Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday she’s still game for the Democrats’ to carve up the Empire State’s congressional maps — a move that would give them the inside track in elections.
Hochul told reporters she’s still considering her fellow party members’ mid-decade redistricting push a week after blue-wave election victories in the midterms that saw Democrats retake the House of Representatives, Congress and every statewide New York race.
“The political landscape has changed but I’m gonna take that into account,” Hochul said at an unrelated Tuesday press conference in Manhattan.
New York Democrats first started pitching the idea of redrawing the state’s congressional districts after Texas started a similar process in 2025 ahead of the midterm elections.
The pre-midterm push evolved into a redistricting arms race with nine states across the country having new US house districts before the midterm elections.
Traditionally, districts were redrawn based on the latest Census data every 10 years.
“That being said, those newly drawn lines are still there,” Hochul said referring to GOP-drawn districts across the country.
“And while it didn’t have an effect on this year’s election, there’s always another election every two years,” she continued.
State lawmakers previously proposed a constitutional amendment that would nix the state’s ban on “gerrymandering,” the practice of shaping a district to favor a particular party of candidate.
Lifting the ban would allow Democrats to redraw maps mid-decade and allow a simple majority of chambers of the state legislature to override proposals from the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission.
Meanwhile, New York’s congressional delegation has 20 Democratic members to the GOP’s six representatives after Cait Conley triumphed over incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler on election night.
Democrats control every statewide office in New York State and have dominant majorities in both the state Senate and state Assembly.
The party, which has a more than 2-to-1 voter enrollment advantage over Republicans in the state, will occupy 47 of the state’s 63 Senate seats as well as 111 of the 150 Assembly seats starting in January.
Hochul said that she has spoken to both Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins about “where we want to go with this” without offering specific details.
“We can’t assume that there’s going to be the same outcome in two years and so, I looked at it long term,” she said.
