NY Dems are primed to pull redistricting punches

DAYS THE BUDGET IS LATE: 38 VOTING RIGHTS DILEMMA: With Democrats’ national redistricting calculus now in disarray over today’s court order blocking new Virginia maps, party leaders are looking to New York as a prime opportunity to keep pace with Republicans. But as top Democrats in the Empire State move ahead with their attempt to redraw lines in 2028, they’re also far more likely to pull their punches in the ongoing gerrymandering wars. The Supreme Court’s decision last week to end a key provision of the Voting Rights Act allows states to break up districts previously drawn to accommodate minority voters. Republicans in states like Alabama and Tennessee are rushing to take advantage by dissolving majority Black districts. In New York — the state where Democrats have the most to gain by drawing new lines — there’s virtually no appetite to respond in kind, underscoring a looming barrier for blue states in the redistricting fight. “People were walking across bridges and being mauled, and have lost their lives for these rights,” New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said of the VRA. “These laws are there because there has been a real effort to disenfranchise certain people, certainly Black people, from being able to vote. So we want to protect that." In the coming weeks, New York lawmakers are expected to begin the lengthy process of approving a constitutional amendment that would let them redraw congressional lines in 2028. If successful, the measure stands to turn a state with 19 Democrats and seven Republicans into one with a 22-4 or 23-3 edge. Such an outcome is akin to what Republicans pushed through in Texas last summer — but not as extreme as the 9-0 Republican map Tennessee lawmakers drew Thursday by eliminating a Black majority district in Memphis. In New York, a 26-0 map isn’t plausible. But in a deep blue state where Democrats routinely receive around 60 percent of the vote in statewide races, maps that feature tendrils extending from the B