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      How Bruce Blakeman Used a Mask Rebellion to Revive His Career

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      Since a surprise win on Long Island, Bruce Blakeman has been on a seemingly single-minded mission to challenge and defy Gov. Kathy Hochul over mask mandates.Bruce Blakeman, who has emerged as the leader of suburban Long Island’s revolt against mask mandates, has lost his fair share of elections.In 1998, Mr. Blakeman — a lifelong Republican — was trounced in a statewide election for comptroller. A year later, he was stunned to be voted out of the Nassau County Legislature, losing his perch as its presiding officer and majority leader. After toying with a run for New York City mayor in 2009, he then lost a congressional race to Representative Kathleen Rice of Long Island in 2014.But Mr. Blakeman’s surprising November win in the race for Nassau County executive — upsetting Laura Curran, a moderate, first-term Democrat — has led, after so many races, to his informal anointment as the state party’s unlikeliest new star.Helping to fuel his rise has been Mr. Blakeman’s seemingly single-minded political mission to challenge and defy Gov. Kathy Hochul, the state’s top Democrat, over her mask mandates, as well as rising crime rates and bail reform, which have proved potent issues for Republicans.“Bruce Blakeman is on the scene; he’s a major Republican leader in this state,” said Nick Langworthy, New York’s Republican Party chairman. “Everybody counted him out, but now Bruce has a great platform. And what I admire about him is he really wants to use it.”Mr. Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, in Mineola. His victory was part of a wave of Republican wins in the county.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Ms. Hochul announced that she would end some rules on indoor masking. Infection rates and hospitalizations have rapidly declined as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has waned. She added that counties and individual businesses could still require masks, framing that decision as empowering for local leaders.Extending that sort of restriction seems unlikely in Nassau, at least as far as the county government is concerned. Shortly after being inaugurated in early January, Mr. Blakeman made headlines by issuing a flurry of executive orders directing county agencies to stop enforcing mask mandates, and proclaiming that local school districts had to vote on whether or not to grant children what he called “the constitutional right” to cast off masks in the classroom.Whether those orders are legal or not — and Ms. Hochul says they clearly weren’t, considering that state orders outweigh local dictums — the defiant stance resulted in Mr. Blakeman’s ascension to the role of sought-after rabble-rouser, complete with repeated appearances on Fox News and a hero’s welcome in Republican circles in Albany.All of which, Mr. Blakeman insists, stems from a genuine concern for parental rights, not political gain.“I think good government is good politics,” Mr. Blakeman said in a recent interview in the State Capitol. “And part of good government is listening to your constituents.”Mr. Blakeman’s opponents counter that such platitudes are a mere disguise for an ambitious and oft-thwarted politician who has found his moment amid the polarization of the Trump era.“He’s following the tried-and-true Republican playbook,” said Jay Jacobs, who serves as both the Nassau County Democratic Party chair, as well as state chairman for the party. “You either scare the voters or make them angry.”Mr. Blakeman’s sudden celebrity has already paid dividends in one way: Less than a week after he announced his executive orders, his party selected Nassau County as the host for its 2022 convention later this month, noting the “historic Republican resurgence” in the county.Mr. Blakeman’s victory was part of a wave of Republican wins in Nassau, including by Anne Donnelly in the race for Nassau County district attorney, the first time that a Republican has held that position since 2005.White-maned, blue-eyed and fond of snazzy three-piece suits, Mr. Blakeman, 66, exudes a kind of old-school New York political swagger, complete with providing Page Six fodder, in part because his ex-wife, Nancy Shevell, is married to Paul McCartney.Politics is a bit of a Blakeman family business: Mr. Blakeman’s father, Robert, was a state assemblyman, and his younger brother, Bradley, was on President George W. Bush’s White House staff. One of five siblings who grew up in Valley Stream, on the Queens border, Mr. Blakeman recalls using Halloween as a campaign outing for his father.“I’d go out with an empty bag and a full bag of literature,” Mr. Blakeman said. “I came back home with a full bag of candy and an empty bag of literature.”After college and law school stints in Arizona and California — working for Republican campaigns and as a driver and aide to the former first lady Nancy Reagan — Mr. Blakeman returned to Long Island to serve as a partner in his father’s firm before being appointed Hempstead town councilman in 1993. He won a full term on the council later that same year, before being elected to the County Legislature in 1995.Mr. Blakeman at a meeting of the Nassau County Legislature in 1996. His father, Robert, was a state assemblyman.Vic DeLucia/The New York TimesLast winter, he had come full circle, once again serving as a member of the Hempstead Town council, when the Nassau County Republican chairman, Joseph G. Cairo Jr., approached him about taking on Ms. Curran.He was ambivalent, he said, because he was in “a very comfortable place in my life” and “wasn’t sure I wanted to go into that kind of a battle.”But, Mr. Blakeman said, he saw an opening as he looked at polling, saying that while Ms. Curran was popular, “she was upside-down on every important issue,” including bail reform. A 2019 law passed by Democrats in Albany had effectively abolished bail for many nonviolent felonies and most misdemeanors.To that end, Mr. Blakeman ran a law-and-order and anti-tax campaign. He seemingly galvanized concerned suburbanites and die-hard Trump conservatives into a winning coalition, despite Democrats outnumbering Republicans by about 25,000 in the county, with a tranche of some 200,000 independent voters.The margin was thin, with Mr. Blakeman beating Ms. Curran by less than 1 percent, or about 2,100 votes.Mr. Cairo said that Mr. Blakeman’s opponents “tried to portray him as being a loser, and that he’s only doing this because he’s Cairo’s friend.”Mr. Blakeman proved to a dogged campaigner, however, impressing even some Democrats.“I would see him along the way and he’d say, ‘Tom, we’re going to win this.’ And I would say, ‘Really?’” said Thomas DiNapoli, the state’s comptroller, a Democrat, and a figure in Nassau County politics for more than three decades. “But he believed in himself.”Mr. Blakeman also won, said Lawrence Levy, the dean of suburban studies at Hofstra University, because he “leveraged concerns over bail reform and property tax assessments in ways that appealed both to his base and the sort of moderate independent who abandoned Trump in 2020.”That combination, however, will prove to be difficult to maintain, Mr. Levy said.“He is trying to thread a political and ideological needle,” he said. “He is getting a lot of attention for taking very conservative populist positions with Trump-style rhetoric, ostensibly to deliver on promises he made to his base. But he’s also trying not to entirely alienate the sort of suburban swing voter that decides national and local elections.”Mr. Blakeman spoke at a press conference in Mineola about the funeral of Officer Wilbert D. Mora of the New York Police Department in February.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesStill, Mr. Blakeman’s victory gave particular hope to Republicans on Long Island, where liberals had celebrated in 2018, after an anti-Trump sentiment led to four State Senate seats flipping to Democrats on the island. The party then took control of the chamber for the first time in nearly a decade.And while new redistricting maps may dash any Republican dreams of seizing the State Senate — the Democrats hold a 23-seat advantage in a 63-seat chamber — Robert Ortt, the Republican minority leader, said Mr. Blakeman showed the potential potency of “bail reform and crime and public safety” in elections all across the state.“It’s a template from the standpoint that it’s a huge issue,” Mr. Ortt said, adding that “public safety is an issue we all campaign on.”Even before taking office, Mr. Blakeman was invited to Albany in mid-December to headline an anti-bail-reform rally in the State Capitol and once again took an opportunity to criticize Ms. Hochul as someone “who likes to lecture me on the law.”“When you look at this bail reform law it is nothing more than a get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said, citing examples of gun charges in his county related to defendants released without bail. “It’s madness, it’s crazy and enough is enough.”In a county in which President Biden won, of course, Mr. Blakeman may well have to walk a fine line between appealing to moderates and the Republican base. Asked about President Donald J. Trump, he said he was “a very effective president,” but added: “Our personalities and delivery style are very different.”His ascension in Republican ranks has fostered some chatter that perhaps Mr. Blakeman — who lives in the well-to-do enclave of Atlantic Beach with his wife, Segal Blakeman, a lawyer — might want to challenge Ms. Hochul at some point.But Mr. Blakeman denies this, saying he supports this year’s front-runner for the Republican nomination, Representative Lee Zeldin, and is happy staying put in Nassau.“I have zero plans,” he said. “This is a great job, I love it. And I get to stay home.” More

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      Working Families Party Endorses Jumaane Williams for Governor

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      Mr. Williams, New York City’s left-leaning public advocate, is waging a primary challenge against Gov. Kathy Hochul, a moderate from Buffalo.New York’s left-wing Democrats have cautiously eyed Kathy Hochul for months, watching and waiting to see how the state’s new governor — a moderate from Buffalo — dealt with fraught policy disputes over the economy, housing and the coronavirus pandemic.On Tuesday, one of New York’s progressive pillars, the Working Families Party, finally rendered a verdict: It endorsed Jumaane D. Williams, New York City’s public advocate, in his long-shot primary challenge against Ms. Hochul.The decision was not unexpected. Mr. Williams has been a longtime ally of the Working Families Party, which is backed by an influential coalition of activists and labor unions. In recent years, it has helped push Democrats to the left and topple moderate incumbents in Washington, D.C.; New York City; and Albany, N.Y.But the endorsement offered early insight into how the left plans to approach Ms. Hochul, who has been far more open to collaborating than her predecessor, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — particularly at a moment when there are signs that party leaders may be retreating to more moderate positions in the face of rising gun violence and a flagging economic recovery.Instead of endorsing Ms. Hochul and trying to lobby from the inside or denouncing her in a scorched-earth campaign, party activists appear to be betting that an empowered challenger on her left flank will help prevent the governor from drifting further to the center on issues like climate, affordable housing and taxes as New York emerges from a devastating pandemic.“This is a serious crossroads moment in New York,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the director of the New York Working Families Party, praising Mr. Williams as “the best choice to ensure that New York can actually be a place that working people could make ends meet.”The endorsement of Mr. Williams offered early insight into how the left plans to approach Gov. Kathy Hochul amid signs that party leaders may be retreating to more moderate positions.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesMs. Nnaemeka said she was concerned that without a robust voice from the left, Democratic leaders were being swayed by other candidates — centrists in their own party like Representative Tom Suozzi and Republicans like Representative Lee Zeldin — who have sought to stir up public outrage over Ms. Hochul’s handling of the virus, the economy and public safety.It is unclear how far the fresh push from progressives can get Mr. Williams, 45, a well-respected activist and former city councilman who first became public advocate in 2019. He came within a few points of defeating Ms. Hochul in 2018, when both ran for lieutenant governor, and the Working Families Party backed Cynthia Nixon over Mr. Cuomo.But much has changed in the intervening years. Since Mr. Cuomo resigned in scandal in August, Ms. Hochul has become the dominant player in New York state politics. She has amassed $21 million in campaign cash and won the endorsements of key labor groups that were once a part of the Working Families Party, as well as left-leaning lawmakers.At the same time, progressives have struggled in a series of high-profile races, losing the mayoralties of New York City and Buffalo to avowed centrists.In the race for governor, they have been relatively slow to coalesce in opposition to Ms. Hochul, who has inspired good will by resetting relationships with left-leaning lawmakers and advocacy groups. She officially competed for the Working Families Party nomination, four years after Mr. Cuomo declared open warfare against the party.Progressives had also been banking on Letitia James, the state’s left-leaning attorney general, to be their standard-bearer. Instead, Ms. James abruptly cut her campaign short in December, just six weeks after entering the race.The most recent public opinion poll released by Siena College in mid-January showed Ms. Hochul leading Mr. Williams 46 percent to 11 percent among Democrats, with just 6 percent backing Mr. Suozzi. More

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      4 Candidates to Be New York’s Next Governor

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      4 Candidates to Be New York’s Next GovernorAnne Barnard📍Reporting from New York CitySeth Wenig/Associated PressThe resignation of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has led to a fluid, fractured and unpredictable race for New York’s next governor. On Tuesday, the Working Families Party announced who they were endorsing. Here’s who they picked, along with other top candidates → More

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      ‘Taking the Voters Out of the Equation’: How the Parties Are Killing Competition

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      The number of competitive House districts is dropping, as both Republicans and Democrats use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.WASHINGTON — The number of competitive congressional districts is on track to dive near — and possibly below — the lowest level in at least three decades, as Republicans and Democrats draw new political maps designed to ensure that the vast majority of House races are over before the general election starts.With two-thirds of the new boundaries set, mapmakers are on pace to draw fewer than 40 seats — out of 435 — that are considered competitive based on the 2020 presidential election results, according to a New York Times analysis of election data. Ten years ago that number was 73.While the exact size of the battlefield is still emerging, the sharp decline of competition for House seats is the latest worrying sign of dysfunction in the American political system, which is already struggling with a scourge of misinformation and rising distrust in elections. Lack of competition in general elections can widen the ideological gulf between the parties, leading to hardened stalemates on legislation and voters’ alienation from the political process.“The reduction of competitive seats is a tragedy,” said former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who is chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “We end up with gridlock, we end up with no progress and we end up with a population looking at our legislatures and having this feeling that nothing gets done.” He added: “This gridlock leads to cynicism about this whole process.”Both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for adding to the tally of safe seats. Over decades, the parties have deftly used the redistricting process to create districts dominated by voters from one party or to bolster incumbents.It’s not yet clear which party will ultimately benefit more from this year’s bumper crop of safe seats, or whether President Biden’s sagging approval ratings might endanger Democrats whose districts haven’t been considered competitive. Republicans control the mapmaking for more than twice as many districts as Democrats, leaving many in the G.O.P. to believe that the party can take back the House majority after four years of Democratic control largely by drawing favorable seats.But Democrats have used their power to gerrymander more aggressively than expected. In New York, for example, the Democratic-controlled Legislature on Wednesday approved a map that gives the party a strong chance of flipping as many as three House seats currently held by Republicans.That has left Republicans and Democrats essentially at a draw, with two big outstanding unknowns: Florida’s 28 seats, increasingly the subject of Republican infighting, are still unsettled and several court cases in other states could send lawmakers back to the drawing board.“Democrats in New York are gerrymandering like the House depends on it,” said Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the party’s main mapmaking organization. “Republican legislators shouldn’t be afraid to legally press their political advantage where they have control.”New York’s new map doesn’t just set Democrats up to win more seats, it also eliminates competitive districts. In 2020, there were four districts where Mr. Biden and former President Donald J. Trump were within five percentage points. There are none in the new map. Even the reconfigured district that stretches from Republican-dominated Staten Island to Democratic neighborhoods in Brooklyn is now, at least on paper, friendly territory for Democrats.Understand Redistricting and GerrymanderingRedistricting, Explained: 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.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.North Carolina: The State Supreme Court ruled that new political maps were illegally skewed to favor Republicans.Without that competition from outside the party, many politicians are beginning to see the biggest threat to their careers as coming from within.“When I was a member of Congress, most members woke up concerned about a general election,” said former Representative Steve Israel of New York, who led the House Democrats’ campaign committee during the last redistricting cycle. “Now they wake up worried about a primary opponent.”Mr. Israel, who left Congress in 2017 and now owns a bookstore on Long Island, recalled Republicans telling him they would like to vote for Democratic priorities like gun control but feared a backlash from their party’s base. House Democrats, Mr. Israel said, would like to address issues such as Social Security and Medicare reform, but understand that doing so would draw a robust primary challenge from the party’s left wing.Republicans are expected to win roughly 65 percent of Texas’ 38 congressional seats.Tamir Kalifa/Getty ImagesRepublicans argue that redistricting isn’t destiny: The political climate matters, and more races will become competitive if inflation, the lingering pandemic or other issues continue to sour voters on Democratic leadership.But the far greater number of districts drawn to be overwhelmingly safe for one party is likely to limit how many seats will flip — even in a so-called wave election.“The parties are contributing to more and more single-party districts and taking the voters out of the equation,” said former Representative Tom Davis, who led the House Republicans’ campaign arm during the 2001 redistricting cycle. “November becomes a constitutional formality.”In the 29 states where maps have been completed and not thrown out by courts, there are just 22 districts that either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump won by five percentage points or less, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute.By this point in the 2012 redistricting cycle, there were 44 districts defined as competitive based on the previous presidential election results. In the 1992 election, the margin between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush was within five points in 108 congressional districts.The phenomenon of parties using redistricting to gain an edge is as old as the republic itself, but it has escalated in recent decades with more sophisticated technology and more detailed data about voter behavior. Americans with similar political views have clustered in distinct areas — Republicans in rural and exurban areas, Democrats in cities and inner suburbs. It’s a pattern that can make it difficult to draw cohesive, competitive districts.No state has quashed competition ahead of the midterm elections like Texas. In the 2020 election, there were 12 competitive districts in the state. After redistricting, there is only one.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      G.O.P. Lawsuit Casts N.Y. Congressional Maps as Brazen Gerrymandering

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      A Republican-led legal effort faces an uphill battle to overturn newly drawn congressional districts, which Democrats have defended as lawful.A Republican-led group of voters filed a lawsuit late Thursday challenging New York’s freshly drawn congressional maps as unconstitutional, a day after Democratic lawmakers in Albany approved district lines that would heavily favor their party in its battle to retain control of the House.The 67-page suit argued that the new district lines violated a 2014 state constitutional amendment meant to protect against partisan district drawing, saying that Democrats had “brazenly enacted a congressional map that is undeniably politically gerrymandered in their party’s favor.”“This court should reject it as a matter of substance, as the map is an obviously unconstitutional partisan and incumbent-protection gerrymander,” said the lawsuit, which was brought by a group of 14 voters.The lawsuit, which was widely expected, is likely to face an uphill battle: State courts have traditionally been reluctant to reject maps drawn by lawmakers, and it can be difficult to prove that maps that favor one political party were drawn illegally.But the lawsuit was filed in State Supreme Court in Steuben County, a Republican stronghold in the state’s Southern Tier where judges may be more sympathetic to claims of Democratic political gerrymandering.The outcome of the challenge could hinge on how a state judge interprets an anti-gerrymandering provision in the 2014 amendment that has not been tested in court before, as well as the process lawmakers followed to draw the lines.“The question is whether the court will reject 50 years of precedent and reject the plan,” said Jeffrey Wice, a senior fellow at New York Law School’s Census and Redistricting Institute.Understand Redistricting and GerrymanderingRedistricting, Explained: 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.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Texas: Republicans want to make Texas even redder. Here are four ways their proposed maps further gerrymandered the state’s House districts.The judge could uphold or reject the maps, and potentially compel Democrats to redraw them — or appoint a special master to do so in a nonpartisan way should the Legislature prove unable to. The decision, if appealed, may eventually wind its way to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.Democrats have rejected the charge of gerrymandering, arguing that the new lines are a fair representation of a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic and where population changes over the last decade have only served to further depopulate conservative rural areas and grow urban and suburban communities that tend to be more favorable to their party.The newly drawn maps in New York position Democrats to potentially flip three House seats in November, the largest projected shift in any state.The challenge against the maps comes as both parties continue their attempts to leverage the redistricting process nationwide, with Republicans often doing so more effectively because of their majorities in large states like Texas. Republican maps are being challenged in several states.State lawmakers in New York had long been in charge of drawing the lines, but the 2014 amendment created a 10-member bipartisan redistricting commission tasked with drawing balanced maps devoid of the type of gerrymandering that had plagued the state over decades.But the commission, as many in Albany expected, became deadlocked and failed to agree on a single set of maps last month. That mean that, under the process outlined in the law, the power to redraw the maps was reverted to the Legislature, where Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers.Shortly after, Democratic lawmakers moved swiftly to draw and consider their own district lines. No public hearings were held, a move that was decried by Republicans and good-government groups, but which Democrats justified as necessary in order to comply with a time-sensitive electoral calendar.Democrats passed the maps on Wednesday and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat, signed them into law the following day.“We are 100 percent confident that the lines are in compliance with all legal requirements,” said Mike Murphy, a spokesman for Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Democratic majority leader in the State Senate. “They are a gigantic step forward for fairer representation and reflect the strength and diversity of New York like never before”Democrats in New York currently hold 19 seats, while Republicans control eight seats. The new maps, which include one less seat as a result of population loss, would favor Democrats in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts.The lawsuit filed on Thursday outlined instances, from Staten Island and Brooklyn to Long Island and the North Country, in which, the plaintiffs said, lawmakers deliberately redrew district lines to give Democrats an overall edge.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      How N.Y. Democrats Are Leading a ‘Master Class’ in Gerrymandering

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      The maps approved by Democrats in the New York State Legislature could lead their party to seize as many as three House seats from Republicans.Democrats across the nation have spent years railing against partisan gerrymandering, particularly in Republican states — most recently trying to pass federal voting rights legislation in Washington to all but outlaw the practice.But given the same opportunity for the first time in decades, Democratic lawmakers in New York adopted on Wednesday an aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional districts that positions the party to flip three seats in the House this year, a greater shift than projected in any other state.The new lines would shape races in New York for a decade to come, making Democrats the favorites in redrawn districts currently held by Republicans on Long Island, Staten Island and in Central New York. They would also help tighten the party’s hold on swing seats ahead of what is expected to be a strong Republican election cycle, all while eliminating a fourth Republican seat upstate altogether.Legal and political experts immediately criticized the new district contours as a blatant and hypocritical partisan gerrymander. And Republicans, who were powerless to stop it legislatively in Albany, threated to challenge the map in court under new anti-gerrymandering provisions in New York’s Constitution, though it was unclear if they could prove partisan intent.Overall, the new map was expected to favor Democratic candidates in 22 of New York’s 26 congressional districts. Democrats currently control 19 seats in the state, compared with eight held by Republicans. New York is slated to lose one seat overall this year because of national population changes in the 2020 census.“It’s a master class in how to draw an effective gerrymander,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which has also sounded alarms about attempts by Republicans to gerrymander and pass other restrictive voting laws.“Sometimes you do need fancy metrics to tell, but a map that gives Democrats 85 percent of the seats in a state that is not 85 percent Democratic — this is not a particularly hard case,” he said. Democratic leaders in Albany rejected the charge, saying they were confident that the new districts were entirely legal and largely wrought by adjusting for population shifts that favor their candidates.State Senator Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader and leader of a task force that drew the lines, said that mapmakers had been “very conscious of potential legal pitfalls” and “more than complied” with the extensive list of standards outlined by the state. He said the maps were fair.“It’s a dangerous game to prognosticate on how elections are going to turn out before they are held,” he said. “Voters have the final say in all these districts, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone in a state as deep blue as New York, the results would reflect the reality on the ground.”Understand Redistricting and GerrymanderingRedistricting, Explained: 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.New York: Democrats’ aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional map is one of the most consequential in the nation.Texas: Republicans want to make Texas even redder. Here are four ways their proposed maps further gerrymandered the state’s House districts.Many of the party’s operatives and voters were less bashful in their support of gerrymandering, arguing that Democrats could not afford to take the high road when Republicans have shown no similar inclination.Both parties have weaponized redistricting for years in the larger battle for control of the House of Representatives, but Republicans recently have been more effective in doing so, based on their control of large states like Texas and Florida, and the decision by liberal bastions like California to adopt nonpartisan redistricting commissions to handle the process.On balance, their practices have also drawn greater legal scrutiny, often related to charges of racial gerrymandering. So far, state and federal courts have considered challenges to maps advanced by Republicans in several states, including Ohio, North Carolina and Alabama, and late last year the Justice Department sued Texas over new congressional maps that it said violated the Voting Rights Act’s protections for Black and Latino voters.At the same time, Republican-led states have attracted attention from the Justice Department after they advanced a series of new election laws making it more difficult to vote.In New York, the redistricting cycle began, perhaps naïvely, in the hopes that a bipartisan outside commission — approved by voters in 2014 — would deliver a balanced, common-sense map.Instead, the commission stuck to party lines and was unable to reach consensus last month, kicking control of the process back to the State Legislature, where Democrats have amassed rare supermajorities in recent years. Those majorities, plus control of the governorship, gave them the power for the first time in decades to draw maps as they saw fit.Democratic leaders swiftly released their own maps in a matter of days, forgoing any public hearings and largely keeping even their own members in the dark about the new lines until they became public.Wednesday’s vote fell mostly along party lines, as Democrats limited defections to narrowly pass the map in the Assembly, 103 to 45, and the Senate, 43 to 20.The Legislature planned to proceed as soon as Thursday to pass state legislative maps drawn by Democrats divvying up State Senate and Assembly districts. Most notably, they were expected to help solidify Democrats’ hold of the State Senate in an election year when Republicans are trying to reclaim a chamber they controlled for all but three years between the mid-1940s and 2019.Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, is widely expected to sign all the maps into law in the coming days.But Republicans were already taking steps on Wednesday to prepare a lawsuit challenging at least the congressional lines as unconstitutional in state court. Several good-governance groups in the state said they agreed with the Republicans’ view, though it was unclear if they would sign onto a suit.“The congressional maps are clearly unconstitutional under the new anti-gerrymandering provisions,” said John Faso, a former Republican congressman who is helping coordinate the effort between Albany Republicans and the National Republican Redistricting Trust. “There is a decent likelihood that there will be litigation as a result of it, but when and where I could not say.”Senator Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader, defended the Democrats’ redrawn maps as being fair and constitutional.Hans Pennink/Associated PressAny court case would likely hinge on how judges interpret language included in the same 2014 constitutional amendment that created the defunct redistricting commission and how Democrats actually arrived at their lines. The language has not previously been tested in court and says that districts “shall not be drawn to discourage competition” or boost one party or incumbent candidate over another.New York State courts have historically been reluctant to overturn plans passed by the Legislature. But Richard H. Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University, said that could change this year based on the new anti-gerrymandering language and the example set by other states’ courts that have grown more comfortable blocking gerrymandered plans.“The provision is written in a strict prohibitory language,” Mr. Pildes said. “Proving that was what actually took place will inevitably trigger these debates about were these lines drawn to preserve particular communities of interest or a range of legitimate purposes.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      N.Y. Democrats Could Gain 3 House Seats Under Proposed District Lines

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      A new map drawn by legislative leaders would reconfigure state congressional districts to benefit Democrats in their fight to maintain a grip on the House of Representatives.ALBANY, N.Y. — New York Democrats on Sunday proposed a redesign of the state’s congressional map that would be one of the most consequential in the nation, offering the party’s candidates an advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 House districts in this fall’s midterm election. Party leaders in Albany insisted that the redrawn districts were not politically motivated, and they appeared to be somewhat less aggressive than many Democrats had wanted and analysts had forecast.But the proposed lines promise to be a major boon for the party for a decade to come, beginning with a hard-fought national battle with Republicans this year for control of the House of Representatives. With President Biden’s agenda hanging in the balance, Democratic gains in New York could help offset those Republicans expect to rack up in red states like Texas, Florida and Georgia. “With the stroke of a pen they can gain three seats and eliminate four Republican seats,” said Dave Wasserman, a national elections analyst with the Cook Political Report, who called the proposed lines “an effective gerrymander” by Democrats.“That’s a pretty big shift,” he added. “In fact, it’s probably the biggest shift in the country.”The new lines give Democrats opportunities to pick up seats on Long Island, in upstate New York and in New York City, where Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island Republican, would be drawn into a Democratic-leaning district. Republicans are likely to lose a fourth seat because New York, which had less population growth than some other states, must shed one district overall.The new boundaries will be in place for the next 10 years. Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesOther proposed changes could help shore up Democrats’ hold on swing districts on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley ahead of what is expected to be a punishing election season for the party overall.In 2014, New York State voters had empowered a bipartisan commission to draw the new districts, but the panel broke down on party lines and could not reach consensus. Its stalemate left it to Democratic leaders in Albany to redesign the map.“We did the best we could with a flawed process,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, who chairs the legislative redistricting task force that took over the process from the commission. He added: “This is a very Democratic state, let’s start there. It’s not surprising that a fairly drawn map might lead to more Democrats getting elected.”Lawmakers plan to vote on the congressional map as soon as Wednesday. New maps for the State Senate and Assembly are also expected this week. Democrats dominate both houses, and the new maps offer the party a chance to maintain majorities, if not supermajorities, in the Legislature.Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has indicated that she supports using the redistricting process to help her party and is likely to approve the maps if they pass both chambers.Republicans are expected to oppose them en masse, but have little power to stop them legislatively. They accused Democrats of undertaking a blatant and unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. Gov. Kathy Hochul is expected to approve the new map if the Legislature passes it. In the last redistricting, she lost her seat when her Buffalo area district became one of the most conservative in the state.Libby March for The New York TimesNick Langworthy, the chairman of the New York Republican Party, blasted the map as a “textbook filthy, partisan gerrymandering” and hinted that Republicans could challenge the proposed district as unconstitutional in court.“These maps are the most brazen and outrageous attempt at rigging the election to keep Nancy Pelosi as speaker,” he said, adding that Democrats “can’t win on the merits so they’re trying to win the election in a smoke-filled room rather than the ballot box.”Republicans were not the only interested parties alarmed by Democrats’ swift action. Lawmakers are poised to vote this week without convening a single public hearing, drawing the ire of good governance groups and community leaders. Even rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers only saw the proposed lines for the first time in the last few days, leading to last-minute changes.The redistricting stakes could scarcely be higher. Democrats control the House of Representatives by the thinnest of margins and are preparing for stiff challenges to their hold on Albany as well. Midterm elections are often difficult for the party in power, and with Mr. Biden’s approval rating at about 40 percent, Democrats are on the defensive.Around the country, battles over redistricting have become increasingly bare-knuckle, with high-stakes brawls between ruling Republicans and disempowered Democrats in North Carolina, Alabama and Ohio landing in state court. In some cases, the pitched battles reflect the tensions not just over party representation, but over race and voting rights at a time when states across the country are advancing laws concerning the right to vote: some expanding it, and others restricting it.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Hochul Amassed a Campaign Fortune. Here's Who it Came From.

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul’s record-setting $21.6 million in donations flowed from a who’s who of New York’s special interests.Last November, when many of Manhattan’s skyscrapers sat half-empty, Gov. Kathy Hochul made a high-stakes wager on New York City’s commercial real estate industry: She vowed to move ahead with a marquee plan to restore Pennsylvania Station and erect new office towers around it.For Manhattan’s mega-rich real estate developers, the announcement signaled Ms. Hochul’s support for the kind of grand projects that foretell a windfall, and some found a concrete way of showing their approval to the new governor.In the weeks that followed, Ms. Hochul’s campaign received checks for $69,700, the legal limit, from some of the city’s biggest real estate executives, including Steven Roth of Vornado Realty Trust, which is positioned to directly benefit from the project that he once called a “Promised Land.” Other checks trickled in from developers, builders, engineers and even some who opposed it.The campaign contributions flowed from a broader spigot of cash turned on last fall by New York’s varied special interests, from real estate and building trades to hospitals, labor unions and gaming companies, directed toward Ms. Hochul’s election campaign.The donations included $200,000 in checks from the family behind a major construction firm with millions in state contracts, $47,000 that was tied to a gaming giant leaning on the state to expand legal gambling, and $41,000 traced back to a single Albany lobbyist.The funds helped Ms. Hochul, a moderate Democrat who unexpectedly ascended to office last August, assemble a record-setting $21.6 million war chest, and claim a steep advantage heading into June’s Democratic primary and November’s general election.People and industries with financial interests before the state have long been reliable donors to top elected officials, showering them with money that, at times, can pose ethical and legal problems.There has been no evidence that the contributions from Mr. Roth and other developers were directly related to Ms. Hochul’s Penn Station plan, but those and others may still prompt scrutiny about her decision-making as she negotiates the state’s $216 billion budget.“It’s not like this isn’t a problem, but it is a well-trod path,” said Blair Horner, the executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which pushes for tighter campaign finance laws. “She’s just running through it instead of walking.”More than 95 percent of the funds she collected came from donors who gave $1,000 or more, according to a review of publicly available campaign filings, despite the Hochul campaign’s claims of success in pulling in small donations. Dozens of people wrote the governor checks for the legal maximum.Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, pointed to contributions from every county in the state and said that the campaign was proud that her agenda “has resonated with a diverse coalition of supporters.”“In keeping with the governor’s commitment to maintain high ethical standards, campaign contributions have no influence on government decisions,” he said.Many of her donors are fixtures in New York politics and were stalwart supporters of her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, who collected tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions by often using the same tactics Ms. Hochul is employing. But where Mr. Cuomo had years to build those relationships and fill his campaign coffers, Ms. Hochul has done so in a matter on months.Few industries gave more — and frequently in large amounts — than real estate, where large developers are keenly watching how Ms. Hochul will not only approach large, state-funded capital projects but the future of the state’s affordable housing law.Douglas Durst, who oversees a multibillion dollar real estate empire and chairs the influential Real Estate Board of New York, gave her $55,000. The family of Scott Rechler, a top donor to Mr. Cuomo whose RXR Realty controls millions of square feet of commercial real estate, gave $60,000. Members of the Rudin, Tishman and Speyer families — whose names dot buildings across the city — collectively contributed more than $400,000. Top executives at Related Companies, the group behind Hudson Yards, maxed out.The new governor, who has cast herself as pro-business and greenlighted a rash of expensive capital projects amid an influx of federal funds, also quickly began collecting funds from the state’s construction industry. Hundreds of thousands of dollars came from unions, trade groups and executives representing bricklayers, sheet metal workers, engineers, elevator constructors, machine operators, construction companies and even a law firm that specializes in construction accidents.Hospitals, nursing homes and other health groups, who scored significant victories in Ms. Hochul’s budget, including retention bonuses for frontline health workers, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well. Over two days in October and December, for example, more than 60 LLCs associated with nursing or rehabilitation homes all gave $1,000 or more apiece.Three family members associated with the Haugland Group, a Long Island construction and energy firm with lucrative state contracts at Kennedy Airport and with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, gave more than $200,000 altogether.A Guide to the New York Governor’s RaceCard 1 of 5A crowded field. More