Brad Lander is ‘holds barred’ against Dan Goldman amid redistricting fight

Former New York City Comptroller and current congressional candidate Brad Lander has found himself in the middle of yet another mid-decade redistricting fight. So he decided to stop by a panel of experts talking about the new “redistricting wars” during the annual Caucus Weekend in Albany on Saturday. “I was just looking for some legal advice,” Lander quipped after the panel’s moderator, Democratic consultant Ny Whitaker, pointed him out in the audience. 

Lander is running for the 10th Congressional District, challenging Rep. Dan Goldman in a Democratic primary. But that race could get upended after a state Supreme Court judge ruled that the neighboring 11th Congressional District violates the state constitution and therefore must be redrawn. If the court order is ultimately upheld and the Independent Redistricting Committee redraws the district, Goldman will likely wind up in the new 11th Congressional and take on Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis in a district that leans far more to the right than the one he currently holds. Malliotakis and other Republicans have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to prevent New York from drawing new lines.

Such a change would leave Lander in a new, but still safely blue, 10th Congressional District with no immediate primary challenger. And Lander is very cognizant of that fact. “(Goldman is) no holds barred against me, but I am holds barred against him,” Lander told City & State. He said he doesn’t want to attack Goldman as part of a primary battle if Goldman winds up running against Malliotakis. “I’m rooting for redistricting because as many problems as I have with Dan Goldman, he’s a lot better than Nicole Malliotakis. … I look forward to the court letting us know what the district is,” Lander said.

Goldman’s campaign snapped at Lander’s comment. “Brad knew about the (redistricting) lawsuit before he ran. He was asked to wait but he refused because he needed an off-ramp when Zohran rejected him for a job in City Hall,” Goldman spokesperson Simone Kanter said in a post on X.  “Now he’s looking for an off-ramp for his sputtering campaign.”

The court case over the 11th Congressional District, brought by Staten Island voters, represents New York Democrats’ foray into the nationwide battle over mid-decade partisan redistricting. It started when President Donald Trump insisted Republicans should hold more seats in Texas given his performance statewide. The Texas legislature immediately moved to redraw congressional lines to maximize Republican influence and minimize the number of seats Democrats could feasibly win. Other red states followed, leading to blue states like California doing the same in retaliation. 

New York’s state constitution prohibits mid-decade redistricting without a court order, leaving Democrats with little ability to engage in similar efforts to shore up the Democratic presence in Congress. So while the lawsuit of the Staten Island district ostensibly claimed voter disenfranchisement even after intense scrutiny of New York’s lines in multiple lawsuits over the past several years, it actually serves as a thinly veiled attempt by Democrats to make the only seat in New York City held by a Republican more favorable to their party. The plaintiffs in the 11th Congressional District lawsuit are represented by Elias Law Group, which has helped Democrats in redistricting lawsuits across the country

“It's not a perfect situation – it's actually wrongful,” said Jeff Wice, a redistricting expert and professor at New York Law School who spoke as part of the Saturday panel. “But it’s a political reality because in a zero-sum game, either a Democratic speaker or a Republican speaker will control the House next year, and the two parties are waging, literally, a pitched battle, state by state, district by district, in the trenches.”