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Could We Go Ahead and Send Them Peter King Right Now?
With Bouldin away at the front fighting one last rearguard action in the War on Christmas, it falls to me to break the bad news here at home: when the music stops after the 2010 census, New York will lose at least one, and possibly two seats from its congressional delegation.
And who stands to gain from our loss? Sunny Florida. I know what you're thinking: the last thing this country needs is more politicians from Florida. Well, get used to it.
Hotline Blog has more:
Polidata’s Clark Bensen also observes that Florida (currently with 25 seats) is now poised to replace New York (29 seats) as the third most populous state – and that both states might end up with 27-member delegations when the dust settles after reapportionment.
Sixty years ago, no one would have believed that Florida and New York might one day have House delegations of equal size. In the 1940s, the New York delegation was a 45-member congressional powerhouse while Florida was a puny 6-seat weakling. But between 1942 and 2002, Florida gained 19 seats while New York lost 16.
And, of course, New Yorkers have nobody to blame for this but ourselves:
[O]ut-migration from New York to Florida has been a prime contributor to Florida’s growth. The 2000 Census revealed that, between 1995 and 2000 alone, 308,000 people moved from New York to Florida – the largest state-to-state flow in the U.S. At last count, nearly 1.5 million Floridians were born in New York, including five members from Florida’s current House delegation.
No word yet on whether Florida would be willing to take Randy Kuhl and a state Senator to be named later in exchange for finally sending D-Train to the Mets...
Ugh.
I seem to recall that in 2000, a deal was struck in the legislature to the effect that one R and one D seat was sacrificed, because we had lost two seats. This despite the fact that blue downstate was thriving and red upstate was not.
Next time around, the Dems need to make sure that we don't get screwed again.
Oh, and
...the Hotline article also mentions four new seats for Texas, god help us all.
Yet more reason
...to win the state Senate - so we don't have to make stupid compromises.
As for Texas, the GOP may be turning it blue anyway...okay, that's overly optimistic, but let's see how much of that population growth is in the increasingly-Dem Latino population.
Local effect
Since the major exodus is from mostly-red upstate, while mostly-blue NYC is actually gaining, we'll probably end up with a majority in the state Senate regardless of who draws the lines (not that I want to wait that long, mind you).
Additionally, since 23 of the current 29 House seats are going to be Democratic (officially, as of next week), losing one red seat and one blue seat is a statistical victory. In fact, it may be difficult, despite the demographics of who's moving out, to get rid of a red seat.
Funny how 12 years of Republican rule in Albany would result in such a disaster for Republican areas of the state.