For Whom the Lines Toll
Bowman v. Latimer, redistricting, gerrymandering, and MAGA Westchester theory
Update 29 June 2024: The version of this article sent out in December neglected to properly attribute the maps of different proposed NY-16 boundaries used within. They are from the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Redistricting and You site. In addition, I used the Energy Justice Network/Sunlight Foundation’s Justice Map for the demographic map and the Social Good Fund’s Dave’s Redistricting Atlas to create custom district boundaries.
Last Tuesday, a 4-3 decision by the New York Court of Appeals threw out the congressional district lines used in the 2022 election, an intensely messy process that began with a planned deadlock in the token Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) that threw mapmaking to the legislature, who passed an aggressive pro-Democratic gerrymander which in turn was thrown out by this same court last year, leading to an appointed special master drawing the lines that were thrown out last week. You got all that?
This isn’t going to be a comprehensive overview of the heated Bowman-Latimer primary on our horizon, but rather specifically a brutally cynical look at the effect redistricting will have on this race. In other words, today I will be discussing how to screw over Jamaal Bowman, or George Latimer, all while still managing to screw over what no doubt will be the primary target: the precarious 5 freshman Republicans swept into office last year on Zeldin’s coattails.
If you’d like a comprehensive overview, I’d suggest my friend Michael Lange’s article on the race. I will have more to write on it, but not until we know more about the variables at play, first and foremost the district lines. Sometimes the best way to explain something as complex as precise gerrymandering for specific political goals is to show how the sausage gets made.
Redistricting in New York
New York is especially difficult to redistrict for a variety of reasons that I’ll get into. To begin, let’s establish some premises of redistricting:
New York has 26 congressional districts
Those districts should be equal in population
New York’s population as of the 2020 census divided by 26 is 776,971 so all our districts should be of that population (due to software restrictions my maps will approximate to +/- 1,000 people)
Those districts should be practically contiguous (there should be a way to drive/walk along existing roads from any one part of the district to another, so bridges are acceptable but things like ferries aren’t)
Those districts should comply with federal and state law
Ideally, we want these districts to encompass cohesive “communities of interest” (for example, Grace Meng’s plurality Asian district in Queens and we don’t want to split NYC neighborhoods or villages/hamlets outside the city except when unavoidable)
And now for some less savory politically motivated ones:
These districts should protect Democratic incumbents, two incumbent Democrats should not be drawn into the same district or one unfavorable to them (unless again, we are trying to screw over one of them)
As many of these districts as possible should favor Democrats, let’s say as many as possible had to have voted for Biden in 2020 by 10 points to give wiggle-room for poor Democratic midterm performances
To illustrate some of these issues, let’s try to draw districts on Long Island. We can draw three districts of our ideal size, but the fourth one in cyan is about 185k people short. Because of this and the fact our districts have to be contiguous, we’d have to add parts of the city in order to hit our requisite population. This is what the district here does today, it stretches to Whitestone to hit the magic number of 776,971.
This seems simple enough. But think a bit further about it. What if instead of the cyan district, the red or blue one was short? Because there are no bridges from them to other parts of the state, the only option would be to alter the two districts that do border other parts of the state in order to give our physically cut off district more people. Even if we can draw a district with 777k people in it that hits all our marks, it still may not be valid if we can’t draw 25 other valid districts relative to it.
New York’s population distribution is also very uneven. It may be helpful to think of New York as a bowtie, where Long Island is one end of the bowtie, upstate another, and New York City is the knot. New York City is a physical bottleneck of the state, with 12 million people living in the Bronx and south and 8 million people north of it, one can only draw so many districts south and north of that line and if we assume only one district can straddle the line between the city and the northern suburbs, that district is Bowman’s. Only three municipalities in Westchester County border New York City: Yonkers (where Bowman lives), Mt. Vernon, and Pelham Manor. Assuming again that we don’t want to split municipalities unless absolutely necessary, there is not much room for another district besides his to straddle the line.
What results from the premise that only one district can straddle the Bronx and Westchester is what we see in the district today: only a sliver of the Bronx (the neighborhood of Wakefield) remains in Bowman’s district. Contrast this to his first primary win in 2020 against incumbent Eliot Engel where he ran up margins in parts of the Bronx he’s since lost such as Co-Op City. Because New York lost a district, his district have shifted noticeably north. For Bowman’s district to extend further into the Bronx, as we talked about on Long Island, a bordering district in the Bronx would need to gain as many people in Westchester as Bowman gains in the Bronx.
It is at this point that we need to address the elephant in the room: when drawing an advantage Bowman or advantage Latimer district, invariably you are talking about gerrymandering along racial lines. Bowman’s path to victory both cycles has been through absolutely dominating with >90% of the vote in the majority Black portions of the Bronx & Mt. Vernon, doing very well with Latinos throughout the cities in the district, all while generally doing quite poorly with White voters in the more suburban parts of the district (with some exceptions such as the rivertowns). That’s not to say race is the only factor, but if Latimer is pulling even within 30 points of Bowman with these groups, Bowman was going to lose under essentially any lines we could draw.
For an example of the kind of maps we could draw to push Bowman’s district further into the Bronx, here’s one proposed last year by the IRC. In it, Bowman loses parts of the Long Island Sound coast to NY-14 (AOC’s district). To equalize his district’s population with her’s, he gains Eastchester and Co-Op City in the Bronx.
There are problems with this approach however that come from our last less ethical premise for our mapmaking. We are trying to draw as many advantage Democratic districts as reasonably possible. These towns and cities along the Westchester coast are very blue, but so is the rest of AOC’s district. If we truly want to draw an advantage map, optimally we would try to tie these cities to a less blue district.
Enter the Biaggimander
The Biaggimander, named for the state senator from Pelham who ran for it during its brief existence under the legislature approved lines, is one such way to draw a map that simultaneously gives Bowman more of the Bronx while also giving Democrats a significant advantage in a previously redder district (NY-03, which George Santos most recently represented). It spanned the North Shore of Long Island, the more suburban neighborhoods of Queens like Douglaston, and then followed the path of the Throgs Neck Expressway across the bridge to the Bronx and then up to encompass parts of towns and cities along the Westchester coast, most notably Rye where George Latimer lives.
This district is notable for several reasons from a gerrymandering perspective, for example it allows NY-03 to take in notoriously red Smithtown while maintaining a district Biden won by 14.4 points. This in turn allows for the other two advantage Democratic districts drawn on Long Island to also in turn be bluer. A fourth on the South Shore is drawn to pack as many Trump voters as possible into a single district.
There is additional considerations here however. First off as already mentioned, George Latimer lives in this district and drawing him out may be decried as politically motivated. Secondly because of the resignation of George Santos, there is a special election planned in February under the current North Shore + Queens lines of the district between Democratic Tom Suozzi, who represented the district under very similar lines for 3 terms and Republican Mazi Pilip. If the process draws out until that election and Suozzi dominates, Democrats will likely feel more comfortable not shoring up this district to this extent. In turn if he barely wins or Pilip wins, a district like this becomes more likely.
A map like this would almost certainly advantage Bowman further, not just because of the inclusion of more of the Bronx or the possible exclusion of Latimer from the district, but because the excluded Westchester coast was his worst region in 2022.
There’s something else we need to account for when it comes to drawing a partisan gerrymander, and to get an introduction let’s look a bit closer at Bowman’s district under these same lines from the legislature’s original gerrymander.
What the hell is that?
Enter MAGA Westchester
It would appear you have baited into thinking this was going to be an article removed from my focus of the Mid-Hudson Valley! We’re gonna be talking about a series of towns I like referring to as “MAGA Westchester” for reasons that will be immediately obvious and why exactly the legislature proposed snaking Bowman’s district up to it.
We’re gonna define MAGA Westchester as contiguous towns in Dutchess and Putnam Counties that:
Voted for Trump in 2020
Have over 10,000 people
That gets us a map like this. There are some honorable mentions (Wappinger just barely voted for Biden and Pawling is just shy of 10,000 people) but we’re gonna focus on these 8 towns. I’ve added some information about each of them including their names, their population, how many points Trump won them by, the net votes he won by, and similar data for local favorite son Marc Molinaro’s gubernatorial run in 2018 for an idea of a worst-case scenario for Democrats (he actually did better here than Lee Zeldin in 2022).
These raw vote numbers may sound small in the grand scheme of things, but the raw vote margin for Trump in Carmel alone is larger than the margin of victory in four New York congressional races in 2022 (NY-17, NY-18, NY-19, and NY-22). The first of those was Sean Patrick Maloney’s district and the swings in this exact region was the margin of loss in his district. Putting them (particularly the largest towns of Carmel and East Fishkill) in Bowman’s extremely blue district does a great deal to shore up Democratic chances in NY-17 and NY-18.
The name probably does a decent job of explaining what this region is, the fringe northern exurbs of New York that unlike every town in Westchester, voted for Trump in 2020. With that said, there are some important distinctions to make.
While MetroNorth Manhattan commuters do exist here, particularly in the southern towns like Carmel, there are far less common than in the classical bedroom towns of Westchester. Instead anecdotally (I went to a high school that covered parts of the Dutchess County towns in my teen years), most commuting is done by car to either Westchester County or in rare cases the Bronx. The Taconic State Parkway, initially built as a pleasure road in the days of Robert Moses, serves as the main artery of commuting and runs due south through these towns. One can expect about a 50 minute commute door-to-door to southern Westchester or the northern Bronx via the Taconic.
This region also needs to be understood in the context of what once was its biggest employer: IBM. It is no coincidence that the biggest spike in population took place in the 1960s when IBM opened their west campus in East Fishkill. Most of the single family homes in these towns were quite literally built around IBM, among employees of this campus was my grandmother.
Said campus shuttered in the 1990s. Regardless of this, some newer McMansion-style developments emerged in the 1990s and 2000s but as with exurban areas all over the country, this development came to a sudden halt with the Great Recession. To this day, it does not take much time driving through these developments to find large cheaply-constructed houses that have been abandoned since 2008, some foreclosed and some simply never being completed. Most of these towns lost population for the first time since suburbanization in the 2020 Census.
That period between the end of IBM’s West Campus and the Great Recession saw a drop in housing prices and accessible mortgages, leading to a second wave of migration which was predominantly white ethnics from outer boroughs of New York City. There are many Albanians, Italians, Greeks, and other groups that only left the city in the ‘90s and aughts, too late to be able to afford to buy in Westchester. They tend to skew heavily Republican and are in large part responsible for the rightward shift since the days of IBM.
For an example, a high school friend of mine and his large family own a business in Bronxville. They bought a large McMansion-style house in East Fishkill for about $250k in the early 2000s, a steep discount vs anything comparable in Westchester County and still commute to Bronxville to this day.
Back on topic, this poses a question: does the neutralization of these areas through a gerrymandered NY-16 help Bowman or Latimer? Honestly, to me it is a bit of a wash. These areas are obviously not favorable to Bowman’s politics, but they also by-and-large aren’t registered Democrats and thus can’t vote in Democratic primaries. There were only 892 Democratic primary votes in East Fishkill in 2022, and while they certainly favored more centrist incumbent Sean Patrick Maloney over insurgent Alessandra Biaggi it’s not by so decisive a margin as to be statistically significant.
It likely benefits Latimer more, but only to a marginal degree. The far more significant benefit to Latimer comes from the affluent white towns in Westchester such a district would invariably have to snake through to reach Putnam and Dutchess Counties. What would be far more beneficial however to Latimer would be a configuration as the one now, affluent suburbs with high relative shares of Democratic primary voters who would run up his margin in the primary.
How to screw them over
Now we get to the fun part: actually drawing some original maps. I want to note from the start that these maps are intentionally more aggressive than I expect to actually be drawn, I am going to do my best to draw as ludicrously favorable districts for each candidate as possible while not being too excessive with splitting communities.
I will be basing these off of my personal gerrymander of New York, which I made with special emphasis towards incumbent protection and keeping communities together. It is a rather aggressive 22D-4R map, only the blue district in Long Island and the orange, blue, and yellow ones upstate favor Republicans. The specifics of it are not important but I’ve included photos for an idea of where I am starting from. Our primary goal will be maintaining a 22D-4R map, our secondary will be advantaging Bowman and Latimer.
And here’s my town-by-town map of 2022 primary results again for reference:
Pro-Bowman
For Bowman there are a few things we want to do:
Maximize intake of Hispanic/Black parts of the Bronx
Try to exclude areas where Bowman did poorly, such as the Westchester coast
Preserve Yonkers where Bowman lives
Neutralize votes in “MAGA Westchester” to shore up Democratic odds in NY-17 and NY-18
One immediate change we’re gonna begin with is add to Gregory Meeks’ majority-minority district in Queens the Black and Latino portions of Nassau County that were in his district prior to 2022. Equalizing population between all other city districts after this change will shift Bowman’s district south.
In shifting districts south to account for this change, AOC’s district becomes far more Queens-based but maintains her home neighborhood of Parkchester within her bounds.
This also allows us to create a neo-Biaggimander including the entirety of Eastchester, New Rochelle, Scarsdale, and Latimer’s home city of Rye. At this point, we have drawn George Latimer out of the district.
And finally, we have Bowman’s District. This is a monstrosity. That was my intent. It stretches from Throggs Neck in the Bronx to Beekman in Dutchess County, in particular neutralizing the entirety of East Fishkill and Carmel. The district is plurality Black, mostly from the broad swath of the East Bronx incorporated within. White Plains joins with NY-18 to shore up that district and NY-17 stretches from riverfront Westchester across the Tappan Zee to Rockland and Orange Counties.
On the side of partisan lean, all districts clear the 10 point Biden victory bar except the intentionally red Long Island pack and Kingston and Staten Island-based districts that are just shy of the mark. This is what an advantage Bowman 22D-4R map could look like
Pro-Latimer
For Latimer, there are some other things we want to do:
Minimize intake of Hispanic/Black parts of the Bronx
Try to exclude areas where Latimer did poorly, particularly majority-minority parts of Westchester and the Bronx
Preserve Rye where Latimer lives, ideally try to draw Bowman’s Yonkers out of the district
Neutralize votes in “MAGA Westchester” to shore up Democratic odds in NY-17 and NY-18
Because a neo-Biaggimander would almost certainly harm Latimer’s odds, there are far less alterations to other districts to go over. With that said, one significant thing that could be done is draw Bowman’s Yonkers into a radically altered NY-17, dropping parts of northern Westchester and Putnam County in exchange for riverside Westchester. This would set up a Mondaire Jones-Jamaal Bowman primary, something that briefly looked like a possibility during last year’s redistricting chaos.
Ruling out a neo-Biaggimander makes shoring up NY-03 far more difficult, with this one only being a Biden win by 8 points. With that said if Suozzi wins decisively in February’s special election, Democrats may be more comfortable drawing a district like this.
That leaves only Bowman’s NY-16, now heavily advantaged towards George Latimer. The minimization of the Bronx allows us to intake all of MAGA Westchester, neutralizing them into a district Biden won by 27 points. This district is also majority White, the demographic Bowman did worst with against both Engel in 2020 and his two low-profile opponents in 2022. NY-18 takes in Peekskill and Cortlandt to further shore it up.
And as always a look at the partisan breakdown, another 22D-4R map although with a far less safe NY-03 than in the Bowman map.
Conclusion
My goal in writing this today was to illustrate just how essential redistricting will be to determining the state of play in this race, about as make-or-break as it gets. I also wanted to put this all in the context of what no doubt will be the Legislature’s goal, advantaging the odds of a Democratic majority in the House as much as possible. It will be interesting to see if the chaos and legal challenges of the past two years dissuade them from drawing another equally aggressive gerrymander.
I skipped my intended article this week to write this, so after the holidays we’re gonna be talking about the City of Poughkeepsie, or more specifically how urban planning and public policy destroyed it in just about every imaginable metric.
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