Politico: The town that will decide New York redistricting for the next decade

BATH, N.Y. — Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres last week made a five-hour trek far to a rural upstate town that’s poised to decide the fate of New York’s congressional delegation — and possibly the balance of power in Congress next year. …

The stakes are huge both for New York and Democrats nationally. The fate of lines rests with Steuben County Acting Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister, a Republican who was elected to a seven-year term in 2017 to an office that is designed to focus on wills and adoptions.

New York’s new redistricting process run by Democrats has collapsed so spectacularly that a case could be made that McAllister is now the most powerful elected official in the state.

The reason is simple: The GOP filed its lawsuit against the initial lines earlier this year in the small, rural Southern Tier community that is as Republican friendly a county as there is in the blue state.

Now the decision rests in McAllister’s court. …

Democrats, who have dominated the state Assembly since Watergate, came out of the 2020 elections with a supermajority in the state Senate for the first time since 1846. That meant they were able to dominate the map-making process for the first time in generations, and the lines they approved in early February left their party well-positioned to pick up a few seats in Congress even as the size of the state’s delegation is poised to shrink from 27 to 26.

Republicans immediately filed suit and strategically picked Steuben County.

“This is the result of forum shopping on the part of the plaintiffs,” Common Cause NY executive director Susan Lerner said after testifying last week. “They knew exactly where they wanted to be. They wanted to be in a remote rural county, and they were successful.”