If GOP Takes the House, Here’s Whom To Thank

If Republicans emerge from the 2022 midterm elections with control of the House of Representatives, it will be in significant part because of a multiyear legal battle over redistricting in the state of New York.“Redistricting” is one of those process-oriented terms that ordinarily puts to sleep anyone who isn’t a political professional. In this case, though, it’s worth paying attention to, translating into the concrete difference between an original, gerrymandered plan — one that would have crammed New York’s Republicans into four congressional seats — and the results of this contest, which saw 11 Republican members of Congress elected from New York’s 26 congressional districts.The 11th race hasn’t been called by the Associated Press as I write, but the Republican is leading with 97 percent of the vote reported. By successfully fighting the crooked election maps in court, Empire State Republicans wound up creating “a markedly different result,” a former Republican congressman who helped lead the effort, John Faso, told me.The seven extra Republicans from New York — the difference between four and 11 — may well be the margin that decides control of the House. New York Republicans don’t get a lot of respect. They haven’t elected a governor since George Pataki won in 2002, and they haven’t elected a U.S. senator since Alfonse D’Amato in 1992.Yet in an Election Day that didn’t have a lot of immediate bright spots for Republicans beyond Governor DeSantis’s big win in Florida, the New York congressional race victories are being celebrated. “It was just one of those very satisfying political things,” a former chairman of the New York Republican Party who worked with Mr. Faso on the redistricting effort, Ed Cox, says.Beyond Messrs. Faso and Cox, the list of those responsible for the redistricting victories includes a mix of household names and more obscure figures. They aren’t all Republicans. One key figure was Edward Koch, who died in 2013 after serving as a Democratic congressman and mayor of New York.One of Koch’s final acts of public service was championing a ballot initiative that placed the design of the congressional districts in the hands of an independent commission charged with following principles including that “districts shall not be drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents.” The voters of New York approved that in 2014.While this is mainly a New York story, two Wisconsin figures played a role. A former governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, was finance chairman of the National Republican Redistricting Trust. The lawyer who won the New York case for the Republicans, Misha Tseytlin, was solicitor general of Wisconsin between 2015 and 2018.When Mr. Tsyetlin was 7, he immigrated to America with his family from the Soviet Union and its infamously uncontested and unfree elections; he’s clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy and for Judges Alex Kozinski and Janice Rogers Bown. Businessman and philanthropist Ronald Lauder helped to fund litigation to defend the New York constitution from legislative attempts to undercut it. The Empire Center for Public Policy, the nonpartisan free-market think tank founded by E.J. McMahon, litigated with help from the Government Justice Center to make sure that the independent redistricting commission got the funding it needed. Mr. Faso also mentions Adam Kincaid of the National Republican Redistricting Trust as part of the “great team” that helped achieve the results in New York despite Democratic efforts to obstruct at every turn.The legal case in New York went through three levels — an initial ruling in Steuben County, then two appeals. The opinion from the state’s highest court came from Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, an appointee of Democrat Andrew Cuomo. Judge DiFiore rejected the gerrymandered, Democrat-drawn districts as violating the principles of the state’s constitution.As the New York Times put it in a news story over the summer when Judge DiFiore resigned with years left in her term, the redistricting decision “enraged Democrats.” The Times quoted a Democratic member of Congress, Hakeem Jeffries, greeting the news of Judge DiFiore’s resignation by saying, “Good riddance.”Partisanship aside, the nice thing about the New York story is that the Republican gains in New York resulted not from drawing districts designed to be safe for Republicans, but from districts designed to be competitive, where voters had an actual choice.Persons on the ideological spectrum all the way from Ed Koch to Scott Walker can appreciate that is how democracy is supposed to work, with the voters choosing between the politicians, not the incumbent politicians choosing their voters.“If you want to win a tough political fight, it’s good to be on the side of the angels,” Mr. Cox told me. “We were fighting for fair districts.”

If GOP Takes the House, Here’s Whom To Thank

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