A measure which would tie New York’s electoral votes to the result of the national popular vote has stalled in the Assembly. It is a complicated concept that would side-step the Constitution’s establishment of the electoral college.

In short, this bill would require that New York’s 31 (soon to be 29) electors vote for the winner of the national popular vote regardless of preference or how New York state voted as a whole. But, this would not go into effect until enough states with enough electoral votes (majority = 270) make this their law as well.

From the AP via The Syracuse Post Standard:

The state Assembly’s Democratic majority, meeting behind closed doors, balked at a bill that would have New York join 20 other states where the popular vote movement is gaining strength.

[snip]

“Obviously it slows (the effort) down,” said the bill’s prime sponsor, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat. “I’m not sure if or when the bill will come to a vote, even though there was a huge number of sponsors.”

More than 70 Democrats and Republicans in the 150-seat Assembly signed on as co-sponsors or have publicly supported the idea. The movement grew from the long disputed 2000 presidential race, in which the Electoral College vote went to Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore, the winner of the national popular vote. The Electoral College has chosen a president who didn’t win the popular vote four times in U.S. history.

I think this is an excellent idea: it would keep the constitutionally-required electoral college intact while basically rendering it defunct. This proposal, in my view, would boost voter turnout and make presidential candidates pay attention to New York instead of just taking us for granted. The State Senate is already on record as having passed the bill, but now it’s up to the Assembly to keep the ball rolling. A majority of Assemblymembers are in favor of this measure and it should be passed expeditiously in time for the next presidential election.

It is wrong for the loser to be elected president — as in the case of George Bush in 2000. Regardless of how you may feel about what happened in Florida that year, it is undeniable that more American voters voted for Al Gore and preferred to have him in the White House. This has already happened four times in American history and it’s time for the Assembly to act.

As political corruption nationwide escalates, so too escalates the amount of money which funds that corruption.  After all, corruption feels the effects of inflation as well as the rest of us.  From Pressconnects.com comes this sickening information regarding Albany’s new cap on political donations:

“As the limits go up, the reliance on big donors goes up,” said NYPIRG’s Blair Horner. “It’s much more efficient to make one phone call for $100,000 than to make a hundred calls for $1,000 each.”

[snip]

“The system is designed for elected officials to cater to the whim of the wealthy and powerful, and the wealthy and powerful don’t always have the same priorities as average New Yorkers,” Horner said.

NYPIRG and other good-government advocates have sought better campaign finance laws to limit the influence of money from special interests and individuals in politics. The practice is so common in Albany it has a term: “pay to play.”

According to NYPIRG, donors can now legally give $102,300 to a political party. That’s up over $8,000 from last year.

And, here’s the kicker:

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who also is calling for substantial overhaul of campaign finance laws, collected over $28 million in campaign donations.

Well, I hope that he carries through with campaign finance reform, because otherwise, what’s us poor folk to do??

This post has been written and cross-posted, by me, from the Swing State Project:

After only two years of a slim 32-30 Democratic majority in the New York State Senate, Republicans in this past election barely took back the chamber that they had previously held continuously for more than forty years. People around the country endlessly ask the question: how is it possible that Republicans have a majority of state senators in a state as “blue” as New York?

There is no simple answer to that question. Suffice it to say, one of the most important factors is gerrymandering. Republicans did a masterful job of redistricting a very favorable map for themselves ten years ago. The current map is littered with Republican senators holding light blue Obama districts all over Long Island (9-0 Republican) and Upstate (21-4). With the great help of Daves Redistricting App 2.0, I set about in the task of redistricting New York’s State Senate districts with three main goals in mind: 1.) connect Democratic towns and cities in Long Island, 2.) preserve majority-minority districts in New York City, and 3.) consolidate small cities Upstate. Much of the basis for my analysis comes from jeffmd’s excellent post on the State Senate written in 2009 in which he looked at the numbers for the current districts. Inspecting the presidential toplines, it was determined that the cutoff between Republican and Democratic districts is about 58-60% Obama. My map uses that percentage as the benchmark. It would create 10 Democratic districts at over 58% in Upstate New York and another four at over 62% in Long Island. Combined with New York City, this would be more than enough to give Democrats a two-to-one majority in the State Senate. So without further ado, here is what I came up with:

New York

Note, also, that I broke the state into four regions for simplicity: Upstate, Westchester/Bronx/Manhattan, Brooklyn/Queens/Staten Island, and Long Island. Here is another table that breaks down the numbers by region:

As you can see from the table, I redraw the map so that NYC gained two seats at the expense of Upstate New York, while Long Island remained the same at 9 districts. The population of each district in each region is very equal with the greatest deviation of -2.1% below the ideal population in the region of Westchester/Bronx/Manhattan. The rest of the seats compensate for this by being about .5% above the ideal. Before discussing the statewide changes that would occur under this redistricting plan, first let me go through the four regions themselves…

Long Island

(The table above is a portion derived from the table in the intoduction. However, included in this table and the three that are to follow it, the number for each district has a link to a picture of that district’s new boundaries. Also, I included the incumbent senators in whichever district that they would live in if my map went into affect. Each senator’s party is denoted by the font color, and the data entries include the number district that each senator currently represents in the State Senate, as well as where they live and a link to their official biographies.)

Long Island has been the province of Republicans in the New York State Senate for many decades. At the height of the Democratic wave in 2008, Long Island elected only two Democratic senators out of nine total. Both of them lost their seats in this last election, returning Long Island to its usual position of having only Republicans represent them in the State Senate. It’s not as though Long Island is that conservative overall — indeed, all but one of the current nine senate districts in Nassau and Suffolk Counties was won by Obama. Republicans have been very effective in diluting Democratic votes, thereby allowing many independents who fear a complete Democratically-controlled Albany to elect Republican candidates for the State Senate.

Of the eight Obama-voting Long Island Senate districts, none of them were won by more than about 55%, which is a very managable percentage for incumbent GOP senators, including the new Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who hails from Rockville Centre in Nassau County. In this region, the goal was to be realistic about what could be achieved and very cautious in achieving it. I drew up four Democratic districts each at over 62% for Obama.

Three out of the four new Democratic districts that I created are left open for any Dem who wants them. The most Democratic district in the region — SD-8, based in Hempstead and Long Beach — is occupied by Skelos and Senator Charles Fuschillo. As the Black and Hispanic populations are spread throughout Long Island, each district retains their white majority.

Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island

While much of Staten Island remains a stubborn Republican bulwark, Queens and Brooklyn voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2008. They are home to most of New York City’s black population, as well as significant Hispanic and Asian communities. Since this area of the state is so heavily Democratic, the overriding goal for this region was not to squeeze out more Democratic seats, but to strengthen a few shaky ones and create new Voting Rights Act (VRA) districts wherever possible. Under my plan, this region would gain one additional seat as a result of new population estimates given by the Census Bureau.

This map preserves the two African-American majority districts in Queens and adds a fifth black majority district to the four that already exist in Brooklyn. One of the best things about this map is that it creates an Asian plurality district that is based in Flushing and spread throughout many parts of Queens. The 16th district is currently represented by Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky, but if the Asian community were able to unite around a consensus candidate, she could well be displaced in a primary. I found it impossible to make the 16th District any more heavily Asian than 48%, but the next largest racial community was 24% of the population, so if Stavisky were to retire, this would most likely go to an Asian candidate. It also preserves the two Hispanic majority districts in Queens and Brooklyn.

The recently-flipped 11th and 15th Districts would be strengthened for the Democrats. Carl Kruger’s 27th district in southern Brooklyn would be radically changed into the 24th district, both strengthening our vote there and also allowing for a primary challenge to the less-than-venerable “Amigo.” At 55% for Obama, the 24th is one of two districts that I created below the magic 58% line that I still counted in the Democratic column — largely because presidential voting patterns in southern Brooklyn are volatile and not necessarily indicative of a broader ideological differentiation. What Republican-leaning communities that do exist here would be consolidated into two large McCain majority districts: the 23rd in southern Brooklyn and the 26th in southern Staten Island, both of which are currently represented by Republican Senators anyway.

Manhattan, Bronx, and Westchester County

This region, encompassing Manhattan, Bronx, and Westchester County, is the most strongly Democratic area in one of the most Democratic-leaning states in the Union. It is home to the largest Hispanic communities in the Northeast United States — mostly Peurto Rican, but also Dominican, Mexican, and other Latin American heritages. The white communities here also tend to be much more liberal than their counterparts in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. That is especially the case in Manhattan and Westchester, which are home to many educated urban white professionals.

All twelve districts here are represented by Democrats in the State Senate. That would stay the same under my plan, except for the addition of a thirteenth Democratic district. This is the second distric that comes at the expense of Upstate New York — the other one being in Brooklyn.

Both majority African-American districts would remain intact. The map also adds another Hispanic-majority district to the four that currently exist.

Upstate New York

Here more than anywhere else in the state, Republicans dominate in local and state politics. Recently, Democrats lost five of their ten Upstate congressional districts. This is also where Republicans picked up two Senate seats and gained about a half-dozen Assembly seats last fall. Nevertheless, there are still many strongly Democratic areas of Upstate New York: mostly medium- and small-sized cities and liberal inner-suburbs that dot the landscape from the Hudson Valley to the Great Lakes. The goal was to consolidate those areas and churn out as many new Democratic districts as possible. Here again, as in Long Island, the minority ethnic populations are too spread out to create any VRA districts. Instead, this is where the great bulk of Republican Senate seats would hit the buzz-saw.

The region as a whole would lose two seats, mostly from the equalization of populations in each Senate district — which Republicans largely disregarded during the last redistricting ten years ago — as well as the much greater population growth downstate.

I was able to get about half of these 23 districts in the Democratic column. The 40th District, based in Rockland County, is the second of only two districts in this entire map (the other being in southern Brooklyn) that I counted as a Democratic district even though Obama’s vote there was less than 58%. The reason is that this seat was one of very few elected offices around the country that Democrats actually gained from the Republicans in this last election. The seat would also bolster its Democratic vote through redistricting, so I figured, if David Carlucci could pick it up for the Dems in a year like 2010, odds are pretty good that he’ll be able to hold it in a lot of other political environments.

I was able to get ten of these districts at over 58% for Obama. One of the most certain Democratic gains under this plan would be my native 56th Senate District, based in the City of Rochester and the Town of Brighton. Republican Senator Joe Robach has vexingly been able to hold onto this district for years despite the fact that it voted by a two-to-one margin for Barack Obama in 2008 (66%-33%). Under this plan, Robach’s hometown of Greece would be removed from the 56th and replaced by the Democratic-leaning suburbs of Gates and Irondequoit.

The four seats that we do hold here would be strengthened. The 60th District, which is even more Democratic district than the 56th, voted out a Democratic incumbent last fall. This district would remain largely unchanged in the hope that a different Dem might likely be able to win it back from freshman Republican Senator Mark Grisanti.

As is convention when State Senate seats are redistricted in Upstate New York, I left every town intact. In addition, only two cities are divided between different districts: Buffalo and Tonawanda (just south of Niagra Falls). The self-imposed requirement that towns be left undivided was a major constraint, but it would probably help a plan like this to survive a court challenge.

Summary:

A major drawback of this map is that without realizing it, I redraw the lines with no attention paid to which district each senator lives in. Hence, a lot of Democratic primaries and games of musical chairs would happen in this plan that might otherwise have been avoided. But, by the time I realized it, it was too late. In any event, many more Republicans get stuck together than Democrats, so that serves to counter-balance this problem.

This map pays tribute to the Voting Rights Act by creating three new majority-minority district: a new Black-majority district in Brooklyn, an Asian-plurality district in Queens, and a fifth Hispanic-majority district in the Bronx.

My plan also evens out the population disparities between regions by making every seat within only a few thousands residents off from the ideal population of 316,280 people per district. In applying a fairer division among the state’s population and using new population estimates given by the Census, Upstate New York lost two districts to New York City.

I am confident that if this plan went into affect at the next election, Democrats would hold a large 43-19 majority in the New York State Senate for many years to come. But alas, Republicans won back this chamber last year and thus, it is not to be. However, I’m still convinced that with new population estimates, it will be extremely difficult for Republicans to redistrict another map that would allow them to retain the majority. Their luck has simply run out. They may be able to preserve many incumbents in Upstate and Long Island, but remember that Democrats only need to gain one seat for them to retake the majority (a 31-31 tie would allow Democratic Lt. Gov. Bob Duffy to act as the tie-breaker). And as I’ve shown through this analysis, downstate will have to gain two seats for the next redistricting plan to be in compliance with the Census.

It took many practice tries, but I believe this map provides the strongest possible plan for a large Democratic majority in the Senate that not only respects existing VRA districts, but also creates three new ones. In short, this is the ideal Democratic redistricting plan for the New York State Senate.

New York’s new Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is starting the job with sky-high favorability ratings, according to the latest public opinion survey just released by Siena College. It shows those with a favorable opinion of the new governor at 70%, including 60% of Republicans and 65% of Independents. Lt. Gov. Bob Duffy and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman remain largely unknown to the general public, with 72% and 60% of New Yorkers polled saying they either don’t know or have no opinion.

This is clearly the honey-moon period of the Cuomo Administration. That’s not to say that his ratings will never be this high after another couple of months, but that would be very difficult to achieve. Cuomo needs to hit the ground running on political reform or else I believe the rest of his program will face a lot of roadblocks in the Legislature.

The new chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House, Representative Peter King from Long Island, is calling for stricter gun-control laws in wake of the Tuscon shootings last week. The legislation that he introduced would make it illegal to bring a firearm within 1,000 feet of a government official. This tragedy has re-sparked the debate over gun control that has remained dormant since the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007.

From the HuffPost:

Over on Capitol Hill, gun control advocates are planning a major push in response to Saturday’s shootings. Freshmen Congress members, particularly Giffords’s state colleagues, Arizona freshman Republicans David Schweikert and Paul Gosar, will be among the main targets of the lobby effort.

Gun controls advocates will push not only for the legislation announced by King, but also for a bill proposed by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), which would limit the sale of high-capacity clips like the one used by alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner.

“The horrendously tragic circumstances involved in this event and that it involves a member of congress changes the dynamic a bit,” Kristen Rand, legislative director for Violence Policy Center, told HuffPost. “There’s a sense there’s more momentum.”

And yet, while it would seem like an ideal time to push for gun restrictions, given public outcry over the violence that took place in Tucson, Ariz. the National Rifle Association has, notably, abstained from lobbying against potential bills — or even talking about how the shooting relates to gun policy at all.

Speaker Boehner, however, has already ruled out new gun control legislation, so it seems that something like this would require a massive public outcry.

Four reform-minded Democratic Senators have broken off from the Democratic caucus: Diane Savino of Staten Island, Jeffrey Klein of the Bronx, David Carlucci of Rockland County, and David Valesky of Syracuse. This surprise move will allow these Democrats to exercise greater independence from Senator John Sampson, who was recently reelected to be the Democratic Leader without their support.

From the Syracuse Post-Standard:

The four senators expressed their independence in the first and only votes on the floor of the Senate today. They joined Republicans in voting against Sen. John Sampson, a Democrat, as majority leader. Then, they joined the Democrats in voting against Sen. Dean Skelos, a Republican, as majority leader. Skelos won.

“I made this decision with the people of my district in the forefront of my mind,” Valesky said. “They are rightly sick and tired of the status quo in Albany, and have lost faith in their state government. We know that the ways of the past don’t work, and if we want to restore the faith of the people, we have to try something new.”

Sampson is truly an embarrassment to every Democrat in this state and why he would be reelected as Senate Leader is totally beyond me. I suspect this new caucus will dissolve soon after the next election, but in the meantime, they may wield a lot of influence if it becomes difficult for the Republicans to hold all of their members in line in a tough vote.

Here is a link to yesterday’s Daily Show where Kirsten Gillibrand talks to Jon Stewart.

I was unable to embed the video but the show is very much worth a look-see.  Gillibrand presents herself well.  It almost gives you something to hold onto in this time of joblessness, coupled with corporate greed and corruption, which has delivered to us a myriad of disappointing legislation.

(The interviews for the new Republican National Chair couldn’t have been more laughable if they had been scripted by Saturday Night Live.)

Enjoy.

Just thought you would want to know:

WOR 710 AM said today it is canceling Beck’s program as of Jan. 17 and replacing him with another syndicated talk show hosted by Mike Gallagher, the New York Daily News reported.

Director Dave Damelio resigned today from the Rochester International Airport.  Channel 13 covered the story:

A report by our news partners at the Democrat and Chronicle found Director Dave Damelio spent more than $21,000 on cigars, bars and restaurants catering to cigar smokers over a two-year period.

21,000 dollars on cigars, bars and restaurants.  21,000 dollars.  Lovely.

Susan Walsh has been appointed to replace our big-spending director:

A replacement for Greater Rochester International Airport Director David Damelio has already been named following his resignation.

Susan L. Walsh, Esq., has been appointed to the position. Walsh, who has served as Monroe County’s budget director since 2008, will assume her new post immediately.

As a result of Walsh leaving her post as budget director, some rearranging will be going on in the county government:

As a result of Walsh’s departure to her new post, Brooks also announced that the Monroe County Office of Management and Budget will become a division of the Department of Finance. Scott M. Adair, CPA, Monroe County’s chief financial officer, will continue in his role as director of finance while also assuming the duties of the budget director.

Has this role really been eliminated?  Is this really going to abolish the position of budget director and therefore the paycheck of said budget director?

If so, then I applaud Brook’s choice.