Bob SparksIt is hard to believe that Florida is less than 150 days away from the August 30 primary, yet two Congressional districts remain in limbo. Didn’t the Florida Supreme Court approve the fully redrawn map months ago?
Well, yes, but one of the incumbents did not approve of the Court’s approval, so she took the matter to federal court. Rep. Corrine Brown from Jacksonville is trying to have the map overturned because, she alleges, it violates the federal Voting Rights Act.
Brown wants to run in her old, serpentine district running from Jacksonville to Orlando until the legal matter is resolved once and for all. She had her day in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee on March 25.
While the saga continues, Brown is not the only one affected. Rep. Gwen Graham of Tallahassee is being deferential to Brown’s desperate desire to maintain the status quo.
With the same decision, Graham saw her Panhandle District 2 redrawn to make it nearly unwinnable for a Democrat. Hardly a peep of public complaint came from the freshman congresswoman.
Instead, she has waited on Brown and the courts before deciding her own future. Graham is most certainly looking at a run in Brown’s new District 5, but has not joined former State Sen. Al Lawson by officially jumping in. Lawson is also from Tallahassee.
“I have learned in my life you can’t make an important decision without all the facts,” Graham told the Tallahassee Democrat. “And until the lines are for sure, I don’t have all the facts to make a decision.”
She has not ruled out a future run for statewide office.
Earlier this week, we learned State Rep. Mia Jones and State Sen. Audrey Gibson from the Jacksonville area are “definitely” interested in running for the seat if Brown is not.
Brown’s legal mountain, while already steep, got much higher this week because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Among her arguments is that the new east-to-west district has a large African-American population incarcerated withing the district’s many prisons.
“They can’t vote,” says Brown.
While precedent has existed for years specifying districts be drawn by population, not eligible voters, the Supreme Court put an exclamation point on the principle. In a unanimous ruling handed down Monday, the Court said precisely the same thing.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the Court in Evenwel et al v. Abbott et al. This involved a Texas case where the plaintiffs were making almost the same arguments as Brown.
Ginsburg wrote that the plaintiffs, (and Brown) rely on “a theory never before accepted by the Supreme Court or any circuit court: that the metric of apportionment employed by Texas (total population) results in an unconstitutional apportionment because it does not achieve equality as measured by Plaintiffs’ chosen metric—voter population.”
We must hand it to Brown for one thing: she is arguing an issue where the Supreme Court is of like mind. Such an issue is hard to find these days.
Her other argument is that the new district does not guarantee the election of an African-American candidate. The constituents of the new district are 46 percent African American (with many in prison) while the old district, which she wishes to keep, is 50 percent.
The Voting Rights Act calls for minorities to have the ability to elect “a nominee of their choosing.” That ability exists in both districts.
“Brown isn’t asking those three federal judges to protect the right of North Florida’s minority voters to select a nominee of their choosing,” opined the Tallahassee Democrat. “She’s fighting to improve the odds that she’ll continue to be that nominee, and that’s not what the Voting Rights Act is all about.”
Hopefully, the district lines will be solved before they must be drawn again for the 2022 cycle.
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Bob Sparks is a business and political consultant based in Tallahassee. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
