be a “east change” plan.)

“But you have to understand that we are not attempting a ‘least change’ plan [as the Democratic proposal is],” said Brian Paul, Research and Policy Coordinator for New York Common Cause, who was the principal mapmaker of the Coalition’s plan. “We start with the current districts and improve them based on criteria that would improve representation and functionality of the legislature:”

In comparison, the 2003 redistricting map, advanced by the then-Democratic majority, resulted in 50,000 people being shifted into new districts.  The map proposed this time by Democrats displaces a minimal number of voters, since they approached the project  from the perspective of minimal changes to existing districts.

The coalition map offers the most compact, contiguous districts, and for the most part keeps villages and towns intact. It map corrects some of the most egregious mash ups of the Republican map, which does some of its worst damage to the Great Neck peninsula (View the Nassau United Redistricting Coalition’s plan here: www.nassauunitedredistricting.org/coalition-plan/). 

The Republican map would rip away Kings Point, Saddle Rock and parts of the Village of Great Neck from the 10th District and “attach” them to the 11th District. What is more, these targeted neighborhoods are not even physically connected to the 11th District – you would have to go by boat, or else drive down to Northern Boulevard, passing through the rest of the 10th District, and then drive east and north again, probably about half-hour in driving time, rather than the few minutes it takes to gather together at Great Neck House. 

The Republicans’ intention, here, seems to eliminate the political clout of the Jewish vote in Great Neck – one of only two districts where the Jewish vote has any significant sway. The other district, the Five Towns, is similarly torn asunder, shredded into three districts. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Jewish voters have tended to vote Democratic (even if in federal elections, lately, Kings Point and Saddle Rock have gone Republican).

In contrast, the coalition map keeps the Great Neck peninsula intact, and combines parts of New Hyde Park which is already part of the Great Neck School District, plus Herricks, Searingtown. This change means that the Asian population in the 10th District will increase from 16% to 21%, which also seems fairer.

The Republican map also was broadly derided for tearing the Five Towns into three or four parts. The coalition map keeps the Five Towns (District 7) intact and meets the population target by taking off Island Park and Harbor Isle and putting them where they are geographically connected, with Long Beach, which is kept together.

The biggest changes – reflecting the growth in population- are in Districts 2 and 9.

In the Coalition plan, District 2 is now much more compact – that area, Garden City, is where the population really grew.. “Every plan has to have major changes to #2,” Paul said. 

But he added, “This plan is subject to improvement based on what the community says.” Indeed, as of Jan. 28, the map already was modified to incorporate public comments – something the Republicans don’t bother about, since they obviously ignored the more than 100 public comments made to the commission during the course of the half-dozen hearings.

In the coalition map, District 9 has the biggest change: putting New Castle with Mineola, making the district much more diverse, but keeping the district entirely within North Hempstead.

“We tried to follow village borders,” Paul said. “We started by analyzing the current map based on the criteria, and how best to keep communities together and make districts more compact.

“With technology, it doesn’t take that long to draw a plan,” he said, adding that it took him a month – including holding meetings and making presentations with the member groups- and at a fraction of the cost the Commission spent.

“This is extremely important for the voting rights affecting all Nassau County,” said Fred Brewington, an attorney and activist, at a press conference to introduce the plan. “The Republican plan moves over half of the population to different districts, separates brother from brother, sister from sister. The whole point of redistricting is completely unfair and insidious” especially in the way District 2 and District 10 were divided.

“I am serving notice, to let them know we’re not going to take this no more,” he said. “We will take them to court. Be ready, because we are.”

“Nassau County voters are being systematically disenfranchised as pawns in the partisan power grab which has become the redistricting process,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause/NY. “The coalition plan is being presented to the Legislature as a viable alternative to demonstrate there are no practical obstacles to creating a fair plan.” 

“By listening to Nassau County residents and applying fair redistricting principles our coalition was able to draft a preliminary map in this important decennial decision on governance and democracy,” said Juan Cartagena, president and General Counsel, LatinoJustice. “We urge the county Legislature to restore trust and conduct an open process to ensure full community engagement for a new districting plan before its vote in March 2013.”

“The League of Women Voters of Nassau County was very disappointed in the advisory commission. They did have hearings around the county, but didn’t seem to listen to the comments,” said Barbara Epstein. “We hope that the legislature will give serious consideration to our map and do what is in the best interests of the residents of Nassau County not their political parties.”

“Nassau legislators must stop their shameful efforts to divide communities of color” said Daniel Altschuler of the Long Island Civic Engagement Table. “Common-sense redistricting is essential for a healthy democracy, but unfortunately the new map proposed by County Republicans seems designed to dilute the power of Nassau’s growing African-American, Latino, and immigrant communities. Immigrants and communities of color are a growing part of Nassau and deserve fair representation, not the gerrymandering we see in the proposed maps.”

The coalition is funded with a grant from the Hagedorn Foundation (www.hagedornfoundation.org), which supports and promotes social equity across Long Island.

Since the Nassau Republicans show little inclination to be open and transparent in their process, the Coalition hosted a webinar on Jan. 29, and plans to hold public forums in key locations around the county in February (dates to be announced at www.nassauunitedredistricting.org ).

For more information, visit www.nassauunitedredistricting.org.

Share this Article