Op Ed: Democrats’ New Obstacle to Gerrymandering New York

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has made no secret of his desire to redistrict New York’s House seats before the 2028 election. Jeffries, who represents a Brooklyn-based district, even tapped close ally and Rochester-area congressman Joe Morelle to be his point man on their efforts to gerrymander the state’s House seats. The Democratic Leader’s task, however, may have gotten a lot more difficult as a result of the recent Democratic Socialists of America wave that swept the Empire State’s 2026 Democratic primaries.

While Jeffries and Morelle may be hellbent on gerrymandering New York’s House districts to allow Democrats to pick up GOP-held seats, there’s no guarantee that the incoming DSA-aligned Members of Congress will see things the same way. After all, the Democratic Leader could give his blessing to a gerrymander that makes a Democratic seat less progressive just as easily as he could back making a GOP-held district more Democratic. Do these socialists really trust that Jeffries, through his allies in Albany, won’t redraw their districts to ensure that they face unfriendly Democratic primary electorates?

Getting the buy-in from the new socialist members of his own caucus isn’t Jeffries only new obstacle in the way of a 2028 gerrymander of New Yorks House districts. In order to pass the constitutional amendment through the state legislature eliminating the state constitution’s ban on partisan gerrymandering, Jeffries will need the support of the DSA’s members in the state Assembly and Senate. The DSA’s ranks are growing in Albany; they even won primaries in 2026 for state legislative seats in Buffalo and Syracuse, Upstate cities with Democratic primary-voting electorates thought to be unfriendly toward socialism. With their growing numbers and influence in Albany, will these DSA state legislators back a gerrymander that might put their comrades in Congress’ reelection prospects at risk? It seems unlikely.

Even if Jeffries is somehow able to get the DSA-backed House members and state legislators to back his plan to gerrymander for 2028, he still faces another significant obstacle: the voters of New York State. Before any Democrat-supported redistricting can take place for the 2028 election, the state constitution must be amended to remove its explicit prohibition on partisan gerrymandering. Approval by the voters is the last step in the Empire State’s process for amending the state constitution. A referendum on the amendment could come as soon as Election Day 2027.

But even though New York is a deeply blue state, it is not guaranteed that the voters will approve an amendment to the state constitution bringing back partisan gerrymandering. A recent Siena poll showed that, by a two-to-one margin, New Yorkers oppose changing the state constitution to permit partisan gerrymandering. And not only are New York Republicans and independents against it, but the Siena poll shows Democrats oppose it, too.

Beyond poll numbers, history demonstrates that Jeffries will have a hard time selling partisan gerrymandering to New York’s voters. In 2021, Democrats in the state legislature sent a constitutional amendment to the voters to weaken the state constitution’s anti-gerrymandering safeguards, but even New York’s overwhelmingly Democratic electorate said no to it. New Yorkers soundly defeated this proposal at the 2021 General Election and allowed the state constitution’s ban on partisan gerrymandering to remain intact.

On allowing New York Democrats to redistrict the state’s House seats mid-decade, Hakeem Jeffries is simply not holding a strong political hand.

If Jeffries had his way, the gerrymander he wants for 2028 would have already happened. With Jeffries’ okay, Democratic “superlawyer” Marc Elias filed a lawsuit late last year in state court arguing that the sole GOP-held House seat in New York City was drawn in violation of the state’s Voting Rights Act. While Elias and Jeffries were successful in the state courts, the U.S. Supreme Court put the brakes on the state court decision, preventing any changes to New York’s House district maps for the 2026 election cycle.

Given the efforts in 2025 and 2026 to convince the judiciary to allow for a new round of redistricting, it’s hard to believe Jeffries won’t continue his push to change New York’s state constitution and enact a gerrymander for the 2028 elections. But the changing political landscape and the emergence of a new crop of DSA-aligned, extreme left lawmakers likely creates new and unexpected stumbling blocks for Jeffries and his friends in the Democratic establishment. And, of course, Jeffries will also have to convince what appears to be a highly skeptical New York electorate to vote to undo the state constitution’s ban on partisan gerrymandering.

Like a good party leader, Hakeem Jeffries’ goal, through a mid-decade redistricting of his home state’s congressional seats, is to make the House more Democratic. The DSA’s goal is to make the House Democratic Caucus more left-wing. These aims are not the same. In fact, they’re in tension. That tension, in the months ahead, will prove to be a major political headache for the House Democrats’ top man.

Joseph T. Burns is former legal counsel to the NYS Board of Elections. He is currently with the law firm Holtzman Vogel.