“This time,” Justice Anthony Cannataro thundered Tuesday, “politics triumphs over free and fair elections.”
Over the rule of law, too: New York’s top court gave Democrats the go-ahead to gerrymander the state’s House seats after they’d stacked the Court of Appeals for just this reason.
Last year, Dem lawmakers pushed through patently gerrymandered maps, in clear violation of the state Constitution and voters’ twice-expressed mandates.
After the Court of Appeals upheld the ruling that nixed those maps, Dems simply packed the court to get the “justice” they wanted.
First, they elevated Rowan Wilson from COA judge to the court’s chief judge via an unprecedented, and corrupt, legislative process.
Next they filed an utterly baseless suit to toss the nonpartisan maps fairly drawn in 2022 by a neutral special master.
Then, Gov. Hochul’s pick to fill the Wilson vacancy, Caitlin Halligan, oh-so-conveniently recused herself in that case — and Wilson tapped Dianne Renwick, a judge who’d already ruled in Dems’ favor in a similar case, to fill in.
On Tuesday, Renwick and Wilson, joined by two other hard progressives, Jenny Rivera and Shirley Troutman, came through — voting to give Democrats another shot at gerrymandering to win back seats they’d lost in fair elections.
Next: The state’s Independent Redistricting Commission will either deadlock (it has equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans) or come up with a third set of maps that the Dem-dominated Legislature will reject.
Either way, the Democratic supermajorities will be free to gerrymander again, maybe a tad less obviously this time ’round. (But don’t count on it)
This should enable Democrats to steal back two to six New York House seats next November, when Republicans now control that chamber by just three.
This, when New York’s voters have demanded fair districting twice — in 2014, approving a state-constitutional amendment to ban gerrymandering, and in a 2021 referendum rejecting efforts to roll back the 2014 reform.
Again: Democratic lawmakers ignored the law and the voters’ express will with last year’s naked gerrymander — until the courts slapped them down.
And then their response was simply a series of back-room maneuvers to corrupt the courts with never a hint of shame.
And yet Democrats are shocked when polls show the voters don’t buy their claims that Republicans now pose a unique threat to democracy.
NEWS CREDIT
