Last week's Thanksgiving-eve release of the list of seven candidates for the chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals comes on the heels of last month's elections in which the court's handling of New York's congressional redistricting map likely swung the House of Representatives to the Republican Party. In that case, four judges of the Court of Appeals—all appointed by Democratic former governor Andrew Cuomo—handed to a Republican Supreme Court Justice in tiny Steuben County the authority to draw the state's congressional map, with predictable results.