Jim Rosica
North Florida U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham on Tuesday said she still hasn’t decided whether to run again for her 2nd Congressional District seat.
Graham, a Tallahassee Democrat, spoke with reporters after a constituent-services recognition event at Tallahassee City Hall. She was surrounded by several she helped, saying her office “helped return more than $1 million owed to constituents” in over 1,136 cases, including government benefits such as Social Security.
But a recent Florida Supreme Court-ordered redistricting has made the district so strongly Republican that’s it’s unlikely Graham or any other Democrat could win the seat. The next election is in November.
“There is, right now, a motion for an injunction that has been filed,” she said. “So we will see if the lines are changed or not. I’m hoping that I am running for this district just as it was in 2014.”
The Democratic-leaning portions of her district were cannibalized to create a new 5th Congressional District, now held by Democrat Corrine Brown.
Instead of running north-south, the new 5th stretches east-to-west from Brown’s Jacksonville base, eating into Graham’s current district and splitting Leon County between the new 2nd and 5th districts.
Brown has filed her own challenge in federal court under U.S. voting-rights law. She asked for a federal court order halting implementation of the new map, with possible oral argument set for 9 a.m. on March 25.
“I will follow whatever the courts decide,” Graham said, adding she has not joined in the lawsuit. “I believe in Fair Districts,” the name of the state constitutional amendments that formed the basis of the redistricting challenge.
She also said she will not run for the 5th District if Brown runs again.
“If the (2nd Congressional District) lines stay the 2014 lines, I will most definitely be running for re-election,” Graham said.
If they’re not, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I need to make a decision based on the facts and I don’t know what all the facts are.”
Graham last week was named “most independent-voting member of the Florida delegation,” according to a CQ Roll Call vote study.
The first-term congresswoman angered many in her progressive base, however, with votes for the contentious Keystone Pipeline project and reversals of measures to rein in Wall Street abuses of the past decade.
Jim Rosica ([email protected]) covers the Florida Legislature, state agencies and courts from Tallahassee.
