ALBANY -- State Senate Republicans on Thursday unveiled what they hope will be a more politically friendly seat for freshman Sen. Mark Grisanti of Buffalo, whose new all-Erie County district will become less Democratic and have far fewer African-American voters.

The Senate GOP, hoping to retain control of that chamber, employed impressive mapmaking skills to stretch Grisanti's newly proposed district from the north side of Buffalo to the suburbs south of the city, connected by a sliver of unpopulated land along Fuhrmann Boulevard narrow enough that a decent chip shot could make it from one side of the district to the other into Lake Erie.

Grisanti loses Niagara Falls, which is picked up by Sen. George Maziarz, a Newfane Republican, and a large section of minority communities on the East Side of Buffalo. He keeps Grand Island and gets all of the City and Town of Tonawanda and a majority of the North and Delaware districts in Buffalo, while heading south into Hamburg, Orchard Park, Evans and Brant.

All area senators see their district lines change to help Grisanti's district become more GOP friendly, with Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer, an Amherst Republican, losing part of Erie County and spreading as far east as Rochester.

Republicans said the plan connects "communities of interest." Democrats called it a classic case of gerrymandering to protect a vulnerable freshman incumbent.

The process is far from over. The proposed lines in both the Senate and Assembly face expected court challenges, and a review by the U.S. Justice Department is needed.

Also, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has threatened to veto gerrymandered lines, could push through changes -- though he was not sounding firm about his intentions Thursday. "It's going to wind up in the courts, one way or another," he said.

A Cuomo spokesman later said the lines "at first glance" are unacceptable and that a veto should be expected if the "process and product" are not improved.

Officials did not release party enrollment figures for Grisanti's new district. He currently represents a district with a 5-to-1 Democratic voter edge over Republicans. But his district would go from 54 percent white and 37 percent black constituents to 85 percent white and 5 percent black residents.

The newly shaped district of Sen. Tim Kennedy, a South Buffalo Democrat who picks up the East Side of Buffalo and loses some suburbs, would go from 89 percent white and 4 percent black to 56 percent white and 33 percent black.

Minority groups condemned the splitting of African-American voters now living in Niagara Falls and the East Side of Buffalo from Grisanti's district.

"That district is going to make sure there's nobody black ever elected, because Republicans have things secured for Maziarz, and Grisanti doesn't have to worry about any African-Americans," said Frank Mesiah, president of the Buffalo chapter of the NAACP. "The African-American community has been disenfranchised to the point that they can no longer have their own in a key political position."

The decision to keep Grisanti's district from crossing into Niagara County has an additional side benefit: It keeps an endorsement in his re-election out of the hands of the state Conservative Party, which has vowed to oppose any lawmaker, including Grisanti, who voted to legalize gay marriage last year.

State Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long has vowed not to give his party's endorsement to any Senate Republican who voted for the gay marriage law. But by keeping Grisanti's district within one county, the Erie County Conservative Party can, if it chooses, endorse Grisanti without Long's involvement.

Grisanti did not return calls over the past two days. In a statement, he expressed support for his proposed district and railed against "downstate political insiders" who in the past have been allowed to influence redistricting that has left Western New York "with gerrymandered districts and peculiar boundaries."

"While we have united communities of interest, the Western New York delegation will continue to work together, without boundary lines, to serve the people of Western New York," the statement said.

Given the Democratic enrollment edge and possible political opponents, Republicans, who control the Senate by a 32-30 edge, needed to move Grisanti into a safer district. The proposed creation of a 63-seat Senate -- there are now 62 seats -- was done, in part, to provide the mathematical ability to push Grisanti into the suburbs.

Maziarz said the 50,000 constituents he picks up in Niagara Falls will shift his district westward and out of parts of Monroe County that he has represented for the past decade.

"I'm glad I'm going to be representing all of Niagara County and all of Orleans County. It's less of Monroe and more of Niagara, and that's fine with me," Maziarz said.

Asked if he felt the proposed Senate lines will help the GOP keep control, he said, "I think it's neutral -- politically, these things almost never work out in the way people intended."

Kennedy called the Republican-drawn maps part of a flawed, secretive process to "maintain Republicans' grasp on power and safeguard vulnerable incumbents." He said Republicans changed his district number -- from 58 to 63 -- to try to make it appear as if the GOP creation of the new Senate seat was done to benefit him. The new seat was actually added in the Albany area.

Kennedy adds a large Democratic area on Buffalo's East Side but loses West Seneca to Sen. Patrick Gallivan, an Elma Republican, and Hamburg, Eden and a Buffalo waterfront area to Grisanti. He keeps Cheektowaga and Lackawanna. He said he is pleased to add more of Buffalo to his district.

"That being said, the process itself was flawed; [it] started with Republicans breaking their promise for independent redistricting, and instead they put forth a politically gerrymandered map," Kennedy said.

The new lines are being drawn as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process following the 2010 census. Deals to draw lines for New York's House members are stalled in Albany. The new lines, once finalized, will be in effect for this fall's elections.

Gallivan would see his district squeezed in a bit on its western edge in Erie County, losing Evans but gaining West Seneca, and on the far eastern edge, losing some towns in Ontario County. He also picks up some Monroe County communities.

Overall, he estimated, the 14,000 Republican voter enrollment edge in his current district has declined to about 2,000 Republicans in the new district. But he sounded unfazed.

"Honestly, I guess if you have a meter that goes up and down, I'm the exact same," he said of his reaction to the new lines.

As expected, Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer, R-Amherst, shifts eastward, partly to accommodate population losses in Western New York. He loses the Town of Tonawanda and part of the City of Tonawanda while adding part of Rochester and its suburban towns of Riga and Chili.

"If this holds up, I'm excited to represent new areas and sad not to represent areas that I now represent," he said.

Sen. Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat who heads the Senate Democratic campaign committee, said, "I think it's about as partisan a map as one could imagine."

Statewide, he said, the GOP-drawn lines pit six Democratic senators -- including himself -- against each other in potential primaries; no Republican incumbents face such primaries.

Government watchdog groups criticized the Senate lines. Based on the number of districts that fall 3 percent or more outside a per-district population deviation scale, Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group called the proposed lines "clearly the most gerrymandered lines in recent New York history."

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