How City Council's Democrat-led redistricting could aid the GOP

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NEW YORK — The Democrat-controlled City Council redistricting process is shaping up to be a boon for the GOP, upping the odds that a vastly outgunned Republican party can grow its legislative ranks next year.

Several swing districts in the 51-member Council would become more Republican under a preliminary proposal, complicating at least one Democrat's path to reelection, according to an analysis of city Board of Elections data, the districting commission and the Department of City Planning.

Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat who has found kinship in Republicans amid his long-simmering war with the left wing of the Democratic party, hasn't put up a fight against the proposed maps — none of his appointees voted against them. And if commissioners tapped by Adams and the GOP form an alliance, they would have enough votes to decide the fate of the Council for a decade.

In total, the GOP would appear to maintain its hold on five Council seats while increasing the party’s chances to win two others — gains that are reflected in a set of preliminary maps unveiled in July by the New York City Districting Commission, which redraws political boundaries each decade to account for population changes.

The results belie the GOP’s power over the bipartisan commission: Republican Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli appointed just three members to the 15-person body but came away with major wins from the first set of maps, which are set to be revised later this month.

“Having competitive elections is good for government,” he said in an interview. “That is the purpose of having a bipartisan commission, and that is why we require elected officials from different parties to have a say in the process.”

Perhaps facing the most danger is Brooklyn Council Member Ari Kagan, a Democrat who won his seat against a Republican competitor by 958 votes last year, even as more than half his constituents voted for Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in the mayoral contest.

Kagan’s victory translated to a healthy six-point margin, but the proposed maps could complicate his reelection bid next year. The draft proposal added sections of Dyker Heights, Bath Beach and Bensonhurst to his district, a map of the changes from the CUNY Graduate Center shows. And according to results from the mayoral election crunched by POLITICO, that translates to a net gain of around 1,500 Sliwa voters — some portion of which might vote in a lower turnout Council contest.

Kagan did not respond to a request for comment.

The new configuration would also slightly bump up the share of GOP voters in Republican Council Member Inna Vernikov’s Brooklyn district, which abuts Kagan’s. Sliwa won 63 percent of the vote in Vernikov’s district last year. Under the new lines, he would have gained another point.

And in four other Council districts held by members of Borelli’s conference, Sliwa’s winning margins remained virtually unchanged.

In a process controlled by Democrats — Adams appointed seven members to the board while Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (no relation) appointed five — maintaining Republican representation might be considered a coup. But an even more tantalizing prospect for the right would be gaining seats. And the proposed maps seem to increase that likelihood.

One of the more dramatic changes the districting commission proposed was the creation of a new majority Asian district to account for the community’s enormous population growth in southern Brooklyn. In addition to Kagan’s spot on the Council, that new seat would also seem to be in play for the GOP: Within the new 43rd District, Sliwa netted 57 percent of the vote.

The proposed lines similarly increased the Sliwa vote share in the district of Democrat Kalman Yeger, who represents a largely Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Yeger ran on both the Democrat and Republican tickets last year and received more votes via the GOP. His colleague Bob Holden, a Democrat, also won more votes on the Republican line in his Queens district.

Holden’s seat was the only one carried by Sliwa that saw a decline of more than one point in the GOP vote share when the mayoral results were applied to his new district.

Should the GOP gains survive in the next iteration of the maps, the impact would become apparent quickly. Because of the timing of the redistricting process, which is pegged to the national census, the typical four-year term in the Council has been cut in half this time around. That means each member must run again next year under the new district lines.

In deep-blue New York City, Democrats hold every major elected office, and Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 7-1. Despite that numerical disadvantage, the GOP has benefited handsomely from the redistricting process thus far.

The commission was considering incorporating parts of Brooklyn into one of Staten Island's districts, which would have diluted the GOP vote there, but in another coup for Republicans, the commission opted to keep the district confined to Staten Island after a hard press from Borelli.

“If someone coughed and it sounded like ‘redistricting commission,’ I reminded them how important it was to keep Staten Island whole,” he said in an interview last month.

Staten Island’s population grew slower than the other boroughs, according to statistics from the planning department. And because Council seats must all have roughly equal populations, that meant keeping the borough intact reduced the potential size of seats elsewhere in the city — leaving less wiggle room to piece everything together.

The result alarmed Jerry Vattamala, a staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of a handful of organizations that banded together to draw up alternative maps they argue split fewer communities of interest.

“It is just outrageous you would give the strongest voting power to the borough that had the least growth and the fewest number of people,” he said.

Vattamala argued that the preliminary set of maps also prioritized keeping largely white and conservative communities in Howard Beach and the Rockaways together at the expense of splitting a south Asian and Indo-Caribbean neighborhood nearby.

The results raised the hackles of the Council speaker, who — unlike Borelli — has taken a hands-off approach with both the commission and her appointees that has left her at a disadvantage. She has sharply criticized the preliminary maps, taking special issue with the commission’s decision to draw largely white Bay Ridge and the Latino section of Sunset Park in Brooklyn into the same district. That change would pit Democratic Council members Justin Brannan and Alexa Avilés against one another in an uncomfortable matchup.

Two commissioners appointed by the speaker voted against releasing the preliminary maps in July. Yet the mayor has said little about the results — one of his commissioners abstained while the rest voted in favor at the July meeting — which has raised eyebrows among fellow Democrats.

“If [the mayor] cares about keeping Democrats in power, why is he not working to make that happen rather than letting Borelli use the limited resources at his disposal?” asked Gabe Tobias, co-founder of a nonprofit related to left-leaning organization Justice Democrats.

But the mayor frequently butts heads with his own party and has struggled to convince even moderates to take up his call for changes to bail reform in Albany. Top City Hall staffers have also clashed with Brannan. And by supporting the results alongside Borelli's appointees, the districting committee's mayoral and GOP factions could form the supermajority needed to approve the final version of the lines over the objections of the Council speaker’s five appointees.

“While these maps still remain preliminary, we are proud of the fact that there have already been six public hearings, across all five boroughs, where members of the public have been able to offer their opinions on how these maps are drawn,” mayoral spokesperson Fabien Levy said in a statement. “We have full faith in the work of our nominees to the independent Districting Commission and trust they will unveil a final map that both reflects the diversity of New York City and ensures every community is properly represented.”

Eddie Borges, a spokesperson for the commission, said that the decision to keep Staten Island whole was the result of extensive public testimony from Republicans and Democrats alike including Council Member Kamillah Hanks.

And Dennis Walcott, chair of the districting commission, said the body cannot play politics and has taken steps to insulate itself from any political considerations. The commission considers public input and its own opinions but does not discuss how the lines might impact a particular sitting official, he said.

“There is a fine line as far as the political and the political implications,” he said in an interview. “From a process standpoint, we have not been political at all. Commissioners have been straight up in bringing the engagements they’ve had with the community.”

During hours-long hearings in each of the five boroughs, the commission has received thousands of opinions about the preliminary maps with several themes emerging, he said.

In Manhattan, for example, residents of Hell’s Kitchen made clear they do not want to be split among several districts, according to Borges. And residents of the Upper East Side have written to the body — often on personalized stationery — to adamantly push back on the prospect of being lumped into a Queens district along with Roosevelt Island. In the Bronx, residents of Kingsbridge have objected to the prospect of being moved into the district of Council Member Eric Dinowitz.

In Brooklyn, the prospect of a new majority Asian district has divided stakeholders, with some in the community opposing the new seat on the grounds it would separate Asian voters in Sunset Park from a neighboring Latino community.

“There were some people who oppose the district and feel we should go with the [maps created in conjunction with AALDEF], but there was an overwhelming show of support,” Borges said. “They showed up with a whole box of paper petitions.”

Sally Goldenberg contributed to this report.