The first — and most controversial — salvo in New York’s redistricting war has been fired.

State legislators voted Wednesday to pass new congressional district maps. Senators voted 43-20 on party lines while the bill passed the Assembly 103-45 largely along party lines. Democrats control 105 seats in the Assembly.

Passing the maps decreases the number of Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation from eight to four. Gov. Kathy Hochul will have 10 days to sign or veto the maps once they land on her desk. The Democrat hasn’t said whether she will sign them.

Voters in 2014 set up a politically appointed commission to agree on new political maps. The redistricting commission — as expected — failed to do so in January, allowing the Democratic-led state Legislature to draw up its own maps.

Not all Republicans are sure, however, that the Independent Redistricting Commission actually fulfilled its duties as spelled out in the state constitution, however, which would mean Democrats have jumped the gun in creating new maps.

“Today we’re voting on maps that were produced just a couple of days ago for which there were no public hearings by this forum or by the Independent Redistricting Commission,” Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, said on the Assembly floor. “And we’re told we need to vote on these maps because the Independent Redistricting Commission, having produced the first set of maps as required by the constitution, couldn’t come to an agreement on a second set of maps. But ironically the constitutional language approved by the voters and reaffirmed last fall doesn’t require the Independent Redistricting Commission to come to any agreement. It’s very clear. If they didn’t come to an agreement they submit a second set of maps they don’t agree on. What’s not included in the constitutional process is for us to just say, ‘Oh well, we’ll skip that process of voting on a separate set and go with our own maps. And it should be very clear by this point in the debate that the new maps were created without any meetings, without any discussion, without any input from the Republicans at all.”

Goodell argued that the Democrats’ action doesn’t comply with the redistricting process created in 2014 but also violated the state constitutional principle requiring districts to be as compact as possible. The Jamestown Republican noted one congressional district running from Long Island into Westchester and another that starts in Staten Island, “and meanders north, then it comes down southeast and then it goes northeast then it goes northwest and it’s like a block or two wide. It’s obvious that’s not compact.”

Sen. Thomas O’Mara, a Republican representing Southern Tier and Finger Lakes counties, said on the Senate floor that Democrats “egregiously” redrew a Long Island district held by U.S. Rep. and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Suozzi. That district will now span five counties from Suffolk to Westchester by traversing narrow segments of Queens and the Bronx.

Democrats said they did the best job they could given time constraints, but acknowledged flaws in New York’s redistricting process.

“When you set up a commission with an equal number from both parties you’ll get deadlock,” Gianaris said. “We’re just dealing with the process that you handed us when we succeeded you in taking over the majority.”

Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes, a Democrat of Brooklyn, was one of a few Democrats who voted against passing the maps.

“This has been a difficult process for me,” Mitaynes said. “As a newly elected, going into my second term, representing Assembly District 51, the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Sunset Park and Red Hook, I was elected to represent a diverse, vibrant, working class community one of the last truly vibrant communities of what we know to be old New York City. What I am asked to vote on and support at this moment I cannot. The people of the district elected me to represent them and to elevate their voices. and right now that is what I’m doing. I vote in the negative.”

State Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, voted against both the Congressional and state legislative maps while calling for a court challenge to the new lines.

“The gerrymandered maps drawn by the Democrats in the Legislature are an affront to New Yorkers who voted for an independent, public-inclusive process in 2014 and who reiterated that stance again in November 2021 by voting down another Democrat move to seize control,” Borrello said. “In choosing to serve their own quest for more political power rather than the will of those New Yorkers whom we all serve, Democrats’ have essentially silenced citizen voices, which exposes the hypocrisy of their rhetoric about voter participation and empowerment. The clearest sign of the hyper-partisan bias in these maps is the intense criticism coming from good government groups and editorial boards in New York and beyond, who have castigated the blatant politicization of the process.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.