After Bob Turner himself, you know who the biggest winners of last night's stunning upset GOP victory in NY-09 were? Upstate New York Republicans. With NY losing two seats in redistricting, the conventional wisdom has long been that one member of each party would be made to walk the plank, given the split control of the state legislature. Before Weinergate, it looked like 5th CD Rep. Gary Ackerman was on the hot seat for the Dems, while Republicans were busy giving each other nervous glances, like a pack of penguins ready to push one of their own off the edge of an iceberg.
After Anthony Weiner's implosion, it was Ackerman's turn to breath a sigh of relief, as the new CW instantly declared that the 9th District would get carved up, just as soon as an unambitious Democratic placeholder won the special election. Yeah, oops. Believe it or not, this was an outcome I feared could happen the moment Weiner announced his resignation:
So Crowley needs to find someone who can win, but is unambitious enough to seek a second term. That sort of candidate could be hard to find — and if that's what Crowley insists on, it could put an already marginal seat at further risk. Apart from the Staten Island-based 13th, the 9th is the least Democratic district in the city, and it's been trending away from us. Filled with conservative white ethnics, this seat went for Al Gore by a huge 67-30 margin, but sank to 56-44 for Kerry and then 55-44 for Obama. It was also Michael Bloomberg's best district in his tight 2009 election. Though the mayor won by just four points citywide, he took the 9th by 70-26. [...]
So I'd say Republicans are a real threat to win this seat, especially if Crowley insists in picking a placeholder. And if the GOP does pick it up, it'll have serious implications for redistricting. With the state legislature split, the likeliest compromise is to eliminate one downstate Democratic seat (as I noted above) and one upstate Republican seat. But if Republicans take over Weiner's seat, that screws up the math entirely.
Assuming Democrats would still want the 9th to get blasted to smithereens, it could force them to give up an upstate Democratic seat instead. But that's not easily done. For reasons of geography, the two most junior Democrats (Bill Owens in the 23rd and just-elected Kathy Hochul in the 26th) are hard to de-district. A Louise Slaughter retirement could ease things, but despite her age (81), she doesn't look like she wants to go anywhere. Here's another possibility: Continue with the original plan of nuking Ackerman's seat (along with that of an upstate freshman GOPer), leave the 9th more or less intact, and hope to win it back in 2012.
I don't think sticking with Plan A — eliminating Ackerman's district and continuing with plans to get rid of an upstate GOPer — really makes sense, since Republicans in the state Senate are probably much more interested in protecting a member of the upstate delegation, rather than the 70-year-old Turner. (By the way, is that some kind of record age for a freshman?) So I figure Turner's district still goes, but instead, an upstate Democrat goes along with him.
With that in mind, I'd like to suggest a mini redistricting contest. (Just a "friendly" match, no babka.) Draw a plan that eliminates one upstate Democratic. You can do this either by mashing up two Dems, or by sticking a Dem into a red district they'd be unlikely to want to contest. Do your worst!
P.S. If you're new to all this, you'll want to use Dave's Redistricting App for map-drawing purposes.