Democrats spent millions of dollars and more than a year in court successfully fighting for a chance at redrawing New York’s congressional map to potentially boost their candidates in key races.
Now, they must decide if they are going to take that shot.
The Democratic-dominated State Legislature is expected to vote on Monday whether to accept a modest set of changes in a congressional map that the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission recommended this month, or reject it and grab the mapmaking powers for itself.
The choice could have major consequences for the national battle for the House. Even with only a handful of tweaks, Democratic state lawmakers could effectively stack the deck against Republicans in up to six swing seats from Long Island to Syracuse.
Party leaders in New York and Washington appeared to be laying the groundwork over the last week to do just that. But by late Sunday, on the eve of the expected vote, they had yet to commit even to voting down the bipartisan proposal.
“It’s a big fork in the road,” said Dave Wasserman, an elections analyst with the Cook Political Report. “The more aggressive their play, the bigger potential reward in seats, but the higher risk courts could step in again to block it or preserve the status quo.”
Spokesmen for Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the majority leader of the State Senate, and Speaker Carl E. Heastie of the Assembly both declined to comment.
So did nearly a dozen other party lawmakers, including Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat widely seen as the most influential voice in the process.
Their reticence reflected a complex set of political and legal concerns buffeting the mapmaking process. Though New York’s Constitution gives the Legislature ultimate authority to draw the maps, it also explicitly prohibits partisan gerrymandering.
Democrats insist any changes they might consider to the district lines are motivated by reuniting so-called communities of interest split between districts.
But they made the same argument in 2022 when lawmakers last drew the lines, and watched it backfire to a dire extent. Republicans sued. The state’s top court ruled the map was a Democratic gerrymander. And a court-appointed mapmaker drew lines that helped Republicans flip four seats.
Ronald S. Lauder, who helped finance the last successful legal challenge, accused Democrats on Sunday of once again plotting “the worst kind of hackery.” He said he stood ready to go back to court if needed.
“I’ll fight to stop them both in the courts and in the court of public opinion,” Mr. Lauder said. “And I’ll win.”
The stage was set for the current fight when a separate lawsuit waged by national Democrats prompted a reconfigured State Court of Appeals to reopen the mapmaking process in December. With a new, more liberal majority in place, it ordered the 10-member bipartisan commission, created by a constitutional amendment, to guide the process to draft a new plan.
As the contours of the commission’s proposal began to leak out earlier this month, influential Democrats in Albany and Washington signaled they might be willing to accept the newly proposed district lines as an imperfect but acceptable compromise.
The commission’s map would make minor changes to the Syracuse area, endangering one Republican incumbent, Representative Brandon Williams. It would also slightly rearrange Hudson Valley district lines, helping one frontline Democrat, Pat Ryan, and one Republican, Marc Molinaro.
The proposal made no changes to battleground areas on Long Island or in Westchester, where Democrats covet three swing seats represented by first-term Republicans.
Though the precise reasons remain unclear, by the time the panel voted 9 to 1 to adopt its plan on Feb. 15, sentiment had begun to swing hard in the other direction among prominent Democrats who wanted to kill the bipartisan commission’s map.
When Mr. Jeffries issued a statement through a spokesman criticizing the commission plan the next day, many in Albany read it as a foreboding declaration of intent.
The spokesman, Andy Eichar, said the commission map “ignores or exacerbates” concerns from watchdog groups about how the current lines slice up so-called communities of interest. He also singled out changes to the 19th District in the Hudson Valley that were “gratuitously designed to impermissibly benefit an incumbent,” in that case Mr. Molinaro.
“That would be a clear violation of the New York State Constitution,” he wrote.
Notably, though, Mr. Jeffries’s statement made no mention of the neighboring 18th District. There, similar changes to the ones he denounced had the effect of protecting Mr. Ryan.
Mr. Jeffries has been relying on two Democratic congressman with deep ties to state politics, Joseph Morelle of Rochester and Gregory W. Meeks of Queens, to serve as intermediaries with state leaders in crafting a possible alternative.
Whether they can find a replacement capable of winning the votes necessary to pass both legislative chambers in Albany and please Mr. Jeffries should become clear by the end of Monday.
