After the 2020 census released Monday showed New York losing a congressional seat by a mere 89 residents, Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the state is looking at its legal options.
The governor, during a news conference on Tuesday, suggested that the count may have been inaccurate, claiming that the Trump administration may have scared undocumented immigrants “nervous to come forward,” according to Fox News.
Cuomo stated, “I do believe the federal government had a chilling effect. We’re looking at legal options because when you’re talking about 89 — that could be a minor mistake in counting, right?”
New York, along with California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, each lost one seat. Meanwhile, Texas picked up two, and Florida, Oregon, Colorado, Montana, and North Carolina each added one.
Politico reported that the Congressional maps themselves will not actually be redrawn until at least later this year, and continued that “[R]eapportionment amplifies the long-term shift in population and political power from northeast to southwest, which began in the middle of the last century. States like Texas and Florida continue to add seats, while New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio shed them.”
New York GOP Chair Nick Langworthy stated that the “news that New York will lose another congressional seat is a sad but unsurprising commentary on Andrew Cuomo’s failed leadership.
“We have no future as a state when our federal representation continues to shrink, our jobs continue to be destroyed and our residents continue to flee to other states,” he argued. “We are a state that is failing and in desperate need of a life-saving treatment — a Republican governor who will change course and reverse New York’s decline,” Langworthy added.
