NEW YORK DEMOCRATS COULD ELIMINATE OCASIO-CORTEZ’S DISTRICT AFTER 2020
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attends a House Financial Services Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 30, 2019. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ is prepared for the possibility that Democrats in New York could redraw her district after the 2020 election, she told The Intercept in an interview.
Following the 2020 census, every state will draw new district boundaries to reflect changes in the population, the political implications of which will stretch for at least the next decade. In 2014, New York approved a constitutional amendment establishing a nonpartisan redistricting commission, which is set to take over the redistricting process starting in 2020. The 10-member commission, meant to be independent from the legislature, is made up of individuals selected by leaders from the state Senate and Assembly, and the original eight members pick two additional members.
But Ocasio-Cortez’s most determined adversaries are not partisan Republicans, but Democrats who say that she has been a disruptive influence. The Hill recently reported that at least one member of Congress has been urging New York party leaders to recruit a Democratic primary challenger to Ocasio-Cortez. But the news led to a surge of donations to Ocasio-Cortez, suggesting that a more efficient means of ousting her might be simply to eliminate her district.
The 29-year-old congressperson noted (accurately) that it’s generally expected that New York will likely lose a seat, despite the city itself growing at a consistent pace. “I don’t know if that means that all of our districts are going to be redrawn dramatically, because they have been historically gerrymandered, or what will happen, but there’s certainly a possibility, if not a guarantee, that my district in the coming years will not look like my district today,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “So I think it’s entirely possible, and New York politics being what it is, we have no idea where things are going to go.”
New York politics are famously insular, with a tight circle controlling major decision-making for years. That began to shift in 2018, not just with Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, but also wins from a number of insurgent candidates against Democrats who had caucused with Republicans in the state Senate.
Ocasio-Cortez, during a podcast interview with The Intercept, was joined by former North Carolina Rep. Brad Miller, who earned his “former” status as a result of statewide redistricting that eliminated his seat in 2012. The 2010 tea party wave handed control of the legislature to Republicans, who drew him out of the district. He decided not to run for re-election. He told The Intercept that his work on the House Financial Services Committee taking on powerful banks “probably” played a role in the redistricting. “And Republicans, it turned out, did not value my service, and they divided my district six different ways, and there was no one piece that was really recognizably the old district. And also it was true on the Democratic side,” he said, noting that his own party leaders weren’t thrilled with his work in a state dominated by financial interests, such as Bank of America.
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/09/ocasio-cortez-district-redistricting-2020/
