Jeffries Fights New York District Maps: ‘Enough to make Jim Crow blush’

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the second-most senior Black legislator in Congress, launched an active effort to discredit a proposed congressional map that would divide Black neighborhoods in history 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 scorching campaign to try to stop New York’s courts from releasing the final new map with no changes later this week.

As is understood, the map would divide Bedford-Stuyvesant in central Brooklyn into two boroughs and Co-Op City in the Bronx into three, for example, while placing Black incumbents in the same boroughs – changes that Mr. Jeffries deemed it a violation of the State Constitution.

“We found ourselves in an all-knowing moment,” said Jeffries, a Democrat in Brooklyn. In his most recent ad, he says the changes have delivered “a sledgehammer to Black counties. It was enough to make Jim Crow blush.”

Mr. Jeffries may be laying the groundwork for a final legal challenge, but his more immediate aim is to pressure Jonathan R. Cervas, the court-appointed special expert in New York, to replace him. change map of congress and state Senate that he first proposed on Monday before he presented the final plan to a state court judge for approval on Friday.

The stake can rarely be higher. After New York’s highest court knocking down Democrat-friendly maps was found unconstitutional last month by the State Legislature, the judges have given almost all of the power in the Mr. Cervasa postdoctoral fellow from Carnegie Mellon, to articulate the views that will govern elections for the next decade.

Mr. Cervas’ original proposal omitted a map led by the Democratic-led state Legislature, creating a new welcome opportunity for Republicans. But it also dramatically altered the shape of New York City boroughs – carefully drawn by another court a decade earlier – reflecting a patchwork of racial, geographical and economic divisions. .

Mr. Jeffries is not alone in filing a final appeal. The court was flooded with hundreds of comments suggesting amendments from Democrats and Republicans – from party lawyers urging more favorable political lines. an analysis about the differences between Jewish families on the East and West Sides of Manhattan.

This week, a coalition of public interest and minority advocacy groups told Mr Cervas that his changes would risk undermining the strength of historically marginalized communities. They include The New York Common Cause and Unified Map Alliancean influential Latino, Black and Asian legal group.

The proposed map would divide Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, and Brownsville – the culturally significant Black communities in Brooklyn – between the 8th and 9th Congressional Districts. Each neighborhood currently resides in one or the other. .

The northeast Bronx, another predominantly Black area that includes the Co-Op City and is located in Representative Jamaal Bowman’s county, will be divided into three different counties.

Groups have raised similar concerns about Mr. Cervas’ proposal to separate Chinatown and Sunset Park in Manhattan, home to a large Asian-American population, for the first time in decades. Other Jewish groups have made relevant appeals for their community in Brooklyn.

Most of the changes are likely to have little effect on the partisan composition of counties where the safe places are Democrats. But Lurie Daniel Favors, executive director of the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers University, says cutting through existing communities would further dilute the political power of marginalized groups. history.

“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 counties, forcing them to compete against each other or run in a county they don’t live in. Under the special master plan, Mr. Jeffries and Representative Yvette Clark would live in the same downtown Brooklyn, and Mr. Bowman and Mondaire Jones would reside in the same Westchester County seat.

“It’s another slap in the face to Blacks,” Bowman said, the county would see the black voting-age population drop from about 30% to 21% according to the report. new stuff.

Mr. Cervas did not explain why he drew the lines as he did. He declined to comment on the maps on Thursday, but said his team is “reviewing any comments that have been submitted to the court”.

The language amended in the 2014 New York Constitution gives cartographers a range of competing directives. It says regions cannot be manipulated to discourage competition or favor a particular candidate or party. It also instructs line-drawers to “consider maintaining existing county cores” and “communities of interest.”

Democrats like Jeffries pointed to those directives on Thursday, arguing that in an effort to boost competition for seats statewide, Mr. Cervas had slashed the hubs of several counties. or existing community of interest. Civil rights and public interest groups are exploring the possibility of legally challenging the maps if final versions fail to address their concerns.

“We are prepared to do everything necessary under the law to correct the wrongs that have been committed against communities of color,” Mr. Jeffries said.

But legal experts say it can be difficult to convince a judge because of the Constitution’s conflicting requirements.

“What they are arguing about is a reasonable outcome, but I don’t know that the position of the particular guru is not,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. must be a reasonable choice.

“I’m not sure anyone has so far come up with clear legal grounds” to prove otherwise, he added.

Republicans challenging Democrats’ congressional map largely oppose changes in Brooklyn and the Bronx in their letter to court late Thursday. They complain that Mr Cervas has not gone far enough ahead of the Democrats’ effort, arguing that he has produced a congressional map that is still tilted too far to the left.

Meanwhile, new legal cases continue to pivot from New York’s redistricting narrative.

New York State Federation of Women Voters File a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan late Wednesday seeking to delay the June 28 primary election for governor and other offices across the state and reopen the federal district-based litigation process. New association is drawn. Doing so would allow new candidates the opportunity to tap into key Democratic and Republican fields, and one plaintiff in the lawsuit specifically mentions one possibility: former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo.