Redistricting: If You Care, Say So

You have to love former New York City Mayor Ed Koch. He is off to Albany this week to cash in his chits. 

According to a New York Daily News editorial, he has 138 signed pledges from members of the state legislature that they will support independent redistricting. For their commitment, the 86-year-old political warrior granted them the moniker Hero of Reform—this when he was pushing hard for a new, more ethical way of doing things during the run up to 2010 elections.

Napoleon once said that “a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.” He was talking, of course, about pinning them on after the battle was fought. Koch, meanwhile, bestowed his politically useful label in exchange for a person’s signed word for a battle yet to come. This, perhaps, was a mistake. Only one legislator, thus far, has agreed to support the redistricting bill put forward by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Fortunately though, Ed Koch is as tough in the political trenches as was Bonaparte on the battlefield. Moreover, it is doubtful that Albany, where the spines are made of glass, will be Koch’s Waterloo. There will be hell to pay. There will be blood. 

I love Ed Koch for this.

At least for a week, Albany will go through a spasm of accountability. I will make this pledge to Mayor Koch now: He will be welcome to come on Good Morning Westchester and he and I will recite, on-air, the names of those who failed to honor their commitment.    

One can only hope that this action adventure will come to a theater near you, say, New Rochelle. In recent weeks, at different times, I have annoyed both sides of the political aisle here in town. 

It feels good to know I will now get under the skin of both.

Redistricting is the neutral term for what we all know can lead to the practice of gerrymandering, or aligning voting districts to favor one party based on demographics and registration. It is an assumed spoil of political warfare, as the party in the majority of the relevant legislature gets to draw the maps. 

How undemocratic! How arrogant!

Worse still, it takes advantage of a trusting public whose tendency is to think in terms of the individual's right to vote and not of the consequences of how the district they vote in can impact other events.

In Albany this week, His Honor will find the Republican senators reluctant to exchange their hero coupons at the trading desk of Trader Koch in exchange for their vote.  

They hold power by the narrowest of leads and will not want to risk it. Likewise, here in New Rochelle, the Democrats hold sway and will most likely not want to part with the power of the majority. Naturally, the Republicans would like to see an independent redistricting process here. Yet, as one loyal Republican shared with me on background one has to wonder if they would be so anxious to do so if they had the votes.

New Rochelle’s districts on a map look like pieces of broken glass making little, if any, geographic sense. In this age of drugs in sports, gambler’s odds on Wall Street and a who-you-know not what-you-know job market, why can’t New Rochelle play it straight and call for independent redistricting? 

We could always invite Ed Koch to town. I have his number.