By: Ilana Siyance

Democrats are now in an uproar after mapmaker Jonathan Cervas redrew district maps in New York for the House of Representatives and State Senate, as per a court order.

As reported by the NY Times, Cervas was appointed by NYS Supreme Court judge, Justice Patrick F. McAllister, to create new district maps.  The maps are to replace the ones recently drawn up by Democrats, which were deemed in court as “unconstitutionally drawn with political bias”.  Democrats, with gerrymandering groups, had been ambitious in redrawing the maps, hoping to pick up several seats in the House, which had long been held by the GOP.  The Republicans had been outraged, claiming in a lawsuit that the redistricting was unlawfully changing representation for districts based on political motives.

Mr. Cervas, 37, a postdoctoral fellow from Pittsburgh and formerly a bartender from Las Vegas, quickly became NYS’s power broker.  His new maps are slated to radically reshape several NYS districts, shuffling the state’s political future for the next decade.  The new maps make it highly likely that the upcoming general-election campaigns from Long Island to upstate New York will be very competitive. Republicans are silently pleased with the results.  Democrats are worried and infighting has erupted– particularly in districts including Manhattan, where incumbent Democrats, including Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney have been set against each other for the upcoming primary.  The party now runs the risk of losing its comfortable majority.

For his part, Cervas has provided a lengthy explanation, which he released on Saturday, for the rationale which guided his drawing.   “I serve the court, I serve democracy. That’s it,” Cervas said in an interview. “If people want to make me important, so be it, but I just stick with my moral principles and things I’ve learned and apply the law as its written.”  He calls himself “pro-democracy,” refraining from choosing a political party to align himself with.   He said he hates politics.  “I don’t really like the bickering, the animosities, the games,” Cervas said.

This, however, has not stopped Democrats from attacking his new lines.  Representative Hakeem Jeffries, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens, is one of those critics. “The unelected, out-of-town special master did a terrible job, produced an unfair map that did great violence to Black and Latino communities throughout the city, and unnecessarily detonated the most Jewish district in America,” said Jeffries, who is chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and the second-highest-ranking Black lawmaker in Congress.

As per the Times, Mr. Cervas has responded that his map “fully reflected” how NY’s main minority populations are “geographically concentrated.”