Jacob Ogles
Sen. Annette Taddeo said she won’t show for next week’s Special Session on redistricting.
“If the Governor wants to make a real difference in Floridians’ lives and tackle the insurance rate crisis or the housing crisis, I’ll see him in Tallahassee,” Taddeo tweeted Wednesday. “But, I’ll be damned if I’m showing up to kiss his ring and waste taxpayer money for an unconstitutional map that erases Black and Brown voices from the electoral process.”
Taddeo, a candidate for Governor, called on Democrats in the Legislature to skip the Session after Senate President Wilton Simpson and House Speaker Chris Sprowls announced they would defer to Gov. Ron DeSantis on a congressional map.
“At this time, Legislative reapportionment staff is not drafting or producing a map for introduction during the Special Session,” read a joint memo from the Republican leaders. “We are awaiting a communication from the Governor’s Office with a map that he will support. Our intention is to provide the Governor’s Office opportunities to present that information before House and Senate redistricting committees.”
To date, no additional map has been published. DeSantis’ office did submit two maps (P 0079 and P 0094) during the regular Session through the Florida Redistricting website’s public portal.
Both of those maps reduced the number of Black performing districts in the state, as DeSantis argued Florida should have no districts drawn with the intention of favoring a racial group. But Florida’s Constitution prohibits any diminishment of the ability of minority communities to elect a candidate of their choice. DeSantis believes that language, part of a Fair Districts amendment passed in 2010, violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.
He vetoed a map approved during Session by the Legislature on those grounds.
“(In) their, I guess, understandable zeal to try and comply with what they believe the Florida Constitution requires, they forgot to make sure what they were doing complied with the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” DeSantis said.
No Florida Governor in modern times has ever proposed a congressional map. Taddeo considers letting the executive branch take over the process as a dereliction of duty on lawmakers’ part.
“It’s too bad between the Senate President and the Speaker of the House they couldn’t put together one spine to stand up to DeSantis,” Taddeo tweeted. “I’m calling the rest of my Democratic colleagues in the Legislature to join me in the cojones caucus and boycott this upcoming Special Session.”
12 comments
Enough
April 13, 2022 at 10:34 am
DeSantis is a political hack. Every day is a new low.
Matthew Lusk
April 13, 2022 at 10:36 am
Con man Al Lawson would love to have a guaranteed seat just for him, raking in the money, selling out his race to the banking cartel and international labor pool, not to mention supporting Kill My Black Baby Inc. and praising atheist Charles Darwin.
Yes you
April 13, 2022 at 4:53 pm
Darwin: All I’m saying is when you sing “into the arms of Jesus” usually I can tell which one of you is going to do it.
And you look like one of them Matthew lol
Richard Bruce
April 13, 2022 at 11:28 am
Isn’t racial segregation by the Gov’t illegal?
Brendahere
April 13, 2022 at 1:58 pm
Yes. Since desantis is filth he just keeps on moving his obscene wants forward, which are you take our country backwards. #GAdesantis
Itold Usoh
April 13, 2022 at 11:43 am
I like this feisty Taddeo! I’m still — barely — a registered Democrat so will likely vote for her in the primary just on her willingness to do something / say something semi-bold. So unlike the vacuous, Kumbaya Crist and the other one, the marijuana lobbyist.
It's Complicated
April 13, 2022 at 3:11 pm
I suppose Taddeo realizes no Democratic Party Legislators need to show up for Special Session for there to be a quorum. The Democrats must weigh the optics and campaign fodder of not showing up for Special Session versus showing up, making a bunch of whiney speeches, voting ‘nay’ as a block, and being steamrolled by the majority. Sort of like Regular Session.
Feckless Ds
April 15, 2022 at 7:37 am
Tell her to leave her monthly stipend check on her desk.
Matthew Lusk
April 18, 2022 at 12:05 pm
Democrats should boycott every session, praise Jesus!
Southern Logic
April 18, 2022 at 4:01 pm
Thing about statistic is that you can make they say anything you want. Ms Taddeo lives life through the lens of skin color and finds statistics that support her. For people like that nothing will ever be good enough. The Gov did a good job. If you dont like it you can always move.
Real Logic
April 18, 2022 at 4:11 pm
Good is matter of opinion, because as you said, you can make a statistic infer whatever metric of “Good” you want.
And yes, while people could move, they should not have to.
They can vote the legislators and governor out.
Then you can move if you don’t like it.
Matthew Lusk
April 20, 2022 at 1:57 pm
Satanic logic: good is bad; bad is good! Or call it democrat logic depending on your truth.
Comments are closed.