Opponents have a good case to overturn the Republican redistricting map for Nassau County that passed along partisan lines, 10-9, at the special meeting on Tuesday, March 5.
Great Neck was spared the most direct adverse impact of Nassau County Republican gerrymandering of county legislative districts. Instead of lopping off Kings Point, Saddle Rock and half of the Village of Great Neck, which could only be viewed as punitive since moving them in the first place could not be justified on any level, the Peninsula was preserved in the 10th district, now represented by Judi Bosworth.
But that does not mean that our vote is not diluted by the strategic dissection and dissolution of districts in order to construct a permanent 11-8 Republican majority on the county Legislature, despite demographics which have already given the Democrats a significant and growing majority of registered voters.
Nassau County, like the U.S. Congress and states and localities around the country, is being gerrymandered in order to create a one-party rule.
We have our local version of Karl Rove, the modern-day Machiavelli in the form of John Ciampoli, brought to Long Island as Nassau County attorney by County Executive Ed Mangano.
Ciampoli, who had no actual experience as a municipal attorney, was the New York State Republican Committee counsel who so effectively disenfranchised college students and others in order to swing Upstate elections for Republicans.
Gerrymandering is not actually illegal – in fact, the Republicans don’t deny gerrymandering. They merely excuse it by accusing Democrats of doing much the same when they controlled the Legislature in 2003 (The allegation is false. The Democrats did not do anything on this level, as evidenced by the fact that the 10-9 balance has shifted over the decade).
What gerrymandering does is to make “the majority” irrelevant in terms of which policies and philosophy of governance rule – and our lives, since local government in many cases has the more significant and direct impact on the quality of the quality of life and the state of our communities.
And there is a dramatic difference between the Republican and Democratic approaches to governance.
Republicans have demonstrated they care less about the lives ordinary people, vilify those who are unfortunate, despise government and public services, and believe in austerity as a priority even though these policies tend to thwart development, progress and exacerbate inequities and expand the gap between rich and poor.
Here in Nassau County, Mangano has exemplified this philosophy by slashing funding for youth and family services, including counseling; tutoring; crisis intervention; family support; after school; evening and weekend programs; gang Intervention; pregnancy prevention; substance abuse prevention/treatment programs.
Gerrymandering may not actually be illegal, but violating federal Voting Rights Act is: packing or cracking districts make some people’s votes more meaningful than others (contradicting the “one person, one vote” standard at the heart of redistricting).
Republicans went out of their way to make it seem as if they followed the County Charter and the federal and state guidelines – that was the recurrent mantra Redistricting Commission Chair Francis X. Moroney and Presiding Officer Norma Gonsalves used.
But all of it, each step, was a sham, a charade done to show a court to defend against the anticipated lawsuit.
Instead of a bipartisan process as stipulated in the County Charter, the so-called Temporary Redistricting Advisory Commission was never intended to get a map that actually would have consensus of both parties. Moroney made sure of that, keeping both sides separated. It was always intended for the Republican majority on the Legislature to get whatever map they wanted.
The public hearings were also a sham. Hundreds of people took off multiple days from work to sit through these tedious affairs, with 99.9 percent of the comments opposing the map, with the Republicans – the commissioners and then the legislators – looking bored, disinterested, otherwise engaged, and never once being able to give an intelligent answer or analysis to why the lines were drawn the way they were. Because they did not know and did not care.
The mouthpiece for the Republican map, Francis X. Moroney – who was supposed to be the nonvoting Chair of the “bipartisan” redistricting commission but was the one who oversaw the Republican strategy and was the only one who spoke to the Republican map. Indeed, by all accounts, he was the one who directed the Republican-paid consultant, David Schaefer, whose firm Skyline Demographic Consultants is the go-to company for Republican gerrymandering.
According to Moroney, the only instruction he gave Schaefer was to be “incumbent blind” – a nonsensical statement since Schaefer first stab for the Republicans this time around pitted four incumbent Democrats against each other – including making a tortured “knuckle-shaped” carve to physically remove Legislator Dave Denenberg from his 19th district, and another odd contortion around Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams’ house. In contrast, two Republicans were put into the same district, but one of them is reportedly planning to “retire.”
Moroney repeatedly would say that the Republican map conformed to federal and state guidelines for redistricting and would pass a constitutional challenge, echoed in the prepared statement of Gonsalves, who made no pretext of actually understanding the law:
“That question was asked,” she said in response to repeated questions to explain why the lines were drawn the way they were and who gave the instructions. “Policy decisions were based on constitutional ramifications that redistricting takes into consideration – equal representation, preservation of one person one vote, each district should have equal representation.”
Bosworth retorted, “Those are very generalized statements. We’ve not had the opportunity to ask about any of the individual decisions – perhaps helpful to have the people who drew the map, to know the instructions they were given. Roslyn now has four legislators; Hempstead and other areas are split up. There is some philosophy that went behind – those are legitimate answers.
“I don’t want to resurrect the past because I’m not comfortable with it,” Gonsalves came back. “Ten years ago, – lines were drawn based on policy….. We may represent the district, but we all represent county.”
Moroney had already anticipated a lawsuit and will no-doubt point to the slight “tweaking” of the map to demonstrate to a court that yes, indeedy, the commission and the legislature did “listen” to the voice of the people by tweaking the map to put Great Neck Peninsula back together, but then, ripping Roslyn apart; put back Legislator Dave Denenberg’s house back in his district, but not his neighbors; and restoring Jericho Gardens to Legislator Robert Troiano’s district but slicing 5,000 more from north Main Street.
They will no doubt point to the fact that the Republican map has three – count them, three! – minority-majority districts instead of the two that were drawn in the 2003 map – except that the third district had already evolved of its own accord, as evidenced by the election of Carrie Solages, and the Republican map turns the new District 14 into an odd, elongated shape that makes the salamander of gerrymandering fame look “compact and contiguous.”
And it seems that Great Neck was the “red-herring,” a diversion, a shell in a con game: “Look over here and marshal your outrage here while our intention is to restore Great Neck as we dismantle other sections.”
In this case Roslyn, which was not split in the original Republican map, was completely blindsided by an 11th hour dismemberment, literally drawn and quartered.
But the most significant basis for overturning the map is that even though the County Charter requires a bipartisan process, the Republicans never allowed consideration of any other map than the one they paid their consultant, David Schaefer, president of Skyline Demographics Consulting, a company with strong ties to the Republican National Committee, New York State Republican Assembly Committee, and Nassau County Republican Committee, to produce. (Schaefer was also the demographer the Republicans used for the 2011 map.)
And rather than the “open” “transparent” process they are required under the charter, the instructions that were given to Skyline, the demographer’s analysis, the method and process are all being kept secret.
But any map that maliciously uproots 360,000 residents – nearly one-third of Nassau residents – to new districts, and divides villages and intact communities, is suspect, especially when two other alternatives showed that the targeted population per district, 71,573 within the plus/minus 5 percent deviation, could be achieved without such dislocation, and with resulting districts that are in fact “compact, contiguous” and preserve communities of interest.
The Democratic plan for redistricting, which aimed to move a minimal number, only moved about 22,000; the nonpartisan, and much better map prepared by the Nassau County United Redistricting coalition, moved 200,000.
Nor will the Republicans provide any documentation to indicate the instructions their demographers had – what “policy decisions and choices” were they instructed to make? Who instructed them? Nor would the Republicans allow the public or Democratic legislators to get answers to questions regarding the rationale for splitting neighborhoods the way they were.
Legislator Judy Jacobs, who was Presiding Officer in 2003 when Democrats had the majority, probed vainly whether “any experts that drew up the map or others review the changes and what was their response?”
Moroney responded, “I’m not sure if that is a question of privilege or not,” – an odd response if this were truly an open, transparent process. “Everybody involved in this process asserted it meets all the standards necessary to muster or stand up to a Voting Rights Act challenge.” He then added under his breath, “No, not in writing,” prompting a chuckle from Matt Kiernan, the director of the Republicans on the redistricting commission, sitting in the audience.
Citizen Voting Age Population statistics – which are estimates – were used, but were Voting Records used?
No one knows. Knowing how many people in what part of which neighborhood voted would have let the Republican map maker slice and dice districts to maximum advantage, as Brian Paul, Research & Policy Coordinator for Common Cause/NY, so easily demonstrated at Great Neck House, where even with a minority of Republicans, the Republicans could control a majority of seats on the Legislature.
(I attempted to speak to David Schaefer, but he refused to answer any questions, suggesting his client relationship was proprietary. I have FOILed any records of any communications with Skyline and David Schaefer; let’s see what emerges.)
This last map was ostensibly ordered from Skyline not by the commission, which was disbanded, but by the Nassau County Legislature – the Republican majority that is – though no one would acknowledge who gave the instructions to make the changes – Denenberg’s house and Jericho Gardens and only those precise changes.
And no invoice came before the Legislature, even though any bill over $25,000 is required to come before the Legislature. (Skyline got $72,000 for the 2011 map, which also did not come before the Legislature for approval.)
Just looking at the Republican map will clearly demonstrate that the redistricting fails to meet the requirements that districts be “contiguous, compact” and to the greatest extent possible, preserve “communities of interest.”
The Republican map goes out of its way to uproot people from their existing districts, many which have been intact since the beginning of Nassau County’s councilmanic structure – which means disrupting and uprooting their political and civic organizations. (You actually have no way of knowing this because the map is unintelligible; by the way, just try to find the Republican map on the Nassau County Web site – not possible, another clue that the claim to “open, transparent” is fraudulent; to find the map, www.nassaucountyny.gov/agencies/Legis/Meetings/2013/documents/map1-74-13.pdf).
Moroney at one point actually suggested that uprooting neighborhoods – stripping away 5,000 residents who live along north Main Street from Legislator Robert Troiano’s district, for example – was a good thing to promote “integration.”
But as Troiano noted, the Voting Rights Act has nothing to do with “integration.” Rather, the fundamental purpose of the Voting Rights Act is to insure that people have the ability to elect representatives of their own choosing, that their vote and their ability to affect the political process not be diluted.
But this is not arbitrary or “blind” – this is calculated to disrupt political voting blocs and civic organizations developed over the past decade.
As Wayne Wink, whose District 11 is seeing some of the greatest violence, instead of being 40 percent of his constituents, Roslyn residents will not be more than 10 percent of any of the four legislators they must now go to. I don’t think it is coincidence that Roslyn like the Merrick and Five Towns which are also being split up, has a large Jewish voting bloc.
“Like Pac Man, chewing up neighboring district,” Wink exploded by the craftiness of dividing his district and pitting two Democratic Legislators against each other. “There really was never any plan for cohesiveness in Roslyn community… Take a whiff, it’s the smell of fear on part of colleagues on the right…there was a fear of united Roslyn, and a fear of united Five Towns – the fact that each is being broken into four, but the biggest fear is the fear of the tide and trend of demographics of this county changing. What you are smelling is the tide of change taking place in Nassau County – and Republican colleagues trying to keep back that tide at all costs, at the cost of integrity. That’s what we’re about here today.”
At one point, Republican Legislator Howard Kopel, who represents the Five Towns (soon to become 1.25 towns), was involuntarily pulled into the discussion.
“As much as I would prefer to keep the Five Towns together, I don’t think the Five Towns more worthy than other neighborhoods being recombined,” Kopel said. “Perhaps people are making more of it than it needs….
“You mentioned the Orthodox vote I take exception,” Kopel added. “The Orthodox vote is not monolithic, never has been. I never ran as orthodox representative, I ran as representative who happens to be Orthodox. Any one, no matter their denomination, is capable of representing someone else.”
Kopel also was personally offended by any suggestion that the redistricting fell along racial lines.
“Any time you start calling people racist because you disagree, you’ve completely cheapened the entire concept of racism. If everything is racism, then nothing is. The people who sacrificed in the name of eradicating racism deserve better than to have somebody come up and say that the map they disagree with is racist. The map will be tested in the courts, and I am fairly confident, whether or not I agree with some aspects of map, I suspect there will be no problem the map will be held to be constitutionally valid.”
Troiano turned to Kopel, who some considered a possible swing vote saying, “This is the time to not remain silent, in face of wrong, I’ll respect you to stand up and say you are right – being put into district they don’t belong – racial mix, economic, educational mix not the same- don’t belong – left to wonder and they are left to wonder why, and why you remain silent,” he said to thunderous applause.
Kopel didn’t exactly remain silent. “I don’t believe the coming lawsuit will determine whether or not the map is racially impermissible. We will find out – if it passes, you are simply wrong – it won’t be a value judgment, it will be a legal judgment.”
Dozens of speakers appealed directly to the Republican legislators to “do the right thing,” and “listen to the people,” and this rather ludicrous threat that “you will pay at the polls” in November. But the Republicans are listening to their constituents – the Republicans who put them there, and who want the Republican philosophy to rule even if the overall numbers don’t support it. That’s the whole point. It’s very much what John Bolton – the anti-United Nations guy who George W. Bush installed as United Nations Ambassador – told Jon Stewart on the Daily Show: “The president represents the people who voted for him.”
That is disgraceful but that is the Republican philosophy – you support the interests of those people who voted for you. Not the nation. Not the state. Not the county.
And they have no fear of retribution in November, because they have made safe districts for themselves, just as Congressional Republicans have no care that the majority of Americans support raising tax revenues instead of cutting spending for infrastructure and public education, because their districts are safe, their only fear is from the far right fringe.
In fact, the most cynical statement of all was made by Legislator Denise Ford, when she cast her vote: “Regardless how many pieces are chopped up, all of us work together. That will continue.” Then she said she would take up Legislator Judy Jacobs’ initiative to “start working together on the next map in 10 years.”
