Conservative Northeast Queens Areas Divided In New District Maps

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — Bayside is divided from other right-leaning swaths of northeast Queens under newly redesigned district maps, which are widely regarded as favoring Democratic candidates.

New York lawmakers approved the congressional, state senate, and assembly maps — which were redesigned by Democrats in Albany after the state's nonpartisan redistricting body failed to approve bipartisan maps — in a party-line vote this week. Governor Kathy Hochul is expected to sign all the maps into law soon.

The boundary changes in Bayside, albeit relatively small (most neighborhood voters won't be in new districts), separate at least some Baysiders from other nearby, conservative voters in parts of Beechurst, Whitestone, and College Point — neighborhoods that comprise City Council District 19, where voters recently elected Republican Vickie Paladino as their representative.

"It appears that any hope we had that the state legislature would take this process seriously, rather than twist it for their own political advantage, was misguided," Paladino said in a statement to Patch, adding that the congressional redesign further divided her constituents into three separate districts with "no clear rationale" (her district was divided between three congressional districts before the redesign, too).

The congressional redesign separates some Bayside voters from those in Beechurst, Whitestone, and College Point (who are now part of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's progressive 14th Congressional District). Most Baysiders, however, will remain part of the 6th Congressional District, now represented by Grace Meng, who is running for a sixth term this year.

Similarly, the new state senate map for District 11, currently represented by John Liu, continues to cover most of Bayside, but ends at the Clearview Expressway in the south instead of Flushing Bay, separating Bayside yet again from Beechurst, Whitestone, and College Point.

In Bayside's State Assembly District 26, currently represented by Edward Braunstein, the northern boundaries no longer encompass Beechurst and Whitestone, and instead extended further into Glen Oaks.

Neither Liu or Braunstein has announced if they are running for reelection; neither immediately respond to Patch's request for comment on the redistricting.

Paladino is hardly the only Republican to speak out against the maps. Nick Langworthy, the chairman of the New York Republican Party, called them "textbook filthy, partisan gerrymandering," noting that his party might challenge the lines as unconstitutional in court (a move that Paladino said she would support).

Northwest Queens' State Senator Michael Gianaris, who chairs the legislative redistricting task force, however, insisted that his party's maps weren't created to unfairly benefit Democrats.

"As we unravel the gerrymanders of the past it doesn't make it a gerrymander of today," he said of the maps in an interview with WNYC on Tuesday, taking aim at New York Republicans' past redistricting efforts (Republicans long-controlled the state's Senate and Assembly, commanding more power over redistricting).

"These are districts that are drawn fairly. If they had been drawn fairly at the outset this is perhaps what they would have looked like," he added, noting that New York is a "deep blue state" and that maps that lead to more Democrats getting elected reflect the "reality on the ground."

Despite the boundary changes in northeast Queens, the percentage of Democratic and Republican voters remains steady between the old and newly drawn districts — with a sizable number favoring Democratic candidates, as is true in all of New York City.

In all of the aforementioned newly drawn districts, for instance, the percentage of voters who cast a ballot for President Biden and President Trump remains within one to three percentage points of what the balance was before redistricting, according to NYTimes data cited by CUNY.

Use the slider on the map below, courtesy of CUNY's Center for Urban Research, to switch between the district's current and proposed lines:

Related Article: Bayside's Congressional Lines Are Redrawn: What To Know