What a Serpentine District Says About N.Y.’s New Congressional Map

The peculiar redrawing of Representative Jerrold Nadler’s district led to the joke that it was “jerrymandered.” The reasons for the new lines were politically complicated.

New York’s new congressional map, redrawn by ruling Democrats, gives the party’s candidates a clear leg up in nearly every corner of the state and could knock out as many as five Republican seats.

But when party leaders in Albany introduced the proposed lines on Sunday, many onlookers quickly seized on what seemed to be a singular example of mapmakers’ partisan excess: a freshly drawn district now held by Representative Jerrold Nadler, a powerful Manhattan Democrat.

Indeed, with its serpentine shape, Mr. Nadler’s reimagined district — New York’s 10th — is almost comically contorted and overwhelmingly favors Democrats. It stretches 15 miles through 15 different State Assembly districts from Mr. Nadler’s home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to Brooklyn, jumping over New York Harbor and making three sharp turns to take in small strips of Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill, before broadening out to encompass all of Prospect Park, Borough Park and Bensonhurst.