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      Hochul’s Lt. Governor Pick Says He Is Afro-Latino. Some Latinos Object.

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      The three major Democrats running to become New York’s second-in-command have Latino roots, but Antonio Delgado’s claim to the heritage is being challenged.In New York’s Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, one goal had unified two outsider candidates, Diana Reyna and Ana Maria Archila: vying to be the first Latino elected to statewide office.Achieving that objective has now gotten more complicated.This month, Gov. Kathy Hochul named Representative Antonio Delgado as her new lieutenant governor and running mate, replacing Brian Benjamin, who resigned in April after being indicted on federal bribery charges.In announcing the choice, Ms. Hochul heralded Mr. Delgado’s Afro-Latino ethnicity, and noted his membership in both the Black and Hispanic congressional caucuses.Prominent Latino Democrats, who lobbied Ms. Hochul on the decision and have long pushed for greater representation in state government, were quick to celebrate an appointment that, once it becomes official, will make Mr. Delgado the first Latino to hold statewide office in New York.But as the congratulatory statements began to circulate, so did questions about Mr. Delgado’s background, putting a spotlight on issues of ethnicity, self-identity and representation in advance of the June 28 primary.Asked about his Afro-Latino heritage at the news conference where he was introduced as Ms. Hochul’s choice for lieutenant governor, Mr. Delgado gave a winding answer. He said people had surmised that he was Afro-Latino because of his name, or perhaps because he briefly lived in Puerto Rico, where he played semipro basketball. He then seemed to suggest that his Latino heritage stemmed from his family’s ties to Cape Verde, a small island nation off the west coast of Africa that was once a Portuguese colony.The answer mystified some of his supporters, and created an opening for his opponents to scrutinize his claims of being Latino.Luis A. Miranda Jr., a founding partner of the MirRam Group, a political consulting firm, posted celebratory comments on Twitter about Mr. Delgado’s appointment when it was announced. But after hearing his remarks at the news conference, Mr. Miranda said he was “puzzled by his explanation on ethnicity.”Mr. Delgado, in an interview with The New York Times, described the complexity of how he views his ethnicity. He said his mother grew up at a time when she felt safe identifying only as Black or white, but eventually embraced the Mexican, Colombian and Venezuelan ancestry of her father, whom she did not know.“She became someone who identifies as a proud Black woman with Latino roots,” Mr. Delgado said in the interview. “And as I’ve tried to orient myself and my sense of identity through her, that is the entry point.”Asked how he identified himself, Mr. Delgado said: “I am a Black American man with Cape Verdean roots and Latino roots. When it pertains to my Latino roots, that comes from my mom’s side, whose own story around her identity is multifaceted and complex.”When Ms. Hochul picked Mr. Benjamin for the job, her choice was influenced by a desire to have her running mate be a person of color from the New York City area as a way to help broaden her appeal beyond her base as a white politician from western New York.Mr. Delgado offered many of the same qualities, giving the governor a running mate with name recognition and the potential to appeal to downstate Black and Latino voters as she seeks a full term this year.Ms. Archila, who has been endorsed by Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the House, and Ms. Reyna said they understood why Ms. Hochul would want a Latino running mate. Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group in the state and make up 19 percent of the population. But the two women questioned Mr. Delgado’s rationale for describing himself as Latino and cast Ms. Hochul’s decision as a political ploy.“Gov. Hochul is being extremely opportunistic and simplistic,” said Ms. Archila, whose running mate is Jumaane Williams, New York City’s public advocate. “I think he should say more than, I have an ancestor who once was born in Colombia.”In selecting Mr. Delgado, Gov. Kathy Hochul, right, chose a running mate of color who may appeal to downstate voters who are not part of her natural base.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesMs. Reyna, whose running mate is Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, said at a recent campaign event that a “last name does not make you Latino.” The first statewide Latino official should be “authentic,” have “lived experience” and a record of helping Latino communities, she told Encuentro New York, a Latino advocacy group.“She tells us that her lieutenant governor is a member of the Latino community,” Ms. Reyna said of the governor. “This is not about identity politics. This is about being truthful.”Ms. Hochul and her campaign have said little about the questions surrounding Mr. Delgado’s ethnicity. They referred to him as Afro-Latino in the third line of a news release announcing his appointment; an email sent out the next day about a fund-raiser did not mention his ethnicity.“He identifies as Afro-Latino,” Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, said.The focus on Mr. Delgado’s ethnicity adds a new wrinkle to the primary for lieutenant governor, which was upended after the resignation of Mr. Benjamin, the presumptive favorite. For weeks, it appeared that he would remain on the primary ballot despite the criminal charges, but state lawmakers ultimately passed a bill allowing him to remove himself.It was then that Ms. Hochul chose Mr. Delgado to succeed Mr. Benjamin.Camille Rivera, a Democratic political strategist who identifies as Afro-Latina, said Ms. Hochul had missed an opportunity to energize an important voting bloc that could help decide the general election. Among the issues Latino leaders say they want state government to address are affordable housing, child care and inequalities in health care.“You have no statewide Latino representation, right?” Ms. Rivera said. “Here was an opportunity to actually lift up Latinos in a real way.”There has been little scrutiny of Mr. Delgado’s Latino heritage. Several news articles over the years have identified him incorrectly as Puerto Rican. Some articles from 2018, when he defeated John J. Faso, the Republican incumbent, to claim the House seat representing the Hudson Valley and Catskills regions, referred to him as Black.Asked whether he had ever corrected the record about being Puerto Rican before the news conference where he was introduced as lieutenant governor, Mr. Delgado said in a statement that he was “raised as a blend of heritages,” including “Latino roots.”“That’s the background I grew up with and how I identify,” he said in the statement. “My mom’s maiden name is Gomez and she grew up identifying as having Latina roots.”Racism and colorism may also play a role in how Mr. Delgado’s description of being Afro-Latino is being received, said Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who identifies as Afro-Latino.“I find it curious that those of us with Black skin often have our Latino identity questioned,” said Mr. Torres, who supports Mr. Delgado. “As an Afro-Latino, I have been told repeatedly that I do not look Latino, whatever that means, and therefore, I must be less authentically Latino than those with lighter skin.”Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores, an associate professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, said she understood why some Latinos were upset about the appointment. Being Afro-Latino in the United States, she said, involves a complicated mix of race, language and culture.“Experience informs what you see, how you perceive things, how you bring in issues that might go unseen or unrecognized,” Professor Dinzey-Flores said. Choosing someone from an Afro-Latino background so that constituency is represented in government, she added, should be about “authentically” capturing that experience and not “checking a box.”Melissa Mark-Viverito, a former New York City Council speaker who was born and raised in Puerto Rico, concurred, saying that Mr. Delgado’s claim of Latino heritage “raises the question and the concern of people loosely taking on certain identities and not being completely honest.”“That concerns me because as someone who fully embraces the importance of representation, we have two qualified Latinas running and a chance to make history,” Ms. Mark-Viverito said, referring to Ms. Reyna and Ms. Archila. “Yet it feels like we are being duped. It’s all very messy.”Days after Ms. Hochul named him as Mr. Benjamin’s successor, Mr. Delgado gave a 15-minute speech at the Harlem headquarters of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Mr. Sharpton said he was surprised that Mr. Delgado did not address the confusion about his Afro-Latino identity.“I think it’s something he can’t ignore,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview after Mr. Delgado spoke that day.Instead, Mr. Delgado reminisced about growing up in a Black Baptist church and drew hearty amens and nods of approval from the mostly Black crowd. He talked about why he pursued a career as a rapper after graduating from Harvard Law School, an issue opponents tried to use against him when he first ran for Congress.“I know the power of the culture,” Mr. Delgado said. “I am the culture.” More

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      Judge Approves N.Y. House Map, Cementing Chaos for Democrats

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      The new district lines, approved late Friday night, will create pickup opportunities for Republicans and force Democratic incumbents to run against each other.A state court formally approved New York’s new congressional map late Friday, ratifying a slate of House districts drawn by a neutral expert that could pave the way for Democratic losses this fall and force some of the party’s most prominent incumbents to face off in primary matches.The map, approved just before a midnight deadline set by Justice Patrick F. McAllister of State Supreme Court in Steuben County, effectively unwinds an attempted Democratic gerrymander, creates a raft of new swing seats across the state, and scrambles some carefully laid lines that have long determined centers of power in New York City.Jonathan R. Cervas, the court-appointed mapmaker, made relatively minor changes to a draft proposal released earlier this week whose sweeping changes briefly united both Republicans and Democrats in exasperation and turned Democrats against each other.In Manhattan, the final map would still merge the seats of Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, setting the two Democratic committee leaders, who have served alongside each other for 30 years, onto an increasingly inevitable collision course.Another awkward Democratic primary loomed up the Hudson in Westchester County, where two Black Democratic House members were drawn into a single district. But the worst outcome for Democrats appeared to be averted early Saturday morning when one of the incumbents, Representative Mondaire Jones, said he would forego re-election in his Westchester seat. He said he would run instead in a newly reconfigured 10th Congressional District in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, a race that has already drawn the candidacy of Bill de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, but which no other sitting House member is expected to enter.Republicans were already eying pickup opportunities in the suburbs of Long Island and in the 18th and 19th Districts in the Hudson Valley that could help them retake control of the House. Representative Mondaire Jones said he would run in a newly reconfigured 10th Congressional District.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesAnd in New York City’s only Republican-held district, Representative Nicole Malliotakis breathed a sigh of relief that Mr. Cervas had reversed one of the boldest moves by the Democratic leaders in the State Legislature, when they inserted liberal Park Slope, Brooklyn, into her Staten Island-based district.Some of the most notable changes between the initial and final district lines came in historically Black communities in Brooklyn, where Mr. Cervas reunited Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights into single districts. He had faced uproar from Black lawmakers and civil rights groups after his first proposal divided them into separate seats.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.Responding to feedback from community groups, Mr. Cervas also revised the map to reunite Manhattan’s Chinatown with Sunset Park in Brooklyn, another heavily Asian American community, in the 10th Congressional District. In each case, he said the communities had been “inadvertently split” in his first proposal.Justice McAllister’s order approving the congressional and additional State Senate maps on Friday makes New York one of the final states in the nation to complete its decennial redistricting process. But both parties were already girding late Friday for the potential for civil rights or political groups to file new, long-shot lawsuits challenging the maps in state or federal court.Justice McAllister used the unusual five-page order to rebut criticisms leveled at Mr. Cervas and the court in recent days, as the maps were hastily drafted out of public view. He conceded that the rushed time frame was “less than ideal” but defended the final maps as “almost perfectly neutral” with 15 safe Democratic seats, three safe Republican seats and eight swing seats.“Unfortunately some people have encouraged the public to believe that now the court gets to create its own gerrymandered maps that favor Republicans,” wrote Justice McAllister, a Republican. “Such could not be further from the truth. The court is not politically biased.”The final map was a stark disappointment for Democrats, who control every lever of power in New York and had entered this year’s decennial redistricting cycle with every expectation of gaining seats that could help hold their House majority. They appeared to be successful in February, when the Legislature adopted a congressional map that would have made their candidates favorites in 22 of 26 districts, an improvement from the 19 Democrats currently hold.The new map reverses one of the boldest moves by Democratic leaders: inserting Park Slope, Brooklyn, into Representative Nicole Malliotakis’s Staten Island-based district.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut Republicans sued in state court, and Justice McAllister, a judge in the state’s rural Southern Tier, ruled that the maps violated a 2014 state constitutional amendment outlawing partisan gerrymandering and reforming the mapmaking process in New York. In late April, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, upheld the decision and ordered a court-appointed special master to redraw the lines.Justice McAllister appointed Mr. Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon with few ties to New York and scant experience drawing state lines, and delayed the congressional and State Senate elections until Aug. 23.On Friday, Mr. Cervas produced a 26-page report explaining the rationale of his map, in which he tried to balance the need to protect communities of shared interest, existing districts, and other constitutional requirements.Mr. Cervas eliminated one district overall, carving it out of central New York to shrink the state’s congressional delegation to 26. The change was required after New York failed to keep pace with national population growth in the 2020 census.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Jeffries Fights New York District Maps: ‘Enough to Make Jim Crow Blush’

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      Hakeem Jeffries hopes to pressure New York’s court-appointed special master to change congressional maps that split historically Black communities.Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the second-highest-ranking Black lawmaker in Congress, has launched an aggressive effort to discredit a proposed congressional map that would divide historically Black neighborhoods in New York, likening its configurations to Jim Crow tactics.Mr. Jeffries is spending tens of thousands of dollars on digital advertising as part of a scorched-earth campaign to try to stop New York’s courts from making the new map final without changes later this week.As construed, the map would split Bedford-Stuyvesant in central Brooklyn into two districts and Co-Op City in the Bronx into three, for example, while placing Black incumbents in the same districts — changes that Mr. Jeffries argues violate the State Constitution.“We find ourselves in an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Mr. Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, said in an interview on Thursday. In the most recent ad, he says the changes took “a sledgehammer to Black districts. It’s enough to make Jim Crow blush.”Mr. Jeffries may be laying the groundwork for an eventual legal challenge, but his more immediate aim was to pressure Jonathan R. Cervas, New York’s court-appointed special master, to change congressional and State Senate maps that he first proposed on Monday before he presents final plans to a state court judge for approval on Friday.The stakes could scarcely be higher. After New York’s highest court struck down Democrat-friendly maps drawn by the State Legislature as unconstitutional last month, the judges have vested near total power in Mr. Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow from Carnegie Mellon, to lay lines that will govern elections for a decade to come.Mr. Cervas’s initial proposal unwound a map gerrymandered by the Democratic-led State Legislature, creating new pickup opportunities for Republicans. But it also significantly altered the shapes of districts in New York City — carefully drawn a decade earlier by another court — that reflected a patchwork of racial, geographic and economic divides.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.Mr. Jeffries was far from alone in lodging last-ditch appeals. The court was inundated with hundreds of comments suggesting revisions from Democrats and Republicans alike — from party lawyers pressing for more politically favorable lines to an analysis of the differences between Jewish families on the East and West Sides of Manhattan.A broad coalition of public interest and minority advocacy groups told Mr. Cervas this week that his changes would risk diluting the power of historically marginalized communities. They included Common Cause New York and the United Map Coalition, an influential group of Latino, Black and Asian American legal groups.The proposed map would divide Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Brownsville — culturally significant Black communities in Brooklyn — between the 8th and 9th Congressional Districts. Each neighborhood currently falls in one or the other.The northeast Bronx, another predominantly Black area that includes Co-Op City and falls within Representative Jamaal Bowman’s district, would be split among three different districts.The groups have raised similar concerns about Mr. Cervas’s proposal to separate Manhattan’s Chinatown and Sunset Park, home to large Asian American populations, into two districts for the first time in decades. Other Jewish groups have made related appeals for their community in Brooklyn.Most of the changes are likely to have little impact on the partisan makeup of the districts, which are safely Democratic. But Lurie Daniel Favors, the executive director of the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College, said that cutting through existing communities would further dilute the political power of historically marginalized groups.“Now, when Bedford-Stuyvesant wants to organize and petition at the congressional level, they have to split their efforts and go to two separate representatives,” she said.The maps would also push four of the state’s seven Black representatives into two districts, forcing them to compete with one another or run in a district where they do not live. Under the special master’s plan, Mr. Jeffries and Representative Yvette Clark would live in the same central Brooklyn district, and Mr. Bowman and Mondaire Jones would reside in the same Westchester County seat.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      For Hochul, Shooting in Buffalo Is a Hometown Tragedy

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      The governor grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives in the city now. The shooting has taken on political overtones in the 2022 race for governor of New York.Hours after an 18-year-old gunman killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket, Gov. Kathy Hochul convened a news conference just blocks away.She mourned for the tight-knit community and for the lives shattered by the cruelty of white supremacy. She spoke of the danger of hatred circulating online. And she talked knowingly of the neighborhood and the streets she had walked — and how it all hit so close to home.Ms. Hochul grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives with her husband in the city’s downtown area, less than four miles from the East Side, the mostly Black neighborhood where a white gunman orchestrated one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent memory.“This is personal” Ms. Hochul said a day later at True Bethel Baptist Church, a Black church one mile away from the site of the shooting. “You’ve hurt our family.”In recent days, Ms. Hochul has called out tech companies that she said were not doing enough to stop the spread of online hate that motivated the gunman, and denounced Washington for its failure to impose what she said should be common-sense gun control laws.On Tuesday, she appeared with President Biden as he visited Buffalo, a postindustrial city in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie. And in the coming days, Ms. Hochul has hinted that she plans to unveil a new gun safety package.With the Democratic primary for governor six weeks away, and Ms. Hochul running for her first full term, the shooting has presented the governor with both an opportunity to engage with voters in a moment of crisis and a challenge to demonstrate whether she is up to the task.From Opinion: The Buffalo ShootingCommentary from Times Opinion on the massacre at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo.The Times Editorial Board: The mass shooting in Buffalo was an extreme expression of a political worldview that has become increasingly central to the G.O.P.’s identity.Jamelle Bouie: G.O.P. politicians and conservative media personalities did not create the idea of the “great replacement,” but they have adopted it.Paul Krugman: There is a direct line from Republicans’ embrace of crank economics, to Jan. 6, to Buffalo.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher hosts a discussion on the role of internet platforms like 4chan, Facebook and Twitch in the attack.Indeed, the shooting, which law enforcement officials said was motivated by a white supremacist ideology fanned by some factions of the country’s right wing, has swiftly taken on political overtones in the escalating race for governor of New York, where gun violence has become a central issue.One of Ms. Hochul’s primary opponents, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, was in Buffalo when the shooting occurred. He immediately used the event as a political cudgel, proclaiming on Twitter, “Hochul refuses to make fighting crime a priority. I will.”Mr. Suozzi, a centrist Democrat from Long Island, later issued a statement that took issue with Ms. Hochul’s record in Congress and endorsement during that time by the National Rifle Association, which has vehemently opposed gun control measures, including background checks.“That is not leadership,” said Mr. Suozzi, who has received an F rating from the N.R.A. “It is hypocritical and it does nothing to protect New Yorkers from this kind of tragedy happening again.”Ms. Hochul, at a Sunday prayer service in Buffalo, lives less than four miles from the scene of the shooting.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesRepresentative Lee Zeldin, a Suffolk County Republican who is running to be his party’s nominee for governor, issued a statement over the weekend that pushed for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York State, which was declared unconstitutional nearly two decades ago.“Those who commit fatal hate crimes, acts of terrorism and other extreme violence should be brought to justice, and in some of these cases, the only fitting form of justice is the death penalty,” said Mr. Zeldin, who, visited the shooting scene on Monday to pay his respects to those killed, but did not take questions from reporters and avoided overtly political remarks.But for Ms. Hochul, the shooting has more obvious resonance.“I think the governor feels it on a whole different level, because she’s passed by the Tops, if not been in the Tops,” said Darius G. Pridgen, a pastor at the True Bethel Baptist church.In the days since the shooting, the governor has visited churches and gone on television and radio, giving interviews to nearly a dozen outlets, from MSNBC and CNN to Buffalo’s long-running morning radio show, “Janet & Nick in the Morning.”She has highlighted the state’s existing gun safety laws, seizing the opportunity to emphasize actions she has already taken as governor, such as an interstate task force that she assembled last year to tackle the illegal flow of guns.And she has denounced the killings as “white supremacist acts of terrorism,” calling on white Americans to take a stand against racism.“To say that she is taking this personally is to say the least,” said Jeremy Zellner, the chair of the Democratic Party in Erie County.The governor has lived with her husband in a condo in the waterfront area of the city’s downtown area since 2013, shortly after she lost her seat in Congress — though she often splits her time between Albany and New York City since becoming governor in August.Ms. Hochul got her start in politics as a member of the town board in Hamburg, a suburban town just south of Buffalo that is overwhelmingly white. While she briefly represented the East Side as clerk of Erie County, the House district she was elected to in 2011 was largely rural and suburban and did not include Buffalo.Ms. Hochul, at a news conference on Sunday, once represented the East Side of Buffalo when she was Erie County’s clerk.Malik Rainey for The New York TimesShe later helped promote economic development projects and job training programs aimed at the city as lieutenant governor to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. As governor, she visited the East Side as recently as March to tout the construction of new affordable housing.One of Ms. Hochul’s major priorities for the region involves addressing the racial and economic inequalities that were exacerbated by a stretch of highway that was built through the East Side. Ms. Hochul is spearheading a plan to reconnect neighborhoods that were divided by the Kensington Expressway over 60 years ago, saying last month that there was $1 billion available in federal and state funds for a project to potentially cover the expressway, or part of it.“She’s from the suburbs, but in no way, shape or form a stranger to that part of the city,” said State Senator Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents parts of the city’s West Side. “She’s a known commodity in terms of boots on the ground in neighborhood centers.”The mass shooting came as New York’s gubernatorial primary, scheduled for June 28, looms large.Ms. Hochul has amassed a gargantuan $20 million war chest and a huge polling advantage, but her campaign has faltered in recent weeks, battered by the arrest of her lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, on corruption charges, and criticism of a deal she secured to subsidize the construction of a new football stadium for the Buffalo Bills with taxpayer money.Mirroring many Democrats nationwide, Ms. Hochul had recently pivoted her attention to the likelihood that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, radically redrawing the national landscape for women’s health care. Ms. Hochul has begun speaking more extensively about making New York a refuge for reproductive rights, vowing to enshrine abortion rights into state law and using her executive authority to create a $35 million fund to support abortion providers.Her campaign released a television ad this week that highlighted her commitment on the issue, even as the shooting’s aftermath overtook most of her public schedule.And on Monday, Ms. Hochul took the stage with Mr. Biden at a community center, seeking to draw parallels between Buffalo and the president’s hometown, Scranton, Pa. She said both leaders were used to their native cities failing to get the “respect” they deserved.“I’m a daughter of Buffalo, and I’m so proud to be governor,” she said ahead of the president’s remarks. “But right now I’m a daughter of Buffalo.” More

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      Fearing ‘Extinction-Level Event,’ N.Y. Democrats Turn Against Each Other

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      Newly drawn congressional maps have led some House members to quickly lay claim to certain districts, even if it means challenging fellow incumbents.Two weeks ago, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney warned fellow Democrats in a private meeting that a ruling by New York’s highest court to invalidate a Democratic-leaning congressional map could prompt “an extinction-level event” for the party, according to people familiar with the remarks.Democratic incumbents, he feared, could either be shoehorned into more difficult districts or forced into primaries against one another.So on Monday, when the courts finally unveiled a proposed new slate of districts unwinding Democrats’ gerrymander, Mr. Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, knew precisely what to do.Just 25 minutes after the maps’ release, Mr. Maloney announced on Twitter that he would leave behind the bulk of his traditional Hudson Valley seat and run instead for a newly drawn 17th Congressional District rooted in Westchester County. Mr. Maloney lives within the new lines, which happen to offer a safer path for a Democrat than the district he currently represents.What might have seemed like an easy political decision for Mr. Maloney, however, has quickly turned into a political firestorm, replete with racial overtones, off-the-record recriminations and rare breaches of congressional decorum between staff of neighboring colleagues.Some Democrats saw the maneuver as an attempt to box out Representative Mondaire Jones, a first-term congressman who represents the vast majority of the district’s population, and force him to enter a primary against Jamaal Bowman, a fellow Black progressive, in the neighboring 16th District. Mr. Jones made no secret of his own feelings, though he has yet to say which Democrat he will challenge.“Sean Patrick Maloney did not even give me a heads-up before he went on Twitter to make that announcement,” Mr. Jones tersely told Politico on Monday. “And I think that tells you everything you need to know about Sean Patrick Maloney.”What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.In a rare break from Congress’s genteel protocols, Mr. Jones’s chief of staff even shared a screenshot of an exchange with Mr. Maloney’s top aide, and accused the chairman of prioritizing his personal interests “rather than working to unravel this gerrymander” by the courts.The once-a-decade congressional redistricting process is almost always an exercise in raw political power, particularly in a state like New York, which this year must shed a seat overall to account for population losses.But if New York’s redistricting cycle began this year with an attempt by Democrats to marginalize Republicans, it now appears destined to end in intense infighting among Democrats as the Aug. 23 primary approaches — thanks to a ruling last month by the state’s highest court declaring the Democrat-led Legislature’s maps unconstitutional.“Can I just go on vacation through August and wake up in September?” said Maria Slippen, the chairwoman of the Cortlandt Democratic Committee in Westchester County, lamenting a potential Democrat on Democrat fight in her district between Mr. Maloney and Mr. Jones. “When we are put in a situation where we have to fight with each other, the Republicans win,” she added.Representative Mondaire Jones said Mr. Maloney failed to give him a heads-up on his election plan.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThe replacement map, drawn for the court by Jonathan R. Cervas, erased outright gains that Democrats had counted on based on the Legislature’s map and made other Democratic swing seats more competitive. It also forced at least five pairs of incumbents together in the same districts from Brooklyn to Buffalo, leaving candidates to decide whether to retire, move or go head-to-head with another sitting House member.A few miles down the Hudson from Mr. Maloney, two powerful Democratic committee chairs who have served alongside each other for 30 years — Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney — were also gearing up for a potentially explosive primary fight that would pit the east and west sides of Manhattan against one another in the new 12th Congressional District.Representatives Hakeem Jeffries and Yvette Clarke, two Black Democrats drawn into a single district in Central Brooklyn, expressed fury at Mr. Cervas, but indicated they were likely to still run for separate seats.The maps, which could still be tweaked before a judge makes them final on Friday, may simply leave other candidates without a natural seat to run in and create unexpected openings for candidates who had previously decided not to run in 2022.Alessandra Biaggi, a rising Democratic star in the State Senate, had hoped to run in a new seat — stretching from her home in Westchester County to Nassau County on Long Island — created under the State Legislature’s plan. But Mr. Cervas’s map removed Westchester from the district entirely.Rana Abdelhamid, a community organizer backed by Justice Democrats, had spent more than a year campaigning against Ms. Maloney in New York City, only to see her Queens neighborhood removed from the district.Suraj Patel, another Carolyn Maloney challenger, has yet to declare his intentions but lives close to the line separating the new 12th District from the 10th, the remnants of Mr. Nadler’s old seat. He could decide to run in the 10th, where State Senator Brad Hoylman, former Mayor Bill de Blasio and Carlina Rivera, a member of the City Council, are also seriously considering runs.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Redrawn New York Map Nullifies Democrats’ Gamble to Gain House Seats

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      The court-drawn lines would increase competition for seats in Congress, and pit longtime Democratic incumbents against one another.Earlier this year, Democratic leaders in New York made a brazen gamble: With the national party’s blessing, they created a congressional map that promised its candidates as many as three additional House seats.On Monday, three weeks after the state’s highest court declared the Democrats’ map unconstitutional, it became clear just how spectacularly the party’s gambit had backfired.A new slate of new congressional districts unveiled by the courts on Monday could pave the way for Republicans to make gains in this year’s critical midterm elections, a disastrous reversal for Democrats in a state where they control every lever of power.The proposed maps, drawn by Jonathan R. Cervas, the court-appointed special master, would unwind changes that Democrats had hoped to use to unseat Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island Republican; flip other Republican-held swing districts; and secure their own tenuous seats in the Hudson Valley region.The new lines even cast the future of several long-tenured, powerful Democratic incumbents in doubt, forcing several to potentially run against one another.The most striking example came from New York City, where Mr. Cervas’s proposal pushed Representatives Jerrold Nadler, a stalwart Upper West Side liberal, and Carolyn Maloney of the Upper East Side into the same district, setting up a potentially explosive primary fight in the heart of Manhattan. Both lawmakers are in their 70s, have been in Congress for close to 30 years and lead powerful House committees.Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and a favorite to become the party’s next leader, was one of a handful of incumbent lawmakers who, under the new map, would no longer reside in the districts they represent. In one case, the new lines put Representative Brian Higgins mere steps outside his greater Buffalo district.Taken together, the proposed changes have broad national implications, effectively handing Republicans the upper hand in a national fight for control of the House, and rattling the top echelons of House Democratic leadership.“This is a huge swing against Democrats from the plan that was struck down,” said Dave Wasserman, a national elections analyst with the Cook Political Report. “Democrats could lose a lot of ground this fall and that could drive a stake through their hopes of keeping the House majority.”The final results promised to make New York an anomaly in a nation composed of increasingly gerrymandered states. Numerous states used redistricting this year to reinforce the dominance of one party or the other, yet New York — one of the largest Democratic-led states — is now expected to preserve and potentially even add competitive seats.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.By Mr. Cervas’s own account, the new map would create eight competitive congressional seats, a figure closer to New York’s current decade-old map than the three that he estimated the Democrats’ map would have yielded.Mr. Wasserman put the handicapping at 15 safely Democratic seats, five safely Republican seats and a half-dozen tossups in a state where roughly 60 percent of voters supported President Biden.The map approved by the State Legislature, where Democrats control both houses, this year would have given their party a clear advantage in 22 of 26 districts. Democrats hold 19 seats on the existing map, which was also drawn by a court-appointed special master a decade ago.The final lines may yet still be revised to account for feedback from both parties. The state court judge in upstate Steuben County who is overseeing the case, Patrick F. McAllister, has set a Friday deadline for approving the congressional lines and a separate proposal for State Senate districts.Mr. Cervas, who declined to comment on the maps, removed one House seat from upstate New York altogether, shrinking the state’s delegation from 27 members to 26. New York was required to shed the seat after its population failed to keep pace with growth in other states in the 2020 census, continuing a decades-long trend.In making other changes, outside redistricting analysts said, it appeared that Mr. Cervas had sought to make the districts as competitive and compact as possible.The effect was evident on Long Island, where Mr. Cervas created one safe Republican seat, one safe Democratic seat and two swing seats. In the Hudson Valley, he drew districts that were more competitive than the ones approved by Democrats. And he returned Ms. Malliotakis’s district to its more conservative contours, after the Legislature tried to fuse Brooklyn’s ultraliberal Park Slope neighborhood onto Staten Island.Mr. Cervas showed less regard for protecting incumbents from changes, though, in many instances sharply redrawing lines that the previous special master laid out a decade ago.Two upstate Republicans, Representatives Claudia Tenney and Chris Jacobs, were left scrambling to lay a stake in rearranged rural seats in central and western New York. A third Republican congressional candidate, the Dutchess County executive, Marc Molinaro, saw the territory he had competed in for months reconfigured.The situation was more dire for Democrats, though. No fewer than five were drawn out of their districts: Mr. Jeffries; Mr. Higgins; Paul Tonko, who represents the Albany area; Grace Meng, who represents a heavily Asian American swath of Queens; and Nydia Velázquez, who represents a Latino-heavy district in Brooklyn.Representatives are not required to reside in their districts, but the changes could create yet another layer of uncertainty for incumbents and challengers alike.Each could still run to represent the core of the district they currently hold, but they would be forced to choose between moving their homes or explaining to voters why they do not live inside the lines they are seeking to represent in Washington.Representatives Mondaire Jones and Jamaal Bowman, two Black progressive Democrats in their first term, may face more difficult choices after Mr. Cervas’s map drew them into a single Westchester County district.In a blistering statement, Mr. Jeffries accused the court of ignoring the input of communities of color, diluting the power of Black voters and pitting Black incumbents against each other in “a tactic that would make Jim Crow blush.”“The draft map released by a judicial overseer in Steuben County and unelected, out-of-town special master, both of whom happen to be white men, is part of a vicious national pattern targeting districts represented by members of the Congressional Black Caucus,” Mr. Jeffries wrote.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? 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      4 Summer Election Days? New York Faces Chaos in Voting Cycle.

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      Representative Tom Reed is resigning, Representative Antonio Delgado is taking a new job, and New York’s redistricting process is up in the air, muddying the election schedule.To understand the chaos upending New York’s election season, consider the plight of Marc Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive trying to run for Congress as a Republican somewhere near his home in the Hudson Valley.Just two weeks ago, the state’s highest court unexpectedly invalidated the new congressional district in which Mr. Molinaro had spent months campaigning, throwing the battlefield into limbo as a special master redraws it and every other House seat in the state.Then last week, his likely Democratic opponent, Representative Antonio Delgado, took a job as New York’s lieutenant governor. The departure will prompt a special election this summer to fill the district whose current contours will be gone by January, just months before November’s election on lines that do not yet exist.“I’m a man in search of a horse,” Mr. Molinaro said in an interview on Wednesday. “I have no district, no opponent, and a million dollars.”With control of the House of Representatives on the line, no one expected this year’s redistricting cycle to be an afternoon by the Finger Lakes. But to a degree few foresaw, New York is lurching through what may be the most convoluted election cycle in living memory, scrambling political maps, campaigns and the calendar itself.It only got murkier this week, when Representative Tom Reed, a Republican from the Southern Tier of the state, announced that he would leave his seat earlier than expected to work for a Washington lobbying firm, setting up a second special congressional election this summer. (Mr. Reed decided not to seek re-election last year in the face of a groping allegation.)What’s left behind is a fog of confusion over when people are going to vote, who is running in which districts and when Gov. Kathy Hochul will schedule two special elections that could have an immediate impact on the narrowly divided House of Representatives in Washington.For now, neither Mr. Delgado nor Mr. Reed has officially resigned from their seats, according to the governor’s office.Representative Tom Reed, who said last year that he would not seek re-election, announced on Tuesday that he would resign.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“We are working with the lieutenant governor-designate’s team on the transition and have not yet received Congressman Reed’s resignation,” Hazel Crampton-Hays, a spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul, said on Wednesday. “But when we do, the governor will call a special election as required by law.”It is not implausible that New York could hold Election Days for statewide and Assembly primaries on June 28; for congressional and State Senate primaries on Aug. 23; and for the seats of Mr. Delgado and Mr. Reed on separate Tuesdays in August. (Republicans believe that Mr. Delgado may be delaying his House resignation so that his district’s special election can coincide with the Aug. 23 primaries in an effort to boost Democratic turnout.)What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Deepening Divides: As political mapmakers create lopsided new district lines, the already polarized parties are being pulled even farther apart.“I joked with our staff last night, maybe tomorrow the locusts will set in?” said Nick Langworthy, the state Republican Party chairman. “We just have so many catastrophes politically.”Some greater clarity may yet be on the horizon.The court-appointed special master is scheduled to unveil the new congressional and State Senate districts on Monday, and if they are approved by Patrick F. McAllister, a judge in Steuben County, candidates will be able to begin plotting summertime campaigns.On Wednesday, Judge McAllister, who is overseeing the redistricting case, shut the door on a related but belated attempt to strike down State Assembly districts. The judge also laid out the process by which candidates can qualify to run in the newly redrawn districts once they are unveiled.If Republicans tend to view the absurdities in a more humorous light than Democrats do, it is because each change has played out to their benefit.The lines passed by the Democrat-dominated Legislature in February, only to be struck down in late April by the New York State Court of Appeals, would have given Democrats a clear advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts. While the new lines remain a mystery, they are widely expected to create more swing seats that Republicans could conceivably win.The departure of Mr. Delgado in the 19th Congressional District was another unforeseen gift to the Republicans. While the exact shape of the new district will matter, Mr. Molinaro’s prospects will be enhanced by not having to run against a popular incumbent with a track record of winning tough races.The district, which includes all or parts of 11 counties, has been one of the state’s most competitive, with tight races in 2016 (a Republican win for John Faso), and in 2018, when Mr. Delgado won his first term. Mr. Delgado won by a more comfortable margin in 2020 against Kyle Van De Water, a Republican and former officer in the U.S. Army.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Top Democrats Want Tom Suozzi Out of Governor’s Race. He’s Still Running.

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      In the New York Democratic primary, Representative Tom Suozzi is fighting Gov. Kathy Hochul for moderate voters, with a focus on fighting crime and cutting taxes.Representative Thomas R. Suozzi is not the kind of person to be swayed by the advice of fellow Democrats. But as he runs for governor of New York this year, he sure has gotten his share.There was Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a favorite to be the next Democratic House speaker, who counseled him not to give up his House seat on Long Island.Eliot Spitzer, the former governor who trounced him in a 2006 primary, warned he had no clear lane to victory. Even Hillary Clinton weighed in, urging Mr. Suozzi to forgo a messy primary and help Democrats fight to keep the House majority.It doesn’t take a political science degree to understand the argument. Gov. Kathy Hochul is enjoying a double-digit lead, a mountain of campaign cash rivaling the Adirondacks and the full muscle of a Democratic establishment eager to see New York’s first female governor win a full term.None of it has deterred Mr. Suozzi, 59. As potential opponents like Letitia James and Bill de Blasio dropped out of the race, the three-term congressman and outspoken centrist from Nassau County has flouted the advice of allies, tossing aside a coveted House seat to embark on a frenetic attempt to spoil Ms. Hochul’s potential coronation.The race undoubtedly remains Ms. Hochul’s to lose. But with less than two months until Primary Day, there are signs that weeks of public appeals may finally be finding an audience among New Yorkers who believe they have fresh reasons to doubt the governor or more progressive alternatives.Ms. Hochul’s administration is still fighting off a cloud of scandal, after her handpicked second-in-command, Brian A. Benjamin, resigned in the face of public corruption charges last month. And recent public polling suggests that she is vulnerable to attacks on issues that Mr. Suozzi has put at the center of his campaign, like rising crime and her decision to spend $600 million in taxpayer money on a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills.“New Yorkers are not just going to forget about this poor judgment she’s exercised,” Mr. Suozzi said the other day, as Ms. Hochul cajoled lawmakers into changing state law to get Mr. Benjamin off the ballot.“We shouldn’t let them forget,” he added.Gov. Kathy Hochul, who took office in August, is running for her first full term this year.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSeeking to draw contrasts with his opponents — Ms. Hochul and Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate — Mr. Suozzi describes himself as a “common-sense Democrat” and a “proven executive.” His political ads portray him as a centrist in a time of extremes, someone better qualified to lead one of the nation’s largest states than Ms. Hochul, a former county clerk, congresswoman and lieutenant governor, who took office last August when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resigned in scandal.Prominent Democrats fear that Mr. Suozzi’s hard-charging candidacy could endanger both the swing district he represents and Ms. Hochul’s chances against a Republican this fall.“Tom is making it difficult for Kathy and the other Democrats down ballot,” said Representative Kathleen Rice, a fellow Nassau County Democrat who has known him for decades.“He really does have a big heart and believes in traditional Democratic values of taking care of the poor and a big social safety net,” Ms. Rice added. “I just think that if he had been able to check his ego earlier in his career, he could have already run for president.”Political analysts are skeptical he can close the gap.Insurgents have successfully defeated Democratic incumbents in New York by running to their left, as Mr. Williams is trying to do this year. But there are few cases of a Democratic challenger winning a primary by running to the right, particularly against someone like Ms. Hochul, who shares Mr. Suozzi’s general political orientation as a Catholic, suburban moderate.“He’s basically vying for the same voter that she is,” said Ester Fuchs, a political science professor at Columbia University. “People have to have a reason to say, ‘She’s doing a terrible job, she shouldn’t continue.’ I don’t see that happening.”In 2001, Mr. Suozzi, a former mayor of Glen Cove, became the first Democrat to be elected Nassau County executive in more than 30 years.Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesThe position is a familiar one for Mr. Suozzi, who followed his Italian immigrant father into law and politics at a young age, became mayor of his affluent hometown, Glen Cove on the Long Island Sound, at 31 and proceeded to take a series of political moonshots.It got Mr. Suozzi elected as the first Democratic county executive in a generation in Nassau, where he won plaudits for turning around the county’s troubled finances. Yet a long-shot campaign to upset Mr. Spitzer in the Democratic race for governor in 2006 ended badly, and a few years later, Mr. Suozzi unexpectedly lost re-election in Nassau with $2 million unspent.In an interview, he insisted this year is not a repeat of 2006.“I was running against Eliot Spitzer, the sheriff of Wall Street,” Mr. Suozzi said. “Now, I’m running against Kathy Hochul, who I don’t think has any kind of record of accomplishment that anybody could point to.”Mr. Suozzi, right, was handily defeated by Eliot Spitzer, left, in the 2006 Democratic primary for governor.James Estrin/The New York TimesMs. Hochul’s allies vigorously dispute that characterization. But while the governor has significantly consolidated party and union support behind her, she does lack the kind of voter enthusiasm that Mr. Spitzer enjoyed at the height of his popularity.Much of Mr. Suozzi’s campaign is a continuation of centrist positions he staked out in Washington, where he joined the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and crusaded, unsuccessfully, to repeal a state and local tax deduction cap implemented by President Donald J. Trump that hurt well-off suburbanites. He also took liberal stances, starting a labor caucus and racking up an F rating from the National Rifle Association and top scores from Planned Parenthood.On a recent campaign stretch that took him from suburban diners to a Black church in Queens, the congressman at times sounded like his Republican counterparts, promising to wage an all-out assault on crime (“This is a crime crisis!”), to cut income and property taxes (“People are leaving our state — it’s not the weather”) and to fight the “socialist” Democrats who are “killing our party” by attacking police. He also reminded voters that Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, had offered him a deputy mayor post.“People say, ‘That’s not a Democratic issue,’” Mr. Suozzi said. “Yes it is. Democrats are worried about crime and taxes. Democrats are afraid to take the subway.”As Mr. Suozzi met with potential voters, he focused his message on fighting crime and cutting taxes.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesThe message resonated with suburban voters who showed up in Westchester and Rockland Counties to hear Mr. Suozzi over free plates of eggs. A warm retail campaigner, he greeted potential voters — as well as some patrons just trying to enjoy a private meal — in fragments of no fewer than five languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin and Greek.“Nothing against Kathy Hochul, but right now I think it’s important to have someone in the role that has the credentials and the history of being able to boost the economy,” said Maria Abdullah, a businesswoman in Westchester who attended one of the gatherings.The question is whether Mr. Suozzi can attract the broader spectrum of voters needed to defeat Ms. Hochul, particularly when she may outspend him four to one. Mr. Suozzi is clearly targeting Mr. Adams’s coalition of working-class Black and Latinos around New York City, betting that the party faithful are tired of progressive voices.He chose Diana Reyna, a former city councilwoman who was the first Dominican woman elected in New York State, as his running mate; Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president, is campaign chairman.At times, though, Mr. Suozzi seems to be going out of his way to alienate another powerful block of primary voters. Progressives have expressed outrage at anti-crime policies they believe are retrograde and took offense at a radio appearance in which he seemingly approved of a Florida law opponents have branded “Don’t Say Gay.” (He later said he had been “inartful” and opposed the law.)Lisa Tyson, the director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, said it’s not the time for bipartisanship. “There’s no middle ground between Republicans and Democrats anymore,” she said. “This is about fighting for justice and fighting for food.”Other prominent party figures have winced at the tone Mr. Suozzi has used to attack the state’s first female leader, whom he often refers to as an unqualified “interim governor.”“What he seems to be saying is, ‘I should be governor because I can do it better,’” said Jay Jacobs, the state Democratic Party chairman. “The underlying implication is that he is a male and she is a female. That’s not where this party should be going.”Mr. Suozzi said Mr. Jacobs, who chaired his 2006 campaign, was “absolutely wrong.” He also defended his approach to Ms. Hochul: “Kathy Hochul has not been elected governor of New York State, and she is serving from now until the end of Andrew Cuomo’s term,” he said. “The definition of that is interim.”A spokesman for the governor declined to comment.Mr. Suozzi does inspire fierce loyalty among his supporters, who say he can be a creative and, at times, groundbreaking leader.“Tom is a doer. Tom is an administrator. Tom knows what the city needs right now: safety and economic opportunity for all groups of people,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who said Mr. Suozzi’s father gave him a job as a young paralegal years before he briefly served as Mr. Trump’s White House communications director.Mr. Scaramucci and his wife each contributed $22,600 to the campaign.Mr. Suozzi readily acknowledges that the safe political road would keep him on a path to re-election for a House seat.“I could stay in Congress the rest of my life if I wanted to and keep on getting re-elected, I believe,” he said. “But I’m giving it up because I feel so strongly that people are suffering in my state and something dramatic has to be done — and because I feel that my party has lost its way.” More