you know things aren't going well for
democrats when there's trouble in one of
the blue estates new york a judge is
expected to approve a redrawn new york
congressional map tomorrow that could
pit incumbent democrats against each
other all over the place particularly in
the new york city footprint the new map
is already creating some drama within
the new york congressional delegation
and potentially embroiling d triple c
chair sean patrick maloney the democrat
tasked with protecting the party's
majority nationally
he is being uh he's urging his colleague
monder jones to run in a different
district leading congressman richie
torres to accuse maloney of quote
thinly veiled racism a black man is
ideologically ill suited to represent a
westchester county district that he
represents
presently and one decisively in 2020
outrageous so joining me now for a deep
dive into this mess is john campbell
he's a new york state capitol reporter
for gothamist and wnyc so john this is
what i want to understand how likely is
this map that a judge drew basically
after rejecting
the the constitutionality of the of the
state pass map
how likely is this map
going to be set in stone
well i mean judging by the the
congressional members actions it seems
pretty likely that that maybe not this
exact map but something very close to it
i mean you saw a a special master quote
unquote by the judge appointed expert
basically by the name of jonathan
service on monday he put out this his
his preliminary map
uh the court took public comment until
yesterday and now they have until friday
to finalize it so that's really not a
whole lot of time they did get all sorts
of public comment from democrats from
republicans from citizens uh but there's
not really a lot of time to change it
and that's why when you saw jonathan
service put out this map you saw
congressional members and candidates and
and any number of people just declaring
very quickly which district they want to
run in even though
if you said it's not final yet john walk
me through what is of the state
legislatures map
what specifically which part of what
which part of the of the redraw
did this judge feel
violated the spirit of what uh of what
uh reapportionment should look like
so the the judge that's overseeing the
redrawing of the map here is a guy by
the name of patrick mcallister he's an
acting state supreme court judge in
steuben county supreme court's the
lowest level state court in new york uh
he he is a republican he ruled on two
things one that the the state
legislature's maps uh that that were
drawn entirely by democrats were
illegally german gerrymandered
unconstitutionally gerrymandered he also
ruled that they didn't follow the right
process new york had a new process in
place for drawing
congressional and state legislative
lines this year it was put into place
for the first time this year uh and it
was it essentially
delegated that to a commission that had
an equal number of democrats and
republicans well that commission
deadlocked they couldn't get it come to
an agreement the democrats wanted one
thing the republicans wanted another
and they they sent one set of maps and
they were supposed to send a second set
of maps once the first set of maps was
rejected
and they never did send another set of
maps so the democratic legislature
stepped in drew the maps on their own
and judge mcallister as well as the
mid-level appeals court and the state
court of appeals which is dominated by
democrats
they all ruled that that was was
unconstitutional didn't follow the
process on top of the maps being
democratically gerrymandered
all right so man you did a terrific job
laying that out and i wanted it you're
you should do tutorials on this
uh how likely is this map a two-year map
only
well i mean it could even be a one-year
map quite frankly there's the
possibility that you have the the map in
place this year
then you have some sort of challenge on
the voting rights act you've heard a lot
from congressman hakeem jeffries and
members of the black community who are
very angry that this map cracks apart
some black neighborhoods in the city bed
stuy in brooklyn is the one that they've
they've really really highlighted so
there's a possibility that you could see
a lawsuit after this map is finalized
that a federal lawsuit that challenges
these state court drawn maps and maybe
you see those tossed out and you have
special elections next year so they're
going through that with the state
assembly now too which those maps
haven't been tossed but
that's a possibility a real possibility
well uh john i sort of was wondering
that i know north carolina and texas
have had to do new maps mid-decade i
have a feeling we could have that uh
perhaps a couple of times in new york
state i guess it's good for the
political consultants bad perhaps for
constituents john campbell terrific
reporting thank you sir
thanks for having me
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