As I’ve noted before, the fact that my house, practically on the shores of the Gowanus Canal, shares a councilman with Greenpoint is not, in and of itself, proof that the lines for Brooklyn City Council districts are preposterous.
Districts have to end somewhere and, even under the fairest of plans, some neighborhood is going to get split in a manner which will seem unfair to those so victimized.
That being said the lines are ridiculous.
Given the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and geography, it is not per se preposterous that Park Slope would share a Councilman with Borough Park, or Brooklyn Heights with Greenpoint.
But the 1991 political need of Kensington resident Steve Dibrienza to have Carroll Gardens in his district, while still accommodating a Latino district based in Sunset Park, produced three atrocities of mapmaking (which the clueless press, including the NY Times, attributed entirely to the requirements of the VRA), which were improved in 2003, by reducing the atrocities to two and eliminating a few, but not all, of their most outrageous features.
Almost all of my neighborhood is in one council district, while my house is in another. The result for me has been a choice between candidates (some of high quality) with only a tangential concern about my local issues.
This has real life consequences. During a debate at a local political club in 2009, someone asked the candidates in my Councilmanic about the Gowanus Canal, only to have the moderator say that so little of the Canal was in the district that it really was not a concern.
In this phenomena, I am not alone, and neither is my neighborhood. Every resident of NYC has a member of Congress, a State Senator, and Assemblymember and a Councilmember.
Chances are, in one or more of any voter’s districts, one’s neighborhood is split. And chances are at least good that, in one of these neighborhoods, one‘s neighborhood is split in a way that is unfathomable every way but politically, in some cases in an manner which may qualify as unconscionable.
In other words, we all have some cause for complaint, but very few neighborhoods have that much more cause for complaint than others.
Take Bay Ridge.
Almost all of Bay Ridge has the same Councilmember. Almost all of Bay Ridge has the same member of Congress. Almost all of Bay Ridge has the same State Senator. Were it not for the effort by Republicans to separate the overwhelmingly Democratic Bay Ridge Towers from the rest of the neighborhood, I probably would not even have to use the word “almost.’
In the realm of reapportionment, when one compares it to other neighborhoods, one can hardly say that Bay Ridge has been victimized overall.
For instance, Borough Park goes into four different Senate Districts, and Sunset Park three.
Though somewhat smaller than Bay Ridge, my home area of coastal Brownstone Brooklyn has two Councilmembers, two State Senators and three members of Congress.
The even smaller area of Park Slope has three Councilmembers, two State Senators, and three members of Congress, as well as four members of the Assembly. In other words, an area which could (especially if combined with its neighbor, Windsor Terrace) dominate one Assembly District has been rendered relatively politically impotent.
But one never hears about “The Rape of Park Slope.”
Contrast this with Bay Ridge.
Prior to the 1982 reapportionment, Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights had dominated two local Assembly Districts. This was accomplished largely by dicing up Sunset Park Latinos into political impotence.
But no one ever heard about “The Rape of Sunset Park.” (probably because the complaints were all in Spanish).
Until a 1981 special election, both Bay Ridge based districts had elected Republicans. But the 1982 reapportionment divided the area into five districts, attaching parts to places like Brooklyn Heights and Coney Island, thereby eliminating any Republican seats.
In true Albany faction, the Democrats had total control over the Assembly reapportionment, while the Republicans had a free hand with the Senate. As a result, BayRidge/Dyker Heights based Republican Senator Chris Mega’s new District was virtually identical with his old one, give or take a few blocks in Bensonhurst and Bath Beach he picked up to eliminate a population shortfall.
And he got to hand pick those blocks himself.
Of course, Mega voted for the reapportionment bill, including the part which split his area in the Assembly.
Then as now, Bay Ridge had a bi-partisan group of local burghers which basically functioned as “The Bay Ridge Party;” it‘s platform being “we are special and things shall always remain as they were in 1955.”
Newspaper columnist/Attorney Chuck Otey, then as now, was one of the pillars of the Bay Ridge Status Quo Ante. His complaints have remained the same all these years he‘s still railing about such dear causes as the community’s entitlement to “reparations” for the use of eminent domain during the construction of the Verrazano, notwithstanding the fact that nearly all of the victims who hadn‘t already left the area for Staten Island, Jersey and points beyond had joined the Choir Invisible.
In 1982, the local burghers were outraged by the unwanted changes in their representation, and Chuck Otey was their designated hitter. And every week for years, Chuck Otey’s column in the Home Distorter would talk about the “Rape of Bay Ridge.”
Otey would even say “The Rape” was responsible for Chris Mega losing his Senate seat, which differed almost not at all from the one he had occupied before.
Amazingly, he’s still saying it.
And Mega spent two years screaming about “The Rape,” even though he’d enjoyed sloppy seconds from the gangbang.
This year, the burghers are at it again, with the civic, Republican and Conservative suspects joined by ambitious young Democratic District Leader Kevin Carroll, who has joined the parade in an effort to be seen as leading it.
They are demanding that all of Bay Ridge be put into one AD.
They are all so self absorbed about their suffering, even though many other neighborhoods have comparable issues at some or many levels–Bay Ridge is not really all that unique, but don’t tell them that.
Over the years, the complaints haven’t changed, and neither have most of the players, but to some extent the lines have.
The largest bulk of Bay Ridge, probably to its regret, is no longer linked with Brooklyn Heights, meaning it has lost the obsessive and careful attention bestowed upon it for two long decades by Eileen Dugan and Joan Millman.
But there are still a long arm reaching from Dov Hikind’s Borough Park to a portion of the Ridge he represents pretty much in name only. And another arm, mostly consisting of one lane of the Belt Parkway, connects a substantial portion of the area to the Brighton Beach/Coney Island based district of Alec Brook-Krasny. Traditionally, this area’s member has paid a good deal of attention to the Ridge, and in one case, such attention actually saved a vulnerable incumbent’s hash.
Another small portion of Bay Ridge, with a large number of Asians and Latinos, is attached to Sunset Park/Red Hook to provide a few extra voters to the not too dissimilar 51st AD. It is hard to find anything very offensive about this.
As I explained in more detail in my previous article, Assembly Districts are required to all be within of 10% of the population of each other (a deviation of 5% from the Statewide mean). Further, all Brooklyn Districts must be the same size as each other. Ass such, the shortfall in the 51st has to be made up somewhere, by dividing some neighborhood, and using part of the north of Bay Ridge is probably among the least offensive ways of doing so.
These days, the largest portion of Bay Ridge encompasses about 40% of a District which crosses the Verrazano into Staten Island, but as I’ve noted elsewhere, some district joining Staten Island to another borough is unavoidable, and joining it to the neighborhood it shares a bridge with is actually the least offensive way of dealing with that reality.
So, bottom line; for good and explainable reasons, Bay Ridge is not going to all be within one Assembly District. Both the 51st and Staten Island co-joinings are perfectly justifiable and will likely remain.
Let me opine further; they should remain.
Further, the hopes that Shelly Silver would create a new Bay Ridge Brooklyn based district for his favorite former Assemblywoman, Janele Hyer Spencer, are virtually nil.
Barring someone’s retirement, the numbers just aren’t there for a new Brooklyn AD, and as badly as Silver may want Janele back, he’s not likely to do so at the price of trying to oust a friendly incumbent.
So Bay Ridge will not be getting its own Assembly District.
But I am not completely unsympathetic. The Borough Park and especially the Brighton extensions are nearly impossible to justify (although, as offensive as the Brighton extension is, it is no worse than the displays of geographic acrobatics used to create a Republican Senate District for the Ridge's Marty Golden).
The Brighton and Borough Park extensions are not only unjustifiable democratically and aesthetically, they are unjustifiable politically.
“The Rape of Bay Ridge” occurred to elect Democrats by dividing up Republican turf.
But if the 2012 Presidential Election results are any indication, Bay Ridge may now be the most consistently Democratic white area in the Borough south of Brownstone Brooklyn.
In 1982, Lou Freda’s (now Peter Abbate’s) Dyker Heights/Bensonhurst based 49th AD was given a chunk of Borough Park to provide him with some reliable Democratic (as they then were in local elections) Orthodox Jewish votes.
They are no longer so reliably Democratic. In fact, they voted against Abbate in his last election, preferring a 20 year old twerp.
Arguably a bit of Bay Ridge, depending on how you define it, is already in Abbate’s Dyker Heights/Bensonhurst based district.
Why not give Abbate’s Jews to Hikind, who can handle them, and give Abbate Hikind’s unrepresented piece of Bay Ridge?
Further, the logic of population shortfalls impels black Brooklyn Assembly Districts to move south, picking up heavily black areas represented by Alan Maisel and Helen Weinstein.
The best place for the white Assembly members to go is West, Young Man.
If everyone moves a bit West, then Abbate could pick up even more of Bay Ridge.
And, as a bonus, Bay Ridge Towers could be put in the same Senate and Congressional districts as the rest of the neighborhood (the Council will have to wait for a separate process). Marty Golden might object to this in private, but if it doesn't happen, it will be entirely his fault.
It’s all a bit tricky (except for the Towers part), and complicated by a lot of other considerations, including the growing Republican trends across much of Southern Brooklyn, but the bottom line is that “The Rape of Bay Ridge” could be made a lot less egregious.
And maybe then, they would just lie back and enjoy it.