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Democrats Urge N.Y. Leaders to Redistrict After Supreme Court Ruling
With the national fight over mid-decade redistricting in high gear, Democratic leaders are trying to ensure that states under their party’s control work to create new congressional district lines to counter efforts by Republican-led states.
That push brought Representative Joseph D. Morelle of New York to the State Capitol in Albany on Tuesday to deliver a simple message for state lawmakers: They must urgently work to draw more favorable maps that help Democrats prepare for the 2028 elections.
Mr. Morelle, a Democrat who spent more than two decades in the New York State Assembly, met with Gov. Kathy Hochul and the leaders of the State Senate and Assembly. He returned to his old stomping grounds at the behest of his boss, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader who also represents New York and sees the state as a focal point in his plans for the next phase of the redistricting wars.
On Monday, Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Morelle announced the creation of the New York Democracy Project, a redistricting initiative meant to counter Republican redistricting in Texas and a recent Supreme Court decision that makes it more difficult to use the Voting Rights Act to challenge a legislative map on racially discriminatory grounds.
“I wanted to make sure that we underscored how important this is,” Mr. Morelle said, noting that the Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais “is going to have wide-ranging impacts for Black Americans.”
Without the protections of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that effectively banned racial gerrymandering, a new era of aggressive partisan redistricting is set to begin. Already, states across the South are aiming to redraw their maps to give Republicans an advantage heading into elections later this year.
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