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“If we had been looking for people who voted alike in order to keep them together, that would have been the definition of illegal gerrymandering,” said State Sen. Michael Gianaris, a Democrat and head of a task force that has draw the lines.
“Maybe in the end it will have the effect of bringing people together,” he said.
It will be extremely difficult in the 11, if the lines hold.
But regardless of the obvious governance difficulties, an uphill battle is unfolding to represent the district as Ms. Malliotakis, who has linked herself closely to Mr. Trump and voted against certification of the 2020 election results, stands up for re-election. She also broke with her party to vote in favor of the infrastructure bill.
As candidates in many races face difficult balances between appealing to the most diehard supporters in a primary and gaining broader appeal in a general election, these tensions will be highlighted in the 11th district.
“It certainly gives the Democratic candidate a really good shot,” John Mollenkopf, director of the Urban Research Center at CUNY’s Graduate Center, told District Newslines. “But it’s going to take a Democratic nominee who can appeal to the most conservative Democrats on Staten Island.”
How Redistricting Works in the United States
What is redistricting? It is the redrawing of the boundaries of congressional and state legislative districts. This happens every 10 years, after the census, to reflect population changes.
On the Democratic side, the biggest open question was whether Mr. de Blasio would run, an idea that drew visceral backlash in Staten Island. At Grant City Tavern, where the ceiling is designed to look like an American flag and a portrait of Mr. Trump hangs on the wall, a patron knocked over his drink at the mention of the former mayor.
He commissioned polls around the race, but got knocked out Tuesday.
The most prominent Democrat in the race is former Rep. Max Rose, who won the district’s previous setup in 2018 and lost to Ms. Malliotakis in 2020. Mr. Rose, who grew up in Park Slope, had billed as more of a Staten Island Democrat with a brash personal style and relatively centrist politics, and some party officials see him as a strong contender for the general election in the new district.
