Viewpoint: Nassau
GOP expected to pass redistricting map as Dems predict lawsuit
At a Feb. 16, 2023, public hearing, Nassau County Republicans took another whack – their fourth – at redistricting.
In fact, it is notable that the day after the February hearing at which the lawyer hired by the Republicans, Misha Tseytlin, a partner in Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP, declared the prior Republican map unconstitutional, the Republicans replaced it with yet another map.
This “final” map will be subject to the only public hearing on Feb. 27 at 1 p.m., to be followed immediately afterward by a vote by the Legislature to adopt the Republican map at 6:30 pm.
Tseytlin testified that both the Republican and Democratic maps that had been subjected to prior hearings were unconstitutional (at least he admitted the Republican map was illegal), and that this new map, dated Feb. 9, was submitted instead.
But why was the Democratic map “illegal”? Because, he said, it creates five – not four – majority minority districts – which Tseytlin called illegal “racial gerrymandering” claiming that violates 14th Amendment Equal Protection.
His argument seemed to put the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the state’s John Lewis Voting Rights Act on their head.
According to Tseytlin, the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 prohibited the consideration of race in drawing maps. (Are the Republicans going to defend their map in court by having the state’s Lewis Voting Rights Act declared unconstitutional?)
Just the opposite is true: Section 2 has been understood to mean that it is unconstitutional to draw districts in such a way as to prevent minority voters from electing a candidate of their choice. The Republican argument ignores 40-plus years of law and pretends the law requires race blind redistricting. Race conscious redistricting is permitted and even required under the 14th Amendment when necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
But arguing against “racial gerrymandering” is key to defend the Republican map, which unlawfully dilutes minority voters. Black and Latino voters are cracked (divided) into multiple districts, making it more difficult to elect candidates of choice; Asian voters in North Hempstead are fractured into three districts even though it is possible to unify the Asian community, a community of interest, into one district.
The Republicans’ “racial gerrymandering” argument is being used to disguise what is really going on here: extreme partisan gerrymandering, which is accomplished by ignoring racial and cultural “communities of interest” who tend to vote a certain way in order to reconfigure the maps to their advantage.
In fact, it was the argument of a partisan gerrymander that the Republicans used in the Harkenrider v. Hochul case that overturned Democrats’ Congressional redistricting, and which the Democrats will use in their lawsuit if this map is adopted.
“Extreme partisan gerrymandering” is what the Democrats’ expert, Dr. Daniel Magelby, a SUNY Binghamton political scientist, concluded: that the map that is being jammed through is an even more extreme partisan gerrymander than the current (2013) map, which similarly was forced through by the Republicans to make a permanent Republican majority on the county Legislature, despite having fewer registered voters than Democrats. He based his conclusion using the same ensemble analysis as in the Harkenrider case.
Indeed, when Tseytlin was prodded repeatedly for who was responsible for drawing maps that divided specific communities – Lakeview, Hempstead, Bethpage/Plainview – so that their votes and voices would be diluted, Tseytlin would only say the boundaries were drawn “in consultation with the presiding officer” – that is, Presiding Officer Richard J. Nicolello.
“The presiding officer’s primary motivation is to favor Republicans and the Republican Party, and disfavor the Democratic Party,” said David Mejias, who was the Democratic chair of the Temporary Districting Advisory Commission. “This resulted in maps that are unequivocally an extreme partisan gerrymander.” (Nicollelo refused to allow Mejias to testify on Feb. 16.)
The Municipal Home Rule Law is clear: “Districts shall not be drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties” and yet in the Republican map, four (of seven) Democrats are impacted by the proposed redistricting: Arnie Drucker and Josh Lazafan are placed in the same district; Carrie Solages is redistricted out of his district; a significant portion of the voters in Kevan Abrahams’ new district (where he lives), is split among five districts,and Roosevelt is moved to another district so that it is no longer a majority minority district
and Roosevelt is moved to another district so that it is no longer a majority minority district.
Coincidence? Random? The Democrats’ expert, Dr. Magleby, said that the way the districts were drawn, in both the Feb. 9 and Feb. 17 maps, could not have happened in 10,000 tries.
“The Republican Proposal demonstrates more bias against Democratic voters than the vast majority of 10,000 neutrally drawn, computer-generated maps,” he said in his analysis.
“That can only happen if it is intentional,” Mejias commented.
The Feb. 17 Republican map makes some slight changes from the Feb. 9 map, but is still an extreme partisan gerrymander and disregards the dozens upon dozens of people who came forward to oppose the Republican efforts to pack and crack, and dilute their votes and their voices. In the “final” map, Hempstead Village is awkwardly split among two instead of three districts; Old Bethpage is now with Plainview in the 16th District, and Elmont is made whole. Lakeview remains folded into majority white districts of Lynbrook, Malverne and
East Rockaway. Also, Freeport is divided so the minority portion of the population moves into a majority white, Republican district. Republicans justify these moves based purely on population numbers – keeping to a 2.5% deviation, when federal law allows 10% and state law allows 5% – but the result is the same: diluting the minority vote.
I’ve sat through several of these public hearings now that have gotten an amazing outpouring of residents, all of them in opposition to the Republican maps, because each had the same impact of cracking, packing, stacking minority and communities of interest in order to dilute their ability to elect a candidate of their choice.
While the people spoke of common religion, customs, civic groups, heritage, language, experience and longtime civic associations to justify staying together as a “community of interest,” Tseytlin defined “community of interest” as having a common train station, firehouse or school district, and absurdly argued that when you think about it, all of Nassau County is a “community of interest,” so there is necessarily “imperfect” slicing to create the 19 districts.
“The Republicans are needlessly exposing the county to a lawsuit resulting in millions of dollars at taxpayer expense all to preserve their own political power,” Mejias warned.
Thank You
Dave Mejias is a Long Island attorney specializing in family law and divorce. He is a managing partner at Mejias, Milgrim & Alvarado where he has practiced law for 18 years. Mejias currently serves as the Chairman of the Long Island Hispanic Bar Foundatio. URL:
https://mylongislandlawyers.com/index#