A.G. Gancarski
Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to tubthump for a rare mid-decade census and Congressional redistricting, as he maintains Florida should have more seats than it does now.
“I had some people in the (Donald Trump) administration tell me they thought Florida would get like three to five more seats if they did it properly. Like, I haven’t seen that analysis done, but I’ve had people tell me that” DeSantis said in Tampa Wednesday during an event at the Hillsborough Academy of Math and Science.
DeSantis maintains the state is “malapportioned” because the census count stopped in April 2020, meaning that “growth” is not accounted for in the metric, which historically happens once a decade.
Yet whether the census happens or not, DeSantis reiterated that his team is “going to be looking at the pathways to be able to do the redistricting here in Florida” and that he would look “favorably” at efforts from the Legislature to move forward.
What that redistricting might look like is speculation as of now, but DeSantis gave hints Wednesday.
He suggested that there were “some potential problems” in South Florida even under the current map. While they aren’t as “constitutionally defective” as the old CD 5 that presented an “egregious racial gerrymander that stretched from Gadsden County, which is west of Tallahassee, all the way to the city of Jacksonville,” his comments suggest that Democratic incumbents like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz could be targeted if a new map is done.
DeSantis argued that Democratic “Blue States” in fact “overcounted” in 2020 to include “illegal aliens.”
“I think it’s wrong. I think it’s unconstitutional that they’re counted in the census. So there was no way that I was going to devote taxpayer money for that. Even without counting that, we should have gotten at least one more seat,” DeSantis said.
“I mean, just think about it over that period. Now, granted, Florida’s population really took off from the day the census ended closed, I think, April of 2020, which is like the start of COVID, we boomed from there, like never before, but still, over that decade, we did gain population. Are you trying to tell me Oregon and Florida were equal in population gain over that period of time? No, of course not.”
DeSantis said U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick agrees that “the census was flawed” and “Florida did not get the population that it should have gotten.”
He mentioned that so-called malapportionment nationally could have affected the 2024 Presidential Election, giving Kamala Harris a chance to win if the electoral count had gone differently.
“If Harris had just won those Rust Belt states, that would be 270 to 268 if that had happened so that it would have been Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and that would have been a huge crisis for this country because people like me would have said, ‘Well, wait a minute, if you did the census properly, even her winning those three states would not have given 270. Trump would have had over 270 with a proper count, even if he didn’t win any of those states.’ And so we really now, obviously, he won all of them, it wasn’t close. But, I mean, we would have had a constitutional crisis in this country had it ended up settled into that.”
DeSantis’ comments come as Texas already is moving toward redistricting that would benefit Republicans, with states like California and New York mulling countermeasures that would bolster Democratic advantages.
