A 60-minute debate featuring the two candidates for the New York State Assembly’s 150th District: Andrew Goodell (R) and Sandra Lewis (D).

WATCH

The debate was held on Thursday, Oct. 13 at the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts inside the 3rd Floor Multimedia Room. It was moderated by WRFA’s Julia Ciesla-Hanley and also involved questions from participating media members – Terry Frank (Media One Radio / WJTN) and Justin Gould (WNY News Now), along with Ciesla-Hanley. There was also an opportunity for each candidate to ask one question to each of their two respective opponents.

Funding for the debate was made possible through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The proposed State Assembly redistricting map that challengers want thrown out

The Associated Press reports a New York appeals court is allowing state Assembly elections to proceed this year under redistricting maps drawn by Democrats but ordered lawmakers to revise the maps in time for the 2024 elections.

The maps have come under fire from Republicans and other critics who say the lines signed into law earlier this year give Democrats an unfair advantage.

Two Democrats and a Republican had asked the court to invalidate the Assembly maps and move the primary to August or September, so new ones could be drawn.

In its ruling Friday, a mid-level appeals court agreed that the Assembly maps had been drawn improperly by the state Legislature but upheld a lower court judge who had ruled in May that it was too late in the state’s election season to come up with new district boundaries.

Delaying the primary until September, the court wrote, was no longer feasible.

The court returned the case to a Manhattan judge to decide how the new maps could be revised in time for elections in 2024.

Jim Walden, the attorney representing the two Democrats and Republican who sued over the Assembly maps, praised the court’s ruling but said he would appeal the part of the decision where the judges declined to move the primary.

Top – Proposed Congressional District Map
Bottom – Proposed State Senate District Map
(May 16, 2022)

The court appointed, special master tasked with redrawing New York’s Congressional and state Senate district maps released a draft version of both maps Monday.

City and State report the interactive version of the maps were posted online by Jonathan Cervas, a scholar on apportionment who was tasked with the job.

The House district map seems to spell bad news for New York Democrats, who could have more competitive general elections than ever. Cervas seemed to prioritize that, drawing at least eight of the state’s 26 House districts in a way that either party could be competitive in November. The lines have national implications as well. Democrats have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives currently, and are expecting difficult conditions in this 2022 midterm election.

The initial lines drawn by the Democrat-controlled Legislature and approved in late January would have given Democrats an advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts.

The proposed 23rd District is geographically smaller, covering 7 counties compared with the current district lines that cover an 11 county region. The new district would include southern and central Erie County to the north before stretching along the Pennsylvania-border counties to Chemung and Schuyler Counties to the east.

Cervas reconfigured the state’s 63 Senate seats from the State Legislature’s original plan struck down by New York’s highest court for unconstitutional gerrymandering last month to have between 315,450 and 329,505 constitutents each.

The lines were released just before 5 p.m. Monday, about five hours after the draft congressional maps were published.

Cervas wrote, “Because of relative population loss, two districts have been shifted and there are necessary changes throughout the state to reflect population changes.”

The new Senate map reflects 38 districts that lean Democratic, 10 that lean Republican and 15 in the 45 to 55% competitive range, based on 2016 and 2020 election data.

Cervas did not take incumbent addresses into account when redrawing the congressional or Senate districts, basing the lines on standards outlined in the state constitution.

The proposed 57th district still includes all of Chautauqua and Cattaraugus Counties, and now would include Wyoming and Genesee counties. A tetris-like chunk of Allegany County is also in the proposed 57 district.

The maps are just a draft, with the final Congressional and state Senate maps due this Friday, May 20. The public has through Wednesday to submit testimony regarding the maps to Steuben County Acting Supreme Court Judge Patrick McAllister. McAllister has been overseeing the redistricting process following a successful, Republican-backed legal challenge to the maps passed into law by the state’s Democratic controlled legislature and signed by Governor Kathy Hochul. With that short timeline, observers do not expect major changes to be made to the maps.

​Primaries for U.S. House and state Senate races were pushed back to August 23, with the primary for statewide offices and state Assembly races set for June 28.

Meanwhile, there are still some question marks about how the election process will proceed. A new lawsuit filed Sunday in Manhattan Supreme Court seeks to invalidate the Assembly maps and delay the primary election until new lines could be drawn.

Two of the three plaintiffs in the case, Gary Greenberg and New York Young Republican Club President Gavin Wax previously filed legal action in the Steuben County suit to have the maps tossed, but McAllister tossed out their request last week, stating that while he agreed the Assembly maps were also drawn in violation of the constitution, it was too close to the scheduled June primary to redraw the lines.

Queens attorney and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Paul Nichols joined the two in filing the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

The proposed State Assembly redistricting map that challengers want thrown out

New York State of Politics reports a Steuben County State Supreme Court judge has upheld the lawmaker-drawn district maps for the state Assembly.

In his ruling, Judge Patrick McAllister said the maps of state Assembly districts were also “unconstitutional in the manner in which they were enacted” by the state Legislature. But the judge said it would cause “total confusion” to allow the people challenging the Assembly maps—Democratic activist Gary Greenberg and conservative political commentator Gavin Wax—to join an ongoing lawsuit over the Senate and congressional maps.

McAllister said Greenberg and Wax knew about the lawsuit when it was filed in February, “Yet they chose to do nothing at that time.” The judge said the pair could still file a separate lawsuit challenging the Assembly maps. But he said letting them raise their argument in the ongoing lawsuit would likely mean New York wouldn’t have all of its maps ready in time for a primary this year.

Wax has previously indicated he will appeal to a higher court.

The ruling from McAllister is in contrast to the rejection of the maps for the U.S. House of Representatives as well as for the state Senate in New York, which were found to be unconstitutional.

A court-appointed expert has been tasked with redrawing the congressional and state Senate maps by May 20. Primaries for those elections have been moved from June 28 to August 23.

Former Assemblyman Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan). (Source: AP)

Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, one of the most powerful figures in state government for two decades before his conviction on corruption charges, has died in federal custody. He was 77.

Silver died Monday, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

WXXI reports Silver, an Orthodox Jew whose parents were Russian immigrants, was a native of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He was elected to the state Assembly in 1977, and as speaker in 1994. He held the post for more than two decades, and at the time was one of the state’s most powerful politicians.

Silver survived an attempted coup in 2000 on his leadership from Syracuse-area Assemblyman Michael Bragman. For years afterward, he wielded influence in key negotiations on the state’s budget and other policy issues, often giving briefings after closed-door leaders meeting in his distinctive deep, gravelly voice.

The late former speaker was criticized for his handling of sexual harassment charges against former Assemblyman Vito Lopez, and also against a former top aide, who was accused of raping two legislative aides while he was working for the speaker and eventually pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct.

Silver fell from grace in 2015, when he was arrested on federal corruption charges by the U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York. He resigned from the speaker’s post.

Silver remained an Assemblyman, but had to leave that post later that year when he was convicted on multiple felony charges for illegally netting $4 million for engineering bribery and kickback schemes. The former speaker saw the charges overturned on appeal, but was convicted in a retrial in 2018. After losing more appeals, he began serving a 6.5-year prison term in July 2020. He also had to pay a $1 million fine.

Silver, who was suffering from cancer, was briefly released to his home in May 2021, under provisions of a pandemic-related federal policies that allowed early release to some medically vulnerable inmates. But after public outcry, he was sent back two days later to the federal prison in Otisville, where he died on Monday.