Redistricted Bronx lines for Senate and Assembly (UPDATE)

There's a handful of days that resemble Christmas morning for diehard political fans (filing days, primary elections, general elections), and this is one of those days. The first draft of the state Senate and Assembly lines have been released by the legislative task force (LATFOR).

We'll go through each one in separate posts, which will all be linked from here (and they are all available to download at LATFOR's website).

29th Senate-Jose Serrano Jr.
32nd Senate-Rev. Ruben Diaz
33rd Senate-Gustavo Rivera
34th Senate-Jeff Klein
36th Senate-Ruth Hassell-Thompson

As for the Assembly, you can look at the individual maps here, but I'm not going to both going through each one because there are 11 of them and they don't drastically change. However, I have been able to speak with Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who briefly talked about his district and the Bronx as a whole:
81st Assembly-Jeffrey Dinowitz

If you love or hate these lines and want to tell LATFOR about it, Tuesday will be your chance.

And here are the citywide maps of both the Senate and Assembly:

There is mostly just minor adjustments for the Bronx Assembly districts. The biggest change is Peter Rivera's district would no longer be the 76th, it would now be the 87th. The new 76th ends up on the Upper East Side somehow. Oh LATFOR, you and your crazy ways.

Here's what the Assembly looks like now:

Jump below for the Update, the Senate lines, as well as a response blasting the Senate lines.

The proposed 81st Assembly district (UPDATE)

Maps of Assembly districts drawn by the legislative redistricting task force (LATFOR) have been sent to the relevant Assemblymember. We've reached out to the Bronx members and are waiting to hear back to get each one. Here's the first we've gotten, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz's 81st. 

UPDATE: All the lines are out now on the LATFOR site, and you can check another post on Bronx Press Politics to see our breakdowns of the Senate. 

The proposed lines add the rest of Van Cortlandt Village, the Jerome Park Reservoir, Clinton HS, Bronx HS of Science, Harris Field and Lehman College, much of Kingsbridge Heights, the four buildings from the Marble Hill Houses that are in the Bronx, and returns the one election district at the bottom of Riverdale (2400 and 2500 Johnson Ave) that was taken away in 2002. Several election districts in Norwood were moved to the 80th Assembly District. The population of the new district is 126,402, a -2.08 percent deviation from the statewide average. The current district has 119,653. 

Every single Bronx AD is within 31 people of one another.


Dinowitz said he absolutely loves this proposed district because it puts nearly all of Community Board 8 in his district. It also gives him Lehman College and Bronx High School of Science, both which he attended, as well as a junior high school that goes by a different name now. It also has a good portion of Kingsbridge Heights, which is the neighborhood he grew up in.


In terms of the overall Bronx Assembly districts, "they're very reasonably drawn," he said. There aren't many "zig zags" but instead you see a lot of straight lines that keep communities together.

"To the extent that you can not divide neighborhoods," LATFOR did a good job with the Bronx.

For your consideration, here is Dinowitz's district as it looks now, drawn up in 2002: