Hakeem Jeffries says IRC's new NY District lines should be "meticulously scrutinized"

Hakeem Jeffries says IRC’s new NY District lines should be “meticulously scrutinized”

Lawmakers organizations are continuing to react to New York’s Congressional District map drawn by New York’s Independent Redistricting Commission this week. It’s now moving to the legislature for a vote.

The IRC says their 2024 map is more than 90 percent the same compared to the 2022 map, a map that was drawn by a court ordered special master.

“The master’s map hadn’t been challenged to its legality or propriety, or whatever,” Charles Nesbitt, the Republican Chair of the IRC, says. “There are not really big changes in the [2024] map anywhere.”

In 2022, Republicans flipped four Congressional seats in the State of New York. Former Congressman Lee Zeldin, who ran and lost in the Gubernatorial race in 2022, urged the New York State legislature to adopt the map the IRC drew up on Thursday.

But, across the aisle, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D), pushed back against the map moving on to the legislature, saying it doesn’t protect historically under-represented communities.

“There is a reason to to be concerned with the failure of the IRC to address many of the flaws in the current map drawn by an unelected, out of town, special master in 2022,” Jeffries spokesperson Andy Eichar says.

Some State Democrats have pushed against the new map already, but Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has been noncommittal since the map was released.

“The Senate Majority is eager to review the proposed map submitted by the IRC. We plan to discuss and decide our subsequent actions soon, taking into account the election cycle calendar. This process is critically important and we are committed to concluding it in a manner that upholds fairness and democracy,” Stewart-Cousins said in a statement.

State lawmakers are supposed to be on vacation next week, but there’s been some talk of the Senate being called back to vote on the map. Nonetheless, many expect the lines to be challenged in court, likely continuing to interrupt the process.