New York's New District Maps

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. If you haven't heard this story yet, check this out. It looks like Democrats in the New York State Legislature are doing their best this week to help Democrats keep their majority in the United States Congress. How can a state legislature do that, you might ask. The answer is redistricting. Stay with me on this because it's a little complicated, but it's really interesting.

After a failed attempt at bipartisan redistricting in New York, the Democratic majority in Albany has released maps of new congressional districts for the state that could actually box out three Republicans who now serve in Congress and see them replaced by Democrats this November. That includes the one district in New York City now represented by a Republican that is Staten Island, and a little bit of Brooklyn represented by Republican Nicole Malliotakis. The new proposed district would include more of Brooklyn to create a likely Democratic majority. Districts on Long Island would become more likely to elect Democrats too as well as a few Upstate.

The reason that New York Democrats can do this is that redistricting happens every 10 years the year after the census. That's the years on the twos, 2022 after the 2020 census. Every state is doing it. New York's legislature has a Democratic supermajority in both houses these days so they're doing this because they can. Now, if it seems like a partisan power grab, it probably is but the context is not just New York, it's national. Republican-controlled states redistricted aggressively for their party's benefit in 2011, 2012. Democrats currently hold a smaller percentage of seats in Congress than their percentage of total voters. Think about that.

Democrats currently hold a smaller percentage of seats in Congress than their percentage of total voters in the country. In 2016, for example, according to the Brookings Institution, Republicans got 51% of all votes for House of Representatives, but 55% of the seats. Brookings says that meant they had 21 seats in the House more than they should have with a perfect percentage match. That's a lot of seats. Brookings called the House of Representatives not so representative.

Looking nationally this year as every state is doing this now, the website FiveThirtyEight which does a lot of data, a lot of counting says Republicans have gained a handful of House seats through the redistricting process so far in 2022. It says Republicans have also converted light red districts into safer seats in states like Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.

One other X Factor before we bring in our guest. Challengers in court. Beyond a certain point, districts can get struck down as illegal gerrymandering, but the courts usually defer to state legislatures. For example, in 2018, we covered this at the time, the Supreme Court upheld most of the pro-Republican redistricting in Texas, a ruling described by The Texas Tribune as a blow to civil rights groups, voters of color, and Democratic lawmakers who had been fighting the Republican-controlled legislatures adjustment of district boundaries since 2011.

With us now, the number two Democrat in the New York State Senate who is also taking the lead on the redistricting plan, which might be voted on tomorrow, Senator Michael Gianaris whose district begins like a big wide bell in Astoria in Northwest Queens, and ends as a skinny little panhandle in Southeast Queens down by Ozone Park. Senator, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Michael Gianaris: Good morning, Brian. I should mention that my district looks that way because the Republicans a decade ago gerrymandered it to look that way.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] There you go. The New York Times article on this calls your plan starkly partisan. The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice is quoted in City & State saying Democrats took a heavy hand for an aggressive gerrymander. How much do you agree or disagree with The Times and the Brennan Center?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Look, the important thing to realize is New York is a deep blue state. We all know this, it's well known nationally. It shouldn't be a surprise that when maps are doing fairly, there's going to be a result that reflects that reality on the ground. We have very strict rules here in New York that we operate under when these lines are drawn. Among them is the lines are not drawn for the purpose of benefiting a party or a particular individual. We believe we have complied with those rules.

The court ultimately will hear this for the first time because these are new standards in New York, and we'll make our case as to why we think what we did is proper. Our lawyers have looked at this backwards and forwards, so we have great confidence that what we did is appropriate.

Brian Lehrer: The Times article, and I'm not even quoting The New York Post article, you can imagine what they say, but The Times article says the map immediately exposed Democrats to charges that they were engaging in the same kind of gerrymandering that many in the party have denounced as anti-Democratic and accused Republicans of carrying out elsewhere. You just accused them of carrying it out in your own district 10 years ago.

Senator Michael Gianaris: Sure.

Brian Lehrer: Do you argue that what you're doing is any different from that?

Senator Michael Gianaris: There's no question that they have been doing it, they've been doing it aggressively for decades. They have been the leaders in this game. What's happening in New York is as we unravel the gerrymanders of the past, it doesn't make it a gerrymander of today. These are districts that are drawn fairly. If they had been drawn fairly at the outset, this is perhaps what they would have looked like, but because we are living in a world influenced by decades of Republican control of the Senate where they influenced these lines, this is how it appears relative to what we're facing in the current line.

For example, there's been a lot of talk of District 11, the Staten Island base seat, and what we're doing with it. The map that we have drawn is quite similar to the way that district existed in the '70s. It was gerrymandered in the '80s to help Guy Molinari and they eliminated a Democratic congressman, Leo Zeferetti at the time, for partisan reasons. As we're unraveling the mistakes of the past, not even a mistake, it was intentional, but as we're unraveling the gerrymandering of the past, we're just bringing things back to where they should have been from the outset.

Brian Lehrer: I want to get into that Staten Island plus parts of Brooklyn district in more detail. We'll get into some Long Island districts in more detail, even one Long Island district that will suddenly include parts of the Bronx and Westchester as you've drawn it. To continue to quote from The Times article in general, it says Democratic gains could help offset those that Republicans are expected to rack up in red states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia. That's the contemporary context, you're talking about undoing the things of the past. These things are going on right now as we all know.

I guess some supporters of your approach, and we've gotten calls like this, just say out loud, yes, this is what Democratic states have to do so you don't have unilateral disarmament. We already have a tweet. Let's see. Here it is. @BrianLehrer, why should New York unilaterally disarm when Republicans are-- They use a word we can't say on the radio, us everywhere.

There's that term that I was citing, unilateral disarmament. When that kind of thing is going on, someday when there's some kind of national agreement on non-partisan redistricting if that day ever comes, then you can back off as well. If the Republican legislatures around the country are going to go all-in for their partisan advantage in Congress, this argument says you're really obligated to your constituents to do the same thing in New York and other blue states. Would it be bad to just say that directly out loud like that?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Look, I'll leave the political analysis to others, and that's a school of thought. What I know is we have some very strict requirements in New York that we have to comply with. Those include not drawing the maps for the express purpose of benefiting a particular individual or particular political party, and we have complied with those rules. You said things are going on right now, they certainly are in other states and they have gone on in New York in the past.

My point simply was if you look at a map drawn today and you compare it to the map that exists yesterday, that's not a fair comparison because the map that existed yesterday was gerrymandered. If that was drawn fairly as it should have been decades ago, or at the outset of this whole process, the maps may well have looked like what we just came up with. It's not a fair assessment to say, "Look, this District 10 changed so much from what it was yesterday," because we're living in an unfair environment, to begin with.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, who has a question or comment about drawing new congressional districts in New York State? The other levels of government are getting their districts drawn too, but there's so much at stake nationally in these midterm elections that we're focusing for this conversation on the most contentious aspect of this and with the most at stake, the congressional districts. Who has a question or a comment about the once-a-decade process going on right now? 212-423-WNYC, 433-9692, or you can tweet @BrianLehrer.

Political cartographers come with your competing maps, or any constituent come with a thought or a question about your current representative or a district line and what you would like to see or not. 212-433-WNYC or tweet @BrianLehrer for the second-ranking Democrat in the New York State Senate, Michael Gianaris of Queens. All right, let's look at some of the specific districts that your proposed map with Troy. You mentioned the one involving Staten Island. The news organization City & State has an article on this with a blunt headline, Representative Nicole Malliotakis is probably screwed. Fair or unfair?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Unfair as we discussed already. By the way, in terms of the political consequences of a lot of what we've done, we can sit here and predict outcomes, but the voters have the final say. There's been a lot of analysis already just in one day about that district and what it might mean. Some people say if the Democrats nominate someone who's further of a particular political persuasion through the primary because the district has changed so much, it might not be to their benefit in the general election, others say it will be. My point is simply we don't know what the outcomes are going to be until the voters have their say. There's a lot of prognosticating going on that is unwarranted at this point. I know that's what we all do and we try and---

Brian Lehrer: You know how different neighborhoods have voted in the recent past, so you can make some predictions based on that, right?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Sure, but there's two elections. There's a primary election to nominate a candidate and there's a general election. The way these districts are drawn can have different effects on each of those. My point is simply we just don't know, and to sit there and say we can draw the maps with full knowledge of where they're going to end up is not accurate.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Right. Maybe not full knowledge, but the City & State article says the district you've proposed, including Staten Island, adds the Democratic bastions, says Democratic bastions, of Sunset Park, Park Slope, and Gowanus. What do you say to the people of State Island which voted Trump for president in a greater percentage than the state of Texas did, that you're making them a minority based on past votes in a way that will likely guarantee a Democrat gets elected from there, and as a disenfranchisement of Staten Island's electoral power?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Again, I would say that we don't know the outcomes. Let me just repeat that again. I would say to people who are concerned about Staten Island, the math is what it is. Staten Island does not have enough population to fill out an entire congressional district. Once you get to that point, you realize they have to add population from somewhere.

In the past, it's been connected to Manhattan where you'd probably get the same criticism related to what we've done. It has been more recently connected to South Brooklyn, Coney Island, and in that area and, in the past as well, it has been drawn the way we drew it, which connects through Bay Ridge and Sunset Park and surrounding neighborhoods. Over time, different map drawers have taken different approaches to find the extra territory that's needed to fill out District 11. We chose one that has historical precedent.

To do it otherwise, Brian, you'd have to say, "Staten Island has some more Republicans. Let's go find Republicans to make sure that that district continues to select a Republican." That is gerrymandering by definition. That is prohibited actually. If we did it that way, that map would correctly be eliminated in the courts. The point is you're supposed to find neighborhoods that make sense. If you follow Staten Island over the Verrazzano Bridge and you just continue the line straight up, the map actually looks very clean. It is a contiguous district. It is compact much more so than if it branched out either East or West and so I think we've done the right thing there.

Brian Lehrer: Let me read you two tweets that have come in from listeners and maybe you can answer them together. One says, "Let's have some honesty here and not act like this is a mission to provide accurate voting lines from the '70s. What does Park Slope and State Island have in common that need to be represented?" That's a specific question. Then someone else tweets a more general question, what is a fair district? What are the principles in this process?

Senator Michael Gianaris: The principles are many and they're new in New York. We changed our standards after the previous redistricting. Now we have a whole litany of standards that we must meet in the constitution and in statutes in New York. They include compactness, contiguity, not disenfranchising communities of interest, and not drawing the lines to benefit a particular individual or to hurt a particular individual, and not drawing the lines to the benefit or detriment of political parties generally. There are others, but there is quite a lengthy list of standards that have to be complied with. Maintaining the core of existing districts is another one.

Brian Lehrer: I'm sorry, what's another one I talked over?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Maintaining the core of existing districts is also on the list of considerations that we have to comply with. We have done all that. The reason I bring up the '70s is simply to say this district has been all over the place because Staten Island has a certain population and you need to add to that to fill out a district. It has been attached to Lower Manhattan, and that was one of the proposals that others have made for this scenario. Had we done that, I don't think the criticism would be any less.

The point is that people that don't like what has happened in District 11 only want us to go seek out specifically conservative-inclined voters to make sure that they can continue to elect a Republican. That is gerrymandering, not what we've done.

Brian Lehrer: Why would they not be considered a community of interest, as you use that term, if they're a substantial political minority? Trump, if we just measure by the presidential election, he got more than a quarter of the votes in New York City, and the party will likely have no seats from New York City.

Senator Michael Gianaris: I don't mean to interrupt your question, Brian, but ideology is not a community of interest. In fact, drawing lines for a specific partisan outcome is expressly prohibited. If what you're suggesting is that we go find people who vote the same way as people on Staten Island vote, that's prohibited.

Brian Lehrer: To the specific question, what do Park Slope and Staten Island have in common that need to be represented? That listener.

Senator Michael Gianaris: If I may, I'll get to that question as well but we talk about Staten Island as if it's a monolithic group. Max Rose was the congressman from there, a Democrat in recent history.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, just two years ago.

Senator Michael Gianaris: It's not as if their voting patterns are set in stone and are unchanged, right? The critique is not well-founded. What does Park Slope have to do with Staten Island? As I mentioned to you, we come off of Staten Island, we follow the Verrazzano, it spills into Bay Ridge, and then you attach neighborhoods from there. You can go east, you can go north, you can go west, and all have been suggested.

As I mentioned, it's been suggested we make a tricounty, a triborough district that goes into Manhattan from there. We took what we thought was the geographic at least simplest route, and just kept moving in the same direction until we got the population we needed. That took us up to Sunset Park and into Park Slope.

Brian Lehrer: Before we go on to Long Island and some other districts just to finish on District 11, City & State also reports on concerns about dilution of Latino political power in the new district because Sunset Park would be moved into that Staten Island plus Brooklyn district taken away from Congressman Nydia Velázquez's current district. You might get a white, more centrist Democrat like Max Rose who used to be the Congressman from there as you mentioned. City Council Member Alexa Avilés is quoted expressing concern that the newly elected Democrat could well be "not deeply connected to the interest of our community." What do you say to the people, an0d particularly the Latino people of Sunset Park?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Again, getting in the business of predicting outcomes is a very tenuous way to go about this. There is a Latina, as I understand it, also competing in the primary in that district to be nominated, and may well be. I don't know how the voters in that district are going to vote at the end of the day. Some would say her ideology is more relatable to the people of Park Slope. We just don't know is my simple point. There's going to be elections, the voters will have their say, and as it relates to Congressmember Velázqueza's district, we took great care to make sure that the Latino population in that district was not diminished diluted. It will continue to have its plurality status in that district.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to continue in a minute with State Senator Michael Gianaris, the number two state senator in New York who's also leading this redistricting mapping project. They may vote on it tomorrow and approve all these new district lines that we've begun to talk about. For Congress, we'll get into districts from Long Island, Westchester, the Bronx, more of Brooklyn. Callers I see you.

Melissa in Mount Vernon asking if AOC is going to be redistricted out of Congress. We see you, we'll take your call. Karen in Brooklyn, we see you. Why have they thrown out the maps from the independent commission that was supposed to end partisan districting? Others, stay with us. More with Senator Gianaris in a minute.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with the number two member of the New York State Senate, Democrat Michael Gianaris from Queens, who's leading the once-in-a-decade redistricting process which The New York Times and others say could remove three Republican seats from Congress, perhaps the biggest change, says some of the press reports I've been reading, of any state in this once-a-decade redistricting year, and with obviously high stakes midterm elections coming in November. Melissa in Mount Vernon, you're on WNYC. Hi, Melissa.

Melissa: Hi, New York has lost a lot of population and we're losing a congressional fee. Is it true that AOC's district is being cut up?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Is it true? No, it's not true. It remains largely the same. It's still a Bronx-Queens district. Because everyone has to gain population as the caller pointed out, there's some movement around the borders. I think she gains some more of Queens in the proposal. Other than that, it's a very similar district to what she currently have.

Brian Lehrer: Karen in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Karen.

Karen: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. [clears throat] Senator, I wanted to ask why you threw out, it seems, all the maps that were put together by the Independent Redistricting Commission. It seems clear that you guys [unintelligible 00:21:52] have been working on these maps right along. Listeners should know that the way the commission was set up was that if they couldn't agree on maps, it was going to go back to the legislature so they could draw their own, and so I think the whole process was due.

Brian Lehrer: That's what happened.

Karen: That's what happened, but let me just ask you a specific [clears throat]. At one of our hearings in Brooklyn, we had people in South Brooklyn saying, "We don't want to be connected to Jerry Nadler's district," which is primarily on the Upper West Side and that's where his focus is. I noticed in the new map that you continue to create this tiny sneaking district throughout Brooklyn that connects Nadler's district again, primarily Upper West Side of Manhattan, all the way down to some of the primarily Orthodox Jewish districts, I believe it is, in Southern Brooklyn.

Brian Lehrer: Borough Park.

Karen: Why is that still happening? People said they didn't want that. Yes.

Senator Michael Gianaris: There were conflicting testimonies about that. Other people said they did want the communities of the Upper West Side and parts of Brooklyn, particularly Borough Park, in the same district. The key word that the caller mentioned which is correct, you said we continue to draw it that way. As I mentioned to you earlier, Brian, one of the criteria we are required to use is maintaining the cores of existing districts. In an effort to do that, we took this rendering of that district which was drawn by a judge last time and we essentially kept it in the same configuration.

Brian Lehrer: Nadler's district to be fair to you wasn't just primarily Upper West Side of Manhattan, it was from there all the way down to the end of Manhattan. He represents the World Trade Center, for example, and then into Brooklyn but now that district does go to Borough Park which it didn't before. That won't change the partisan makeup of it, it would still likely be Democratic.

Senator Michael Gianaris: Correction there, Brian, it does go to Borough Park currently. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That's what I'm saying. Oh, it currently goes to Borough Park?

Senator Michael Gianaris: : Yes.

Brian Lehrer: I thought that park was new. Did missee that? All right. I've seen that discussed and reviewed as more sympathetically perhaps in some of the other changes as giving Hasidic New Yorkers a religious minority or Jewish New Yorkers, but I think particularly aimed at Hasidic New Yorkers, some stronger electoral power as a religious minority. Do you not see it that way?

Senator Michael Gianaris: What I would say is there's a recognized community of interest that has driven that district to look the way it does. That's why it looks that way in its existing configuration and we maintained that approach going forward.

Brian Lehrer: To the caller Karen's point about the bipartisan redistricting commission that failed to agree on a bipartisan endorsed set of congressional maps. That's why we're here now with you going your own way in the Democratic majority. Other states, apparently red and blue alike, are having the same issue. Do you think nonpartisan redistricting is a nice idea in theory but nobody will ever actually do it?

Senator Michael Gianaris: I think it's a nice idea in theory, I think it could be a good idea in practice. I think California has an approach which is working much better. The thing to remember is our process was flawed at its origin. It was never nonpartisan. It was bipartisan. It was five appointeeS essentially from each party. When you do that, that's akin to the way the Board of Elections works. If you have the same number of votes, so to speak, from each party, it's designed for deadlock. This was designed by then-governor Cuomo and the Senate Republicans. This was their formula for how to do redistricting.

I remember this because I was around back then and fought it very hard to set up something actually independent and nonpartisan. They gave us something where the parties are supposed to act as checks on each other and inevitably you end up with five to five deadlocks on everything. That's what we were dealing with. It was a process designed to fail. Critics are right about that, but it was designed by the Republicans a decade ago and so this is the outcome that they've driven. I hope before the next redistricting comes around, we're able to alter the process and make it truly independent.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go on to Long Island. City & State describe the east end of the island district, now represented by Republican Lee Zeldin, as being altered to extend more west into Nassau County which is more Democratic putting that seat in play and concentrating the Republican South Shore communities in Suffolk into Republican Andrew Garbarino's district, pretty much guaranteeing Republican control there by making it harder for Republicans in Zeldin's district. Fair description?

Senator Michael Gianaris: No, mind you, Brian. This criticism is directly at odds with the criticism we were talking about earlier in the Staten Island district scenario. You were just asking me why didn't we go find like-minded people and put them in the same district. The critique of this is now we found like-minded people and put them all in the same district on the South Shore. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: The premise is that the goal was to put more Democrats in Lee Zeldin's district.

Senator Michael Gianaris: No, but this is my point. What we did was we united the communities on the South Shore, which everyone can agree are-

Brian Lehrer: Republican.

Senator Michael Gianaris: -communities of interest. No, we do not look at it that way as I made clear earlier but there are certainly communities that share a lot in terms of how their communities deal with issues they're facing, the fact that they do contain a shoreline and have a variety of factors that make them likeminded not politically but just in terms of the issues their communities faced.

A lot of the questions we get are driven by things that happen around these districts, so you can look at any district in a vacuum and say, "Why did this one turn east here and what's there?" Sometimes it's because we're doing things in the districts around them that are forcing those decisions. Once you create a South Shore district, it moves the districts around it in a particular direction.

Brian Lehrer: The district currently represented by Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi who's probably giving it up to run for governor, that's currently a North Shore district extending from Northeast Queens around Bayside and Little Neck out to the North Shore of Suffolk County around Huntington. Now that district will add very Democratic parts of Westchester and the Bronx. Can you argue that those communities have enough in common with the, let's say, private home, pretty affluent North Shore communities to make sense for them to all be represented by the same person?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Certainly you make that argument. These are all suburban Long Island Sound bordering neighborhoods. Again, this is all driven and I want to take a step back and give you the origin story, so to speak, of how we ended up where we did.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Senator Michael Gianaris: This is driven by the geography of the state. You start at the east end of Long Island and you start building out your districts, and each congressional district has to have basically the exact same number of population. You start building as many districts as you can. The state bottlenecks where the Bronx meets Westchester, and so you get up to that point in the map and there's a certain amount of population that's still needed to fill out whatever district hits there. Inevitably, under any scenario under any map that's been proposed, a New York city district has to spill into Westchester. At that point, your options are limited.

If you tinker with some, you potentially have issues with communities of interest, minority communities that need to maintain their pluralities, or majority status in some of these other districts that could have potentially crossed over. In the end, we actually took this idea from the public testimony. One of the previous callers said we didn't pay attention to the public testimony as a commission or whatever it was. That's completely false because this was a specific suggestion of a group that was concerned about minority representation, and this was how they configured this district.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, on AOC, here's something from the Queens Eagle for that listener and other listeners interested in or concerned about her congressional district. The Queens Eagle says Ocasio Cortez picks up the progressive Queens voters that Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney loses under the proposed maps. She also picks up voters in Whitestone who recently elected Republican Vickie Paladino to the city council. However, the proposed map brings more Democratic voters into the district. Anything else to say about Congresswoman Ocasio Cortez's district?

Senator Michael Gianaris: No, that's sounds to me like we did it fairly. You just said we've added some progressive voters, we added some conservative voters. Every district had to change at least at the margins. It sounds like in that case. we did it in a way that brought in people of all types of persuasions to fill out that number.

Brian Lehrer: Jay in Northern New Jersey I think wants to say, "Way to go, Michael Gianaris." Jay, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Jay: Hello. I love your show and I think shows like this really help promote democracy. By the exchange of ideas, maybe we can get past all this partisanship which is poisoning our country. I think we have to approach the problem of redistricting in a totally neutral fashion. If we leave it up to politicians, that is party bosses, we're always going to get partisanship and partisanship is poisoning this country. What we need to do is have an independent commission that's truly independent. You have to scrutinize who sits on such a commission to make sure that they are neutral.

Brian Lehrer: The problem is, Jay, who's neutral and who's going to appoint them who is neutral, and so maybe it's an impossible task.

Jay: Seemingly it is impossible, but don't forget we have people appointed to the judiciary. They're supposed to be neutral. They're not chosen because they're left or they're right. They might be chosen because of party membership, but judges are supposed to be neutral people. When somebody sits as a judge, they're an umpire. They're not a Yankees fan, they're not a Red Sox fan. They're the umpire, and that's what we have to strive for.

Brian Lehrer: We know that's imperfect, but I definitely take your point. One more. Phil in Mendham, you're on WNYC. Hi, Phil.

Phil: Hi. I'm excited to ask a question of you two gentlemen that I've always wondered. How come nobody has ever advocated for some neutral computer program that just basically superimposes a bunch of identical square districts throughout the country and let the chips fall where they may. I'm aware right now that there's this huge disparity between the popular vote that goes to the Democrats in Congress compared to the actual electoral success of the Democrats. The first thing I think is that fair district thing would be, I'm sorry to say, a boon to Democrat because right now the Democrats are getting the short end of the stick on--

Brian Lehrer: They have more people who voted for Congress total nationwide as a percentage than the percentage of seats that they have in the House because of the history of Republican gerrymandering. Phil is asking why not have a computer program do it? Maybe that's the neutral umpire that the previous caller was going for.

Senator Michael Gianaris: It would certainly be neutral, but the question is is that really what we want to do? Because county lines, county borders don't follow squares, state borders don't follow squares. What happens when you reach the corner of a state, you have a representative from New York and Pennsylvania? It's just not the way communities exist. When you're looking for communities that need representation that we talk a lot about communities of interest which is a a legal construct, but when you're talking about communities of interest, those don't always fall in square shapes.

Brian Lehrer: You're going to have to go to court apparently. With these Republicans will almost certainly take some of these districts to court. City & State quotes at least three progressive-leaning sources who won't predict victory in court for you with any confidence; L Joy Williams who heads the Brooklyn NAACP, Democratic Consultant Camille Rivera, and Michael Li from the Brennan Center. Did you support the lawsuit that made it to the Supreme Court against Texas's partisan redistricting? The Supreme Court allowed that redistricting to stand. Did you ever say anything supporting the lawsuit against that?

Senator Michael Gianaris: No. We have our hands full here in New York, but I was a supporter of the lawsuit we filed 10 years ago when the lines in New York were gerrymandered. Litigation is inevitable and guaranteed every time there's a redistricting. There's always suits, multiple suits usually, and the courts will hear it out at the end of the day. We have had lawyers look at these maps backwards and forwards. When the time comes, we're confident we'll make our case to the court and be successful.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, let me touch briefly on two other issues before you in the legislature. Mayor Eric Adams wants bail reform amended as you know to allow judges to consider the dangerousness of the defendant, as he says, they can in all 49 other states. Many states have no cash bail at all, but judicial discretion on dangerousness to keep somebody in jail before trial. Are you open to that kind of revision? You would have a lot of power over it.

Senator Michael Gianaris: First of all, let's take a step back again. The conversation around bail reform has gotten so twisted that any criminal activity that occurs is laid at the feet of bail reform. I just saw a tweet from a member of Congress today, someone who should know better, who cited an article about someone who committed a crime and said, "Look at this person, this person was out on bail. Bail reform has failed." If the person is out on bail, that means they were granted bail under the old system. Now it's just gotten to the point where everything lands at the fee of bail reform. Let's look at the real data.

Brian Lehrer: That wasn't no bail, that was bail. Yes.

Senator Michael Gianaris: Correct. It was paid. By the way, the incident that the mayor himself said is just a couple of days ago with someone who was out on $250,000 bail. Those are examples of why the bail system needed reforming, not the fact that what we did was flawed.

Brian Lehrer: I think the mayor's example said, yes, cash should not be the barrier to getting out while you're waiting for trial and it should not be a ticket to get a out while you're waiting for trial if the judge sees you as a danger to the community.

Senator Michael Gianaris: Right. The thing to remember about New York is people are talking about 10 years ago, 15 years ago as if they were incredibly safe and they were, and we never had that kind of standard then. We can be safe. We know how to do this, we have done it without using a dangerousness standard, which every scholar who has looked at this will tell you is applied in a way that is discriminatory. When you give a judge on a bench the power to just say, "I deem you to be dangerous," without a trial by the way, that's what a trial is for. Everything we're talking about related to bail is pretrial.

These are unconvicted people at that point in the process. Innocent unless proven guilt, we're all taught, right? Somehow when it comes to bail, people just want to throw people in jail and lock away the key. Maybe they did it, maybe they didn't. We're just going to let a judge decide on their own whether someone is dangerous or not. That has proven to be applied very discriminatorily. A lot of people have a problem with that.

Brian Lehrer: That's [unintelligible 00:37:56] on dangerous stands.

Senator Michael Gianaris: We do know, Brian, that we have real data on how bail reform is working. We're seeing that less than 2% of people who are out under the bail reform laws are reoffending or being charged, I should say, with serious crimes. That is less than the reoffense rate in other contexts, so it's actually working as intended.

Brian Lehrer: Last question. The revisions to the affordable housing tax break for developers known as 421-a, as I understand it, Governor Hochul has proposed to replace the current system which provides a complete tax break for rental buildings with affordable housing with a new plan which keeps the tax break with modest changes to require affordable apartments go to lower-income New Yorkers and allow the tax break to be used for lower price condos. Progressives like Comptroller Brad Lander want the tax break ended. What's your position on the Hochul proposal or the Lander response?

Senator Michael Gianaris: I think my concern with the proposal is it is just modest changes. 421-a is boondoggle for wealthy developers and has not done very much to increase the affordable housing stock. The levels of affordability are often actually unaffordable, and so we need more than just modest changes to this program. We should end it and start all over with a new approach.

Brian Lehrer: You think that's the position of the legislature's majority, so Hochul won't get her way as is on this?

Senator Michael Gianaris: I only speak for myself until we discuss it as a conference and we have yet to do that.

Brian Lehrer: State Senator Michael Gianaris, the number two ranking state senator representing parts of Queens and having drawn or participated heavily in drawing these congressional districting maps, which may get voted on tomorrow. Is it tomorrow? Have you scheduled to vote?

Senator Michael Gianaris: Yes, I believe it's tomorrow.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much for your time and standing for all these questions. We really appreciate it.

Senator Michael Gianaris: Always a pleasure, Brian. Thanks so much.

 

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