NY Dems redrew House lines after tossing bipartisan proposal. What changed in their plan?

New York lawmakers are weighing a revised congressional district map of their own making that proposes only small changes to a bipartisan plan Democrats rejected earlier this week.

A bill setting new lines for New York's 26 House districts was introduced Monday night, only hours after Democratic supermajorities in the Senate and Assembly shot down the version approved this month by the state's Independent Redistricting Commission. Both chambers are expected to vote on the new map no later than Thursday.

The rejection of a map with bipartisan support had prompted Republicans to cry foul and predict a gerrymandered alternative by Democrats. But the proposal that quickly emerged made no changes at all in the commission's lines for 16 districts and added an edge for only one Democratic incumbent.

Republican leaders were silent about the proposal on Tuesday, leaving unclear if they plan to challenge the map in court, as they did in 2022 and vowed to do again if Democrats skewed lines in their favor.

What changes did the Democrats propose with new map?

Under the legislature's proposal, two House members from each party who stood to gain from the commission's map — Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro and Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan — would lose most of the re-election boosts they would have gotten, according to an analysis by political mappers at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

The new map still made Molinaro's 19th District and Ryan's 18th District slightly more favorable to each of them, but erased the more appealing shifts the commission had proposed. Ryan, a Democrat, would wind up with a district that President Joe Biden won by 9.2 percentage points in 2020, while Molinaro, a Republican, would be seeking to hold a seat Biden won by 4.4 points.

One Syracuse-area Republican, Rep. Brandon Williams, would be hamstrung with a bluer district. Williams would be defending his seat in a district Biden won by 11.6 points, 4 points bluer than it was before.

But his party would be hard-pressed to object: the new proposal recast his 22nd District in exactly the same way as the independent map that GOP leaders and lawmakers strongly supported.

Court ruling: NY to draw redistricting lines again, top court rules. What that means for 2024 races

One significant map change was made on Long Island. Lawmakers shifted lines in way that help Rep. Tom Suozzi, the Democrat who won a special election this month to fill a vacant seat representing parts of Nassau County and Queens.

Suozzi's district would get 3 points bluer, becoming one Biden won by 11.4 points.

No tinkering at all was done to two other swing districts critical to this year's battle for House control: those of Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in the Hudson Valley and Rep. Anthony D'Esposito on Long Island.

Lawmakers tinkered with House lines in the Bronx, slightly reshaping the district in which Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Westchester County Executive George Latimer are waging a heated Democratic primary. But those changes merely swapped pieces of the Bronx in the 16th District and made no changes in Westchester, where most of the district is located.

CUNY Graduate Center mapped the new proposal on Tuesday based on the unwieldy descriptions in the bill, which lists the counties, towns, cities and census tract numbers in each district. To view that map and compare it the redistricting commission's proposal or the existing lines, go to newyork.redistrictingandyou.org.

Tossed map: NY redistricting: Back to drawing board as Dem lawmakers reject map by bipartisan panel

Will new map touch off a legal fight over redistricting in NY?

The proposal seemed a far cry from what furious Republicans warned of after Democratic lawmakers in both chambers tossed the commission map, over GOP objections.

"They should have been embarrassed when they were caught red-handed in their unconstitutional gerrymander in 2022," state Republican Chairman Ed Cox said in a statement after the vote. "But Albany Democrats are incapable of shame. They again seek to rig elections in back rooms rather than compete at the ballot box."

Cox and other Republican leaders made no immediate comments on the fairness of the Democrats' map or if they will sue. With candidate petitioning for House races starting on Tuesday, a lawsuit almost certainly would force a delay in the June 25 congressional primaries. A similar court challenge in 2022 pushed those elections into August.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, speaking to reporters at an event in Schenectady County on Tuesday, defended the legislature's right to revise the lines, rebuffing GOP complaints that it was overriding a panel created for that very task by a 2014 constitutional amendment.

"The Constitution allows a multi-step process, which is that there is a commission that's convened in a bipartisan way — yes, to draw maps — but it is the prerogative of the legislature to vote yes or no, and if they vote no, they have an alternative," Hochul said. "That's exactly what is allowed in the Constitution."

If Republicans don't sue, the approval of the legislature's map this week would conclude a three-year redistricting saga in New York and solidify House lines for the next four elections. Democrats won a lawsuit last year that forced the redistricting commission to propose a map to replace the court-imposed lines used for the 2022 elections.

If they do sue, they could be prevented from bringing the case in a Republican-leaning county, as they did in 2022. A bill passed Monday by the Senate and being considered by the Assembly would limit redistricting challenges to courts in Manhattan or three Democratic-leaning counties: Westchester, Albany and Erie.

Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Dems toss NY bipartisan redistricting map. What they proposed instead