A Sort Of Amazing John Sampson Quote

Senate Minority Leader John Sampson certainly isn’t the world’s most quotable politician —  he rarely seems to get quoted at all these days — but he spoke freely in this recent Amsterdam News article decrying the Senate Republicans’ drawing of district lines.

This kicker quote at the end of the article really struck me. Apparently, Sampson doesn’t really care about his members’ oddly shaped districts — it’s really all about reforming the redistricting process.

“It’s not about the lines with us. It’s the process,” said Sampson. “As long as it’s dictated by partisan politics, voters and minorities will always be disenfranchised. When you talk about Martin Luther King, whose birthday we just celebrated, and Black History Month, which is happening now, until we understand that all people deserve to choose their representatives, we will always continue to fight what Dr. King fought.”

You may recall that the Senate Democrats controlled the chamber’s majority for two years — Sampson was leader much of that time — and did not bring a bill to the floor reforming the redistricting process.

And a source pointed out this little-watched YouTube clip from Aug. 23, 2010, when the Democrats still held the majority, in which Sampson actually argues against creating an independent redistricting commission:

“All of a sudden, everybody gets an epiphany that now we have to change the rules because the Democrats are in control. I think we can be fair,” Sampson says.

Meanwhile, who could forget Sen. Malcolm Smith’s statement about redistricting the Republicans into oblivion?

Perhaps this is why DSCC chairman Mike Gianaris — who was a member of Assembly when Democrats controlled the Senate, and can plausibly claim not to have been responsible for the lack of independent redistricting – has been doing most of the talking on this issue for the Senate Dems.

The audio on this Sampson video is a little hard to hear — you have to turn it all the way up.