If Democrats Lose the House, Andrew Cuomo Might Be to Blame
In 2012, the now-disgraced former governor negotiated a deal that helped bring about this year’s disastrous redistricting.
If Democrats lose control of the House of Representatives in November, there will be plenty of blame to go around. But one villain in that disaster surely will be former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. To understand why, you need to go back to 2012. The political world was somewhat more normal then, and Cuomo, a centrist Democrat with long-term presidential ambitions, made a Faustian bargain, as Chris Smith described earlier in the summer in Vanity Fair. He claimed that he was seeking to end years of gerrymandering by creating a nonpartisan commission to draw the state’s congressional maps. Instead—in a short-sighted, last-minute, politically opportunistic move—he allowed legislators to file a redistricting plan shortly before midnight on a Sunday in March, and put off a potential state-constitutional amendment to create an independent commission until after the 2020 census.
This year, after that commission stalemated in its plans, the New York Court of Appeals threw out the Democrats’ proposed congressional-district map in April and brought in a “special master” named Jonathan Cervas to redraw it. The final map—released on May 16 and approved later that week—may well have ended any chance Democrats had of keeping control of the House. At least that’s what David Wasserman, the senior editor at The Cook Political Report, thinks. “The New York Court of Appeals’ decision to strike down Democrats’ gerrymander likely drove a stake through the heart of any remaining chance Democrats had to hold the House majority in 2022,” he told me. For 2022, The Cook Political Report now identifies 162 blue seats as safe, compared with 191 safe red seats.
Jack O’Donnell, a Democratic strategist who once worked for New York Senator Charles Schumer, agrees that the redistricting is a disaster for Democrats. And he lays the blame at the former governor’s feet.
“Cuomo wanted to avoid the ire of editorial boards, so he proposed an independent redistricting commission,” O’Donnell told me. “The language governing redistricting was vague and imprecise, while the commission, with an equal number of Republican and Democratic allied members, was born to fail … The proposed constitutional amendment gave Democrats, Republicans, and Cuomo cover to do whatever they wanted in 2012 while postponing any real test until 2022.”
After the New York state legislature drew new congressional lines in 2012, O’Donnell explained, Democrats were optimistic that the blue state would be a counterweight to the blatantly partisan redistricting processes happening elsewhere. But, he added, that hope was built on a shaky foundation. And the responsibility for the state-constitutional amendment that created the redistricting commission was clear. Former New York State Assembly Speaker and convicted felon Sheldon Silver and former New York State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos “were the sponsors of the proposed amendment,” O’Donnell said, “but the architect of it was Governor Cuomo.”
A city in which Biden won nearly 76 percent of the presidential vote in a state in which he won over 60 percent should have been an easy place for Democrats to keep or add seats in what could be a very contentious midterm cycle. Democrats hoped to pick up multiple seats with their original map. Instead, they will likely lose one seat, while at least one more becomes competitive.
Representative Mondaire Jones of New York’s 17th district is experiencing the fallout firsthand. His own residence “was drawn into a district mostly represented by Jamaal Bowman in order to try to force me to run against a fellow Black, progressive Congressman. I didn’t take the bait.” His overall assessment of the new map is brutal; he says that Justice Patrick McAllister, the New York State judge who initially threw out the Democratic legislature’s maps and later appointed Cervas to help draw new ones, “adopted a Republican gerrymander that tore apart communities of color and was intended to reduce the number of Democrats … in New York’s congressional delegation.” Jones has decided to run in the new 10th district, which includes Lower Manhattan. His opponents include former New York Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, the Levi Strauss & Co. heir Dan Goldman, New York State Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, and New York city-council member Carlina Rivera. (Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently dropped out of the race.)
Meanwhile, the congressman from the old “New York Ten” is now running for New York’s 12th district in a match pitting septuagenarian against septuagenarian. Incumbents Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney have feuded over everything, including responsibility for the new Second Avenue subway line. Maloney told the New York Post, “Nadler’s claiming credit for that? He did nothing. Nothing … Here’s a man claiming credit for a woman’s work.” Nadler is running on, among other things, the importance of a Jewish voice in New York City’s House delegation. He told The Washington Post, “It would be very unfortunate if there was no Jewish representation from New York.” (Also in the mix: perennial candidate Suraj Patel, who challenged Maloney in 2018 and 2020.)
Everything New York Democrats have done to protect their incumbency is coming back to haunt them. The federal Democratic primary isn’t until August 23, two months after the state primary. This two-date primary system originally benefited incumbents. (It’s unclear what effect this will have on the two-incumbent primaries, such as NY-12, that are a result of the new map.)
If Cuomo hadn’t made that terrible bargain in 2012, Democrats might have picked up more seats, offsetting some of the GOP gerrymandering that is running rampant around the country. Instead, Democrats have to watch their representatives battle each other for incumbency. Andrew Cuomo is disgraced, but his political handiwork endures. Democrats may have thought they were done with Cuomo, but Cuomo wasn’t done with them.