In the last seconds of a 4 1/2 hour hearing, just before the Temporary Districting Advisory Commission – a body appointed to come up with a plan to redistrict Nassau County’s legislative districts – was to vote on a proposed plan, Democratic commissioner Wayne Hall made a final plea to Republican commissioner Henry Holley: “Do the right thing, Brother,” as the couple of dozen of people still left in the Nassau County Legislative chamber at 10:30 p.m. applauded.
The plea was in vain.
Republican chairman Francis X. Moroney disregarded the pleas from the Democratic commissioners as well as dozens of individuals who testified, that the vote be put off until Saturday, Jan. 5 (the mandated deadline for the commission to finish its work), so that the commissioners could actually review the public comments and perhaps tweak their proposed map.
After all, wasn’t that the point of a public hearing? How could the comments of the dozens of people who testified that night be taken into account if the commissioners voted that same evening?
Even more improbably, the Democrats hoped to actually be invited to sit down with their Republican counterparts and try to work out a compromise map that would achieve consensus, or at least, the six-vote minimum for the commission to actually present a map it recommended.
In the end, the Republicans could not be dared or shamed to “do the right thing” or threatened enough times with lawsuits into holding off the vote despite virtually unanimity among the “public” speakers that the map was a travesty, “an abomination,” a blatant “power grab,” gerrymandering designed to give permanent, 12-7 super majority to Republicans on the Legislature and strip communities of their ability to have impact with their vote.
Clearly, the whole process was a sham, intended to appear to follow the county’s constitution and a judicial order. There was never any real interest in developing a proposed map that would pass the threshold of the six votes – which would have required at least one vote from the other party.
If there was a serious interest, Moroney would have asked the different sides to introduce their maps early in the seven-month long process, so that the people who turned out for public hearings could have had input into those, and he would have had sit-downs and consultations among the commissioners.
As it was, the Republican commissioners never opened up their mouths during the hearings – they did their best to even appear to look interested. And even at this hearing, despite efforts by the Democrats to get the Republicans to explain how the lines were drawn, Moroney – ostensibly the non-voting chairman – did all the talking for the Republicans.
I doubt the Republican commissioners even had seen the map, let alone knew the rationale for so redrawing district lines so dramatically.
Finally, the leader of the five Democratic commissioners, Bonnie Garone, demonstrated the Democrats’ contempt for the process and as a protest against the “sham” that the commission had become, the Democrats did not vote at all.
The result was predictable – and calculated: now it will be up to the Nassau County Legislature – or rather, the Republican majority on the Legislature – to choose whatever map they wanted, even if it the map devised in secret more than a year ago by John Ciampoli, a Republican Party operative brought to the county by Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano as the county attorney, but really to accomplish the Republican goal for redistricting to create a permanent, 12-7, super majority on the county Legislature.
Moroney justified the Republican map saying that the consulting company they hired (each side got $225,000 to spend), had but one caveat: to “disregard” incumbency.
“Because this was done with a blind eye to incumbency,” Moroney said, there are four districts where there will be no incumbent, and four districts in which there are two incumbents who will have to challenge each other.
“When you give somebody something, somebody loses something,” Moroney said. “Districting is not a process that goes community by community, it goes house by house…. There are lots of things in the maps – both maps – that don’t follow what people wanted in those hearings. That’s just part and parcel in the nature of districting.”
Clearly, though, the caveat to “disregard incumbency” was done with a wink that meant “make sure Democrat incumbents were dislodged” – otherwise, as numerous people questioned, why would the lines be drawn, literally, around Democratic Legislator David Denenberg’s house making for an odd hook in the district? Denenberg (D-LD 19) is extremely popular – winning reelections by 70 percent or more.
Apparently, the home of Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams (D-LD 1) was also carved out of his district.
The lines are also drawn to pit popular Democrats against each other – Judi Bosworth (D-LD 10) and Wayne Wink (D-LD 11).
Thus, Kings Point, Saddle Rock and parts of the Village of Great Neck (now represented by Bosworth) are lopped off from the Great Neck peninsula where they are now part of the 10th district, and glommed onto the 11th, with Plandome and Munsey Park – except that entire part of the peninsula is physically separated from its new district by water. It would take probably 30 minutes to drive from that part of the district just to get to the rest of the district.
Similarly, the Five Towns are broken up three ways.
Taken together, the only two political strongholds for Jewish voters would be broken up; even though “Jews” are not considered a minority worthy of protection under the Voting Rights Act, it would mean that Jewish voters have little if any clout in local government.
The Republican plan displaces 680,000 residents who will find themselves in new districts, often cut off and reattached to “neighborhoods” who are very different in income level, in culture and background from their own communities.
All but two of some 50 speakers at this hearing strongly condemned the Republican proposal (a guy from Levittown was pleased that this map makes Levittown intact).
And the one Republican operative who expressed support for the Republican plan basically argued that Democrats have also gerrymandered.
Except that in 2003, when Democrats in the Nassau County Legislature controlled the process, they did their best to incorporate Republicans, involved local mayors, and came up with lines that produced compact, contiguous districts and only displaced 50,000 voters whose borders had to be moved to achieve the demographic balance.
That was not done here.
And despite Moroney’s absurd protestations that the Republican map was “constitutional,” it clearly and bizarrely fails to meet the federal and state requirements of “contiguous, compact, and respecting communities of interest.”
“How could anything but politics, justify carving Kings Point from Great Neck peninsula…These maps don’t follow state, federal requirements,” said Nancy Rosenthal of the League of Women Voters, who offered the league’s own map.
“The principle of one-person, one vote is important in redistricting.. so is keeping communities together,” said Cynthia Correll, Long Island Regional chair and national committeewoman for Democratic Lawyers Council. “Keeping a municipality intact is such an important value, that you could deviate by more than 10 percent. This map cuts up communities – Glen Cove (where I live) which has a single school district is sliced up 3 ways, and that is not the only [community sliced up] on that map. Both the New York State constitution and U.S. Supreme Court cases require that districts be drawn in a way that are compact and contiguous.”
A test that is used, she said, requires “that a district be measured in such a way that the smallest circle you could draw that would contain be drawn. If you look at this map, Glen Cove is a long drawn out string of pearls – there is no circle you could draw to meet the test…. [Commissioner Robert] McDonald’s new district, [represented in] bright blue, is a long string of pearls. It is very obvious that they cannot pass constitutional muster.”
Moroney’s response, “I understand what you’re saying,” brought laughter from the audience.
“This map was developed under a very fair process,” Moroney said, as titters went through the audience, “all the legal standards. It would certainly be sustained in a court of law.”
Moroney said that the target population for the new districts was 71,573 (accounting for prison population), but there was no backup to explain how the existing districts compared to the target number. In the derided Ciampoli plan, an almost equivalent number of voters were moved between District 10 (Great Neck peninsula) to District 11, which without any adjustment fell within the allowed deviation.
But none of this mattered to the Republicans, who have very clear strategy which has been exercised at every level of government, from federal on down to local elections: to gerrymander districts so that even though there are more registered Democrats or more Democatic votes cast, Republicans continue to dominate state and local legislatures. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that there were one million more Democratic votes cast for House Representatives, and yet Republicans managed to keep control of the House.
Remember: in 2009, Republican Ed Mangano edged out Democrat Tom Suozzi as county executive by a scant few hundred votes out of some 250,000 cast; the Republicans held a one-seat majority on the Legislature, and in 2011, almost lost that. It could have gone either way and the Democrats could have taken over the Legislature.
So the Republicans dug in their heels and showed they will do anything they need to in order to retain political control.
One speaker remarked that the party should win on the strength of their candidate, not by manipulation of the voting lines.
A tremendous number of speakers opposing the Republican map came from the Great Neck peninsula – including Great Neck Mayor Ralph Kreitzman (also representing Nassau County Village Officials Association and Great Neck Village Officials Association), a trustee from Saddle Rock, residents of Kings Point, representatives of the Great Neck Public Schools.
Howard Weitzman, the former mayor of Great Neck Estates and former Nassau County comptroller, came to the podium, and chastised the commission, saying, “This is an illegitimate meeting – to have the public come down, then take a vote without the opportunity to consider what they said and you heard is outrage on the citizens of Nassau County.”
“This map breaks my heart – a bald face partisan power grab that has ever been seen in the history of Nassau County,” Weitzman went on. “It is clear how this map was put together: every Republican household and block was strung together to create a super majority on the Legislature, 12 to 7. Nassau County is close to an even balance between Democrats and Republicans. For most of the history of the legislature it’s been 10-9, 9-10. This would give you a 12-7 legislature with an evenly divided county, which would assure history of partisan wrangling..
“Why did you bother to differentiate colors? You only needed two – red and blue. That would explain everything. I am truly amazed and in wonderment that the Republicans would present and defend what is not defensible.
You’ve broken up communities all across the county, decimated Great Neck peninsula which historically has been one community, taken Five Towns and divided into three, taken Hempstead – a longtime political power – and divided it, divided Westbury, taken Plainview and split, taken Glen Cove and split. This certainly isn’t an improvement over what would have before. If one looked objectively, you could consider that racism is involved – taking communities of color and dividing them to weaken them. The numbers may be the same but communities don’t fit together.
“Taking Great Neck and 5 towns, historically Jewish – and breaking up to minimize theirs – all to gain political advantage.
“Rip this up start again, do it in nonpartisan manner and come out with something everybody could be proud of,” Weitzman said to loud applause.
Uprooting 680,000 voters among the districts in the way devised by the Republicans doesn’t just mean that Democrats will be forced to run against each other, it means that Democrats will be largely unknown in their new constituencies. What is more, the geography proposed by Republicans – makes the districts unwieldy, hard to establish a presence at all, and probably will discourage candidates altogether. But that also is the intention.
The fact that so many districts would have brand new faces gives an edge to whoever has the money to campaign. Clearly Republicans see their advantage in that.
What got very little attention was that the Democratic map that was proposed retains most of the communities and districts as they are.
But the role of the commission was always merely “advisory” – the Nassau County Legislature controls the process – it could accept the commission map proposed by the Republicans, the map proposed by the Democrats (yes, there is one), or other maps, such as one proposed (but not reviewed) by the League of Women Voters. It could also ditch them all and pick up the Ciampoli map that was so derided before.
That was always the plan.
The charade and the likely actions that the Republican Legislature will take will likely result in a lawsuit – as activist Fred Brewington promised during a dramatic appearance.
But who pays?
The county Legislature has unlimited – taxpayer – funds to defend a lawsuit, adding to the long list of cases the county has had to defend with taxpayer money. But who pays for the challenge to this blatant gerrymandering?
As for the hordes of people who protested the map? They don’t matter. They never did. You may think that this can be corrected at the ballot box. But that is the point. By gerrymandering districts, the Republicans don’t even have to appear to care.
And that’s why those commissioners – and the Republican legislators in the next go around – can sit through hours and hours of public condemnation and not care at all.
