On the eve of the City Council Public Hearing on Redistricting in the wake of the 2010 census, the New Rochelle Republican Party has released its plan. Earlier in the day the New Rochelle Citizens Committee released its own Redistricting plan. The Democrats released their plan on April 8th.
District 1 13,099 31% Hispanic, 27% Hispanic 18+
District 2 12,878
District 3 12, 530 >50% NH Blk, >50% 18+ NH Blk
District 4 13,670 56% Hispanic, 52% Hispanic 18+
District 5 12, 414
District 6 12, 471
For the uninitiated, the Democrats and Republicans will all talk about their desire to be “fair” and follow Federal guidelines for redistricting but the real goal is achieve a political advantage within Federal guidelines. The Democrats (the majority) will say their plan is fair and offer to make minor (i.e. meaningless) concessions. The Republicans (the minority) will say that plan is unfair. In the end the GOP will try to avoid running on lines drawn by Democrats by seeking to have a Federal judge to intervene and the Democrats will try to run on the lines they have drawn by pushing through their plan on a party line vote and using City resources to defend the adopted (i.e. Bramson) plan by keeping it out of court. The key players will be minority groups in New Rochelle (i.e. Latinos, African-Americans) who will be most likely to have legal standing to file a lawsuit. Of course, it is always possible that all sides will come to some sort of compromise but that seems unlikely given the extreme nature of the Democrats plan which radically alters District’s 1, 2 and 4 and impacts Latino and African-American voting blocks.
New Rochelle GOP Redistricting Plan by District
New Rochelle GOP Redistricting Plan, Comprehensive
NR-GOP_REPFINAL-36X76_2011-1.pdf