When the fledgling Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures set up an office in Washington, D.C., in 1976 to begin amplifying its members’ voice at the federal level, it invited individual legislatures to follow suit.
Wice
One of the first to jump in: the New York State Legislature, which tapped Jeff Wice—then working as an assistant to Assembly Speaker Stanley Steingut—to open and run its new office in the district.
For Wice, it was the start of what proved to be a long and fruitful relationship with NCSL, one that led to nationwide prominence for both him and the organization in one of the thorniest areas of the political sphere: redistricting—the redrawing of congressional and state legislative boundaries after every decennial census.
“Redistricting has gone from a process that used to last about two years following each census to something that goes on for years and years, in and out of the courts. It’s become a cottage industry,” Wice says. “Today, it’s headline news more than ever before.”
But redistricting “need not be the blood sport of American politics,” he says. Conflict over redrawing boundaries is invariably the result of “overzealousness and overreaching by the majority party—they just get greedy.”
Wice says his work with states focuses on what he calls “bringing down the temperature”: educating political leaders and encouraging them to work together to make redistricting a fairer and more rational process.
Growing With NCSL
In his work for the New York Legislature in the 1970s, Wice had already begun focusing on election law, census outreach and redistricting. At the same time, NCSL was eager to build its capacity to help state legislatures better navigate the redistricting process, which had long been marked by partisan maneuvering, lack of civility and litigious strategies.
Working with NCSL, Wice steadily expanded the scope and reach of his work, and today is widely seen as one of the nation’s foremost experts on the history, methods and practices of redistricting. He has served as a consultant for members of Congress, the Democratic National Committee and legislative leaders in nearly every state.
“The creation of NCSL opened the door to my working with states,” Wice says. “I owe my career to NCSL.”
“He is one of the smartest individuals you’re going to find when it comes to the history and process of redistricting, and he isn’t someone who allows partisanship to cloud his vision.”
—Frank Strigari, former Ohio Senate counsel
In turn, NCSL’s Elections and Redistricting Program has become an indispensable source of information and training for states grappling with redistricting.
Over the years, Wice has held a variety of NCSL leadership positions, serving six years on the Executive Committee and seven years as staff chair of the Redistricting and Elections Standing Committee. He attended NCSL’s conference-wide annual meeting for the first time in 1977 and hasn’t missed one since.
Since 1990, Wice has contributed to every edition of NCSL’s highly respected “Redistricting Law” handbook, a one-of-a-kind resource for legislators and staff, and co-edited the most recent edition, published in 2020.
“Jeff’s five decades of work for the legislative institution is extraordinary,” says NCSL CEO Tim Storey, who has worked closely with Wice for more than 35 years. “I can’t overstate his impact on the expansion of how people across the nation understand the complex redistricting process.”
What makes Wice good at what he does, says Frank Strigari, a Columbus, Ohio-based attorney and former Ohio Senate counsel who specializes in election law and redistricting, is his combination of intelligence, fair-mindedness and unmatched experience.
“He is one of the smartest individuals you’re going to find when it comes to the history and process of redistricting,” Strigari says, “and he isn’t someone who allows partisanship to cloud his vision.”
Although Strigari’s consulting work is primarily with Republicans, he and Wice have worked together productively over the last decade with a shared belief that control of redistricting should rest with legislatures, not with independent commissions or the courts.
“Jeff and I may be on opposite sides (politically), but we both deeply appreciate and respect the importance of state legislatures,” he says.
An Early Start
Wice, a native New Yorker who grew up on Long Island, remembers going to rallies and other events as a youngster with his politically active father in the ear1y 1960s, and developing an interest in state government as a grade-schooler. When he was 16, he joined up with college students who traveled to Indiana in the spring of 1968 to campaign for Robert F. Kennedy in the presidential primary.
That experience brought him in contact with Kennedy speechwriter Adam Walinsky and a network of Democratic Party luminaries for whom he campaigned and worked over the next several years as he made his way through George Washington University and Antioch School of Law. Among them were Sens. Edward Kennedy, George McGovern and Daniel P. Moynihan, and a charismatic, young antiwar congressman from Long Island, Allard Lowenstein.
In 1970, Lowenstein was running for a second term, but in a district whose lines had been redrawn by the New York Legislature’s Republican majority to favor the GOP. Lowenstein’s defeat that fall was a turning point of sorts—Wice’s first real-life encounter with gerrymandering inspired him to focus on combating the practice.
Wice now works as special counsel for the New York State Assembly and for the past five years has taught at New York Law School, where he directs the Elections, Census and Redistricting Institute. He has served for many years as the executive director of the National Association of Jewish Legislators, and in 2018 was appointed as a Rockefeller Institute of Government fellow.
Wice maintains an unwavering commitment to voting rights, census education and participation, and improving the redistricting process.
“The census should be an everyday topic—not an obscure one that only comes up once every 10 years,” he says. “It is essential that people understand and care about the census, and the extent to which their quality of life depends upon the census and the resulting district lines. Look out the window at your streets, your roads, your hospitals, your schools, your senior centers—every way that government impacts you is determined in part by redistricting. It’s that important.”
Susanne Weiss is a Denver-based freelance writer. This story was first published in the 50th anniversary edition of State Legislatures magazine.