What NY’s Democratic Redistricting SNAFU Has Revealed For All To See
According to the New York Times, just two weeks ago, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) told his fellow House Democrats in a private meeting that if the new congressional maps that the New York state legislature had just approved under redistricting were thrown out by the state’s highest court, it would be an “extinction-level event” for the party.
Reading this made me spit out my coffee. First, because of the self-absorption the quote displays. We as a world are facing a slow-motion extinction-level event due to climate change; what individual Democratic politicians are facing now that the courts have indeed ruled that the legislature’s maps were an impermissible political gerrymander is uncertainty about their personal political careers. The thing we casually refer to as the “Democratic party” will continue to exist once the dust is settled and voters and politicians alike get used to the new districts. A few careers may take an unexpected turn. This is not an extinction-level event.
The second reason for my spit-take was Maloney’s own role in this mess. It’s an open secret in political circles in New York that he, as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which controls tens of millions of dollars that it raises to support the election of House Democrats, was deeply involved in the horse-trading that went into the now-defunct maps passed by the legislature. Those district lines would have given Democrats a strong advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 districts, enabling them to pick up three new ones over the seats they currently hold and costing the Republicans four of their present eight (one seat is being lost due to a decline in the state’s population). That is, it would have given Democrats 85% of the state’s seats while they make up a little less than 50% of its registered voters (Republicans and decline-to-state each make up about a quarter). Had Maloney and his allies in the state Democratic party not been so aggressive about maximizing the number of seats they were drawing for Democrats (which they did to try to increase the party’s chances of holding the House this fall), they might not be in their current pickle.
But it’s a pickle indeed, and one that is offering a rare and revealing look at the inside of the tottering behemoth called the Democratic Party.
For years, political scientists have been telling us that the parties have gotten hollowed out, turning from machines with lots of local precinct captains adept at dishing out patronage in exchange for votes into decentralized coalitions of individual politician-entrepreneurs, each running their own small businesses like franchisees sharing a common brand. Right now, something very unusual is happening before our eyes: an impartial overseer appointed by the courts has redrawn the state’s district lines without any regard for the needs of incumbent politicians, even ignoring where they currently live. As a result, many, including Maloney himself, are suddenly scrambling, announcing campaign bids that clearly serve their self-interest in survival above any allegiance to what is best for their party or the loyalties of voters they may have represented up until now.
It’s as if McDonalds suddenly announced a restructuring and told several of their franchisees they had to move their stores and start competing across the street from each other.
Denuded of their once comfortable perches atop districts that they’ve won in several times and thrown into uncertain waters, incumbents like Maloney are now showing us another operating principle of party politics that is usually hidden from view: Party veterans think they are owed deference from newcomers, and not vice versa. Whatever lip service leading Democrats may pay to diversity and inclusion is forgotten when their own careers are at stake. Thus literally minutes after New York state’s new congressional maps were released on Monday, Maloney, who is white, announced that he was abandoning his upper Hudson Valley district and instead going to run for a newly drawn district to his south, which happens to be safer for a Democrat to win. Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), a young Black progressive who was elected for the first time in 2020 and who currently represents the bulk of that district, was furious, declaring “Sean Patrick Maloney did not even give me a heads-up before he went on Twitter to make that announcement, and I think that tells you everything you need to know about Sean Patrick Maloney.”
Maloney’s behavior is reminiscent of how another long-serving Democrat, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), responded when another congressional newcomer, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), started garnering tons of media attention for asking corporate executives tough questions during hearings of the House Financial Services committee, which Waters chairs. Porter would often pick up a miniature whiteboard as she asked her questions, sketching notes and equations on it in language that was easy for viewers to digest and share. But when the ranking Republican on the committee complained that Porter was in violation of congressional rules barring the use of props if they weren’t visible to all committee members, Waters ruled with her Republican colleague, not her Democratic ally, as Vanity Fair reported in 2019. “Maxine regarded Porter as ‘performative,’” a long-serving member of the committee told the magazine. “But imagine you’re Maxine, you’ve been running that committee for forever, and this freshman who asks questions in the first five minutes is all [that] gets reported — everybody runs the clip of the freshman and nothing about you.” A year later, Porter was quietly removed from the committee at Waters’ behest.
The longer a politician is in office, the more they incline toward protecting the status quo that got them there and the less they remember the promises they once made about “changing the system.” Waters, who has been in office since 1991, is a great example of someone who worked her way up the power ladder the old-fashioned way. Maloney, who is heading into his tenth year, started out as an upstart outsider, the first openly gay man elected to Congress from New York. But now his behavior seems more like one of his longer-serving peers. Except that circumstances beyond his control have exposed the one thing politicians hope the public will never see: their naked ambition.