Draft of new New York congressional lines released by special master
ALBANY, N.Y. — The special master tasked by a Steuben County court with drawing new congressional lines for New York has released a set of draft plans.
Carnegie Mellon fellow Jonathan Cervas, the special master, is expected to finalize his maps by Friday.
His plans would lead to a radically different set of races than those that began to take shape after a different set of maps was enacted by Democrats earlier this year.
Notably, there’s a new congressional district that stretches from Ithaca in Central New York to Columbia County on New York’s eastern border. That most closely resembles the district currently held by Rep. Antonio Delgado, who is leaving soon to become Gov. Kath Hochul’s lieutenant governor.
But the most prominent candidate to succeed Delgado following the announcement he’d be leaving — Republican Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro — would now live in a different district consisting of Dutchess, Orange County and part of Ulster County.
The map would place the residence of Democratic Rep. Paul Tonko in the seat currently held by Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik. That district would lean heavily Republican.
The Albany area would be split from Tonko’s home of Amsterdam and used to form a new Democratic-leaning seat.
Long Island would be drawn significantly different than in the Democratic plans that were tossed by a court in April. Those plans would have had three Democratic-leaning districts and a Republican one; the new map would lead to one Democratic seat, a Republican one and two toss-ups.
Cervas is due to also release new plans for the state Senate by Monday afternoon.
