New York State’s long-awaited re-districting plan is here. To the surprise of almost no one, but to the vocal disappointment of many Democrats, the new map was clearly redrawn with an eye to keeping a Republican majority in the state senate*. Under the proposed plan, six traditionally Democratic districts in Queens would be smushed into three, and several new districts would be created in heavily Asian-American outer-borough areas. There’s also a proposed new Senate district in a heavily Republican upstate area, and a new assembly district in a Democratic area outside of Rochester. That last district is shaped like a swirling question mark, explains the WSJ — perhaps an apt metaphor for the way at least some people feel about the whole proposal. (Whaaa?) Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group told the paper that is was, statistically speaking, the most gerrymandered state map in “at least 30 years.”
* The Republicans have a majority in the senate, not the assembly.
