Democrats upset over redistricting

Borough and Township residents and representatives say they are disappointed with the results of a legislative redistricting earlier this month that moved the Princeton area from its habitually Democratic district to a more conservative one, leading to conflict between the Princeton Community Democratic Organization and The New Jersey Democratic State Committee.

The state redistricting panel approved the Democratically proposed district map on April 3, transferring Princeton from the traditionally Democratic 15th district to the 16th, where it will join municipalities that have regularly elected Republican legislators.

Princeton’s former district, made up of seven Mercer County municipalities, has had excusively Democratic representatives since 1998.

The incumbents in Princeton’s new 16th district are all Republicans: Senator Christopher Bateman, Assemblyman Peter Biondi and Assemblywoman Denise Coyle. The district, composed mostly of Somerset County municipalities, has been represented solely by Republican legislators since 1994.

PCDO president Dan Preston wrote in an April 3 post on the group’s Facebook page, “The result is that the citizens of Princeton get sacrificed, for what? Certainly not the greater good.”

Preston said this week that the message “was my initial reaction on the day that I found out” and that it was meant to represent both his own views and those of Reed Gusciora, assemblyman for the 15th district and a Princeton resident whose home had just been removed from his legislative district.

“We’re going to make the best of the situation that we face,” Preston said. “I’m putting a smiley face on what was initially met with frowns.”

When asked if he thought the change had been for the greater good, Preston said, “I wouldn’t go that far.” He predicted that the move “will have some effect” on the financial amount that Princeton residents contribute to the state’s Democrats in the future.

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John Wisniewksi, chairman of The New Jersey Democratic State Committee and head of the Democratic redistricting team, said that Preston’s comment was uninformed. He said that the commission had to draw a map to meet the many requirements of Rutgers University political science and public policy professor Alan Rosenthal, who cast the deciding vote in approving the measure.

“The notion that any town was sacrificed for the greater good really does a disservice to the process we all went through,” Wisniewski said. “The goal of the five Democratic commissioners was to craft a map that met the requirements of Dr. Rosenthal ... That doesn’t give you the luxury of saying, ‘You could have just drawn this line this way and put this town here.’ ”

The Republican-drawn map would have moved Princeton out of the 15th as well, he noted.

Gusciora, who has leased an apartment in Trenton to continue serving, said that Democrats on the redistricting commission intentionally drew him out of his district for political reasons.

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“They traded an equal population municipality, West Windsor, for Princeton so they did not have to switch them, but for their own convenience they did,” Gusciora said. “They could have kept the 15th district intact and added Lambertville.”

“These are arbitrary and capricious decisions that they can make because they’re the commissioners. The claim that some map fairy came up with a fair map, that’s for others to decide,” he noted. “I’ve really been very independent, and I know that my party has not always been happy.”

Gusciora added that Ralph Caputo’s district, the 28th, “was drawn out a block from his house” for similar reasons and noted that some members of the commission had redrawn their districts to make their own races less competitive.

“Senator [Paul] Sarlo [who was on the Democratic redistricting commission] was going to have an opponent from Nutley from the 36th district, and then Nutley was carved out,” he said. “These are all just human decisions that they make for political reasons. The claim that they had no regard for what they were doing or they were just doing this blindly is not true.”

However, Wisniewksi said that the decisions made weren’t concerning personalities.

“It wasn’t about ‘This person is favored or disfavored’ or ‘This town is favored or disfavored,’ ” Wisniewski explained. “It was about the numbers.”

Nevertheless, local officials and residents have expressed dissatisfaction with the redistricting.

“Overall, I find the redistricting unfortunate for the people of Princeton,” Borough Councilwoman Jo Butler said. “When the move sort of doesn’t benefit us, it’s a little bit hard to be cheerful about how it’s for the greater good.”

In an April 12 editorial in The Princeton Packet, Pam Hersh, half in jest, referred to the redistricting as a “man-made political disaster” that, she said, left her and her colleagues “devastated.”

Gusciora said the change in representation could also pose difficulties in the future to Princeton residents who may be offered gubernatorial appointments. If the governor appoints a Princeton resident, he explained, the appointee’s state senator must consent to that person’s service.

“Somebody who has liberal leanings or is more inclined to a progressive agenda is in danger of not being approved by the state senator from the 16th district,” Gusciora said.