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CityAndStateNY.com
February 7, 2022
Party of the decade
By Zach Williams
D
lyn has been replaced by lines that now stretch into more Democratic areas like Brooklyn Heights. The addition of blue areas to the southern side of the Long Island district held by James Gaughran, one of eight Democrats who flipped GOP state Senate seats in 2018, was another example of changes aimed at helping Democrats avoid tough reelection fights in the future. The proposed state Senate map could help Democrats expand their 44-seat supermajority in the upper chamber. Republican state Sen. Sue Serino might have to run in a redrawn district whose voters favored President Joe Biden in the 2020 cycle. It also remained unclear which Republican might run in a new district that included upstate Democratic bastions like Saratoga Springs and Troy. Other proposed districts that went big for Biden over Donald Trump in 2020 included a seat based in the Southern Tier and another in Suffolk County. The 2021 election results included some big wins for Republicans, but none of them made any difference in a state Senate where they will have to defend more historical turf later this year. There are not quite enough Democrats from New York
Democratic state Sens. Jamaal Bailey, left, Michael Gianaris, center, and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, right
City and its suburbs to maintain Democrats’ longtime supermajority in the Assembly, so they will once again have to defend upstate seats to keep at least 100 seats in the 150-member lower chamber. Assembly Member Jennifer Lunsford could run for reelection in a district that went overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020 while she narrowly beat a Republican incumbent. Democrat Monica Wallace is losing some Republican areas in the outskirts of Buffalo while Democrat Al Stirpe of the Finger Lakes will be getting a few more Democratic enclaves. The Democrats, however, are not making life more difficult for every Republican. The only Re-
NYS SENATE MEDIA SERVICES
With new state Senate and Assembly districts, New York will belong to the Democrats for years to come.
EMOCRATIC DOMINANCE in state politics is about to reach a whole new level as the decennial redistricting process approaches its conclusion. Albany Democrats are expected to approve new legislative lines for the state Senate and Assembly that benefit their incumbents while making it harder than ever for Republicans to regain any of the electoral ground they have lost in recent years. Call redistricting the latest step in a multiyear process that is now making one-party rule by Democrats a permanent fact of political life three years after the party won control of the state Senate for the first time in a decade. “It’s a generational shift,” said Basil Smikle Jr., a political consultant and former executive director of the state Democratic Party. Many of the changes included in the proposed map for the 63-seat state Senate appeared to be aimed at helping Democrats keep more than a dozen seats that Republicans have historically controlled. Rochester and Syracuse are being split to help Democratic incumbents. The district gerrymandered a decade ago to help former GOP state Sen. Marty Golden win reelection in southern Brook-
