Jacob Ogles
House Democrats in the redistricting process say the Legislature has produced congressional maps worthy of consideration. Just not the one slated to come to the floor this week.
“We’re not obstructionists,” said Rep. Dan Daley, ranking Democrat on the House Legislative Redistricting Subcommittee. “This is not a ‘Hell no, we won’t go.’ But we want a constitutional map.”
Rep. Kelly Skidmore, ranking Democrat on the House Congressional Redistricting Subcommittee, filed an amendment Tuesday night that would drop a controversial two-map plan under consideration in the lower chamber.
She suggests the House take up only one map, the one already approved by the Florida Senate in January (S 8060). The two chambers must come together on a map to send to Gov. Ron DeSantis, and this would automatically align the upper and lower chamber.
Of course, it’s already a possibility that’s the map that comes out of conference anyway. It’s also a map that’s similar in many ways to both House-crafted congressional maps under consideration right now, and appears identical south of the I-4 Corridor.
It also performs slightly better for Democrats, according to a partisan performance analysis by MCI Maps.
Analyst Matt Isbell calculates the Senate-approved map has 16 districts where Republican Donald Trump won a plurality or majority, compared to 12 where Democrat Joe Biden won. In both House maps, there are 18 Trump districts and 10 Biden-favoring jurisdiction.
Florida’s constitution forbids drawing maps in a way that favors or disfavors a political party.
Daley offered a different course. An amendment he filed would retain a GOP-crafted plan to file a primary map, but to offer a secondary one in the event courts toss the first one out.
But he reorders the priority of the maps. He wants to see the secondary map (H 8015), one that retains an analogous district to Florida’s 5th Congressional District, as the primary map passed by the House.
Rep. Tom Leek, chair of the House Redistricting Committee, instead offered an amendment today with a new map (H 2019) as the primary. It’s similar to one advanced by the committee last week and would effectively scrap the existing CD 5 but replace it with more compact Jacksonville area district with a lower percentage of Black residents, but which House staffers believe will still let Black voters control a Democratic primary.
That approach came in response to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ assertion CD 5’s current makeup is an “unconstitutional gerrymander.” The Governor has signaled he would veto a map with such a district, and he doubled down on that even after the House unveiled it’s two-map plan.
With that the case, Daley’s amendment asserts the House should stick with its original plan and keep CD 5 intact. If the courts agree with DeSantis’ assertion that plan violates the constitution, then the latest House draft should be the fallback map for courts to consider.
“We’re not comfortably with the Governor’s argument about CD 5,” Daley said.
“This is the better map. We should be considering that. We shouldn’t be leading with novel legal theories that seem to contradict our voting laws.”
Daley said he can’t commit that more Democrats will necessarily vote for maps if these amendments pass.
“We’d certainly be more interested than we would with the alternative,” he said.
