A majority in the Bronx, Latinos feel
ignored in the state’s redistricting plans
BY ROBBIE SEQUEIRA
The 2020 census showed a changing
demographic in the Bronx. According
to that census data, New
York’s Hispanic population not only
grew — the group makes up 28.3%
of the New York City’s population —
but became the predominate racial
group in the Bronx at a 54.8% clip.
However, advocates say that new
maps for the state’s congressional
and legislative districts — which
give Democrats a heavy political advantage
and was signed into law by
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul on
Thursday — do not refl ect the growing
Latino or minority presence in
the borough.
New York City will gain two new
state Senate seats in 2023 under the
redrawn district lines by Democratic
lawmakers.
“Gerrymandering is great for politicians,
bad for voters,” said Karen
Young, redistricting with #DrawDemocracy.
“No matter which party
they belong to, when politicians are
in charge of drawing lines, they will
draw them for partisan advantage,
incumbent protection, and making
insurgents in their own party more
vulnerable – not for fair representation
of communities. The fact that if
the Redistricting Commission deadlocked,
the power would go back to
the Legislature, just about guaranteed
that the deadlock would happen.”
“In terms of the process, we’re disappointed
and it’s clear the desire of
New Yorkers across the state was for
a nonpartisan process and what we
saw was the opposite of that, ” said
Cezar Ruiz, an EqualJustice Works
legal fellow with LatinoJustice. “In
terms of the map, as a nonpartisan
advocacy organization, we feel this
is a missed opportunity for the legislature
to meaningfully account for
Latino growth over the past decade.
The state’s Legislature approved
the new maps on Wednesday, along
party lines, after the New York Independent
Redistricting Commission
— an independent bipartisan board
tasked with the mapmaking process
— forwarded the plans to state lawmakers
last week after Democrats
and Republicans on the panel failed
to reach consensus. In the new map,
Democrats are the majority in 22 of
the state’s 26 congressional districts.
Advocates point to a loss of Hispanic
voting power in the newlydrawn
An Exciting
New Career!
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, F 20 FEB. 11-17, 2022 BTR
The new state Congressional lines, drawn by New York Democrats and signed by Gov.
Kathy Hochul on Thursday, Feb. 3, will give the party a sizeable 22-4 gerrymander. Photo
courtesy New York State Assembly
state Senate District 36 —
which incorporates the Pelham,
Middletown, City Island and Throggs
Neck sections — as a disappointment.
LatinoJustice, along with two other
civil rights groups created the “Unity
Map” to produce state Senate and
Assembly districts that preserved a
community’s political power.
Additionally, Ruiz said that the
group is still analyzing the impact of
the new congressional and state Assembly
districts, but on the surface,
a redistricting process that was supposed
to be different from decades
of racial and political gerrymandering,
ultimately maintained the status
quo.
“We thought we would see some
shifts in the borough to account (for
the growth of 65,000 Latinos) but we
didn’t see any,” said Ruiz. “It was
more of the status quo throughout
the borough, and we see the district
drawn as they were 10 years ago.”
In the newly-drawn Congressional
District 13 — which includes a
high population of Black and Latino
populations spread throughout the
South Bronx sections of Mott Haven,
Hunts Point and Morrisania —
minority voting population in the
district dropped by a combined 6%,
while nonwhite Hispanic voting representation
increased by 5%.
But racial erasure isn’t a problem
unique to New York’s redistricting
process. For the 28 other states who
fi nalized congressional maps in late-
January, there were more majority-
White districts added than any other
demographic majority, despite 2020
census data that shows a decline in
the nation’s white population for the
fi rst time, as minority communities
have swelled.
The number of majority-Black
districts fell by half in those states
even though the Black population increased.
In some cases, judges have
intervened in two states — Alabama
and Ohio — where Republican state
lawmakers were accused by voting
rights advocates of disenfranchising
Black voters.
Ruiz hopes that minority groups
who feel underrepresented by the
maps continue to voice their frustration
in both the process and the maps
that will defi ne the next decade of
state and city politics.
“I think it’s important to rally the
community and using the court of
public opinion to rally behind what
is really clear,” said Ruiz. “Which is
that these maps don’t refl ect the lived
realities of the people that they aim
to represent.”
It’s not just minority advocacy
groups that are disappointed with
the newly-drawn lines, Republicans
fi led a lawsuit in New York Supreme
Court on the basis that the new maps
violate the state’s constitution.
The Democracy Program at the
Brennan Center for Justice have
called the new maps, a “master
class” in gerrymandering. The group
has also opposed previous gerrymandering
from Republican-led efforts as
well.
The state Democratic leadership
who drew the maps, maintain that
they refl ect the state’s population
shifts over the last decade. New York
state is slated to lose one seat overall
this year because of national population
changes in the 2020 census.
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