Democrats need to win back the New York State Senate

[Note: This is an abridged version of an earlier post.]

A little known fact : even though New York has had its fair share of Democratic governors, its state government has been in the clutches of the Republicans for 150 years. The only two times the state government was all blue were in 1932 and 1964. Teddy Roosevelt said once that 'the state Senate is constitutionally Republican'; it's not, but it's been reliably Republican since that party was founded in the 1850s.

It's probably the main reason so many groups have come together to support Craig Johnson.

Another little known detail about the Albany political machine : Incumbency has become the product of anti-democratic redistricting shenanigans.

It is outrageous that NYC, the single
largest demographic in the state, does not have proportional representation in Albany. This is because for years Republicans have been able to pass legislation that favors their districts.

Only in New York would you have majority white and Republican districts inflate their demographics by counting their prison population. This is what The New York Times has to say about the practice [Ending the Prison Windfall — New York Times editorial | Prisoners of the Census]:

Inmates are denied the right to vote in all but two states. But state lawmakers treat them as residents of the prisons when drawing legislative maps, to inflate the head count in lightly populated rural areas where prisons are typically built. This creates legislative districts where none would ordinarily be, shifting political influence from the heavily populated urban districts where inmates live.

Once inflated, these towns and counties siphon an outsized portion of state and federal aid. Politicians in districts with prisons sometimes brag openly about the windfall, as they mock “constituents” who are powerless to remove them from office and are packed onto buses and driven hundreds of miles to their real homes the minute
they leave the prison walls.

The repercussions of this particular practice are atrocious : Mostly white and lightly populated areas upstate are being turned into districts on the backs of a prison population that is not only mostly black and latino and poor, but a product of the Rockefeller Laws that have thrown many a first time drug felon into upstate jails with 25-to-life jail sentences. Prisoners of the Census is an apt name for the countless men and women who are being used as electoral pawns.

So when I was asked to lend my hand for this election, the first thing to come to mind was, "Why should I care about a guy in Long island running for a seat in a predominantly white and Republican district?

Well, given Spitzer has made election reform a priority, there is an even more compelling reason to plant the seeds with this election for a Democratic majority in 2008.

With Spitzer's commitment to reform Albany and, among other things, vow to end the atrocious practice of "census farming" through prisos, people have come knocking on his door to lend their support. No wonder the campaign manager of Congressman Keith Ellison is working on this campaign. Yes, the "I am swearing on Jefferson's Koran and don't you try to stop me" Ellison, junior Congressman of Minnesota.

No wonder the list of people involved in this campaign is an amazing mashup of the netroots, grassroots and establishment who's who in New York. The exciting prospect of dismantling the system that has kept a mostly corrupt state government in power is proving to be contagious.

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