Miami-Dade has a new redistricting map. Let the fights begin over voting boundaries

The future of Miami-Dade County politics will need to go through a color-coded map in the coming years as county commissioners decide how to accept a consultant’s recommendation for new boundaries.

Commissioners and the public got their first look this week at a proposed redistricting map for how to redraw the 13 districts to compensate for faster population growth in South Miami-Dade than in other parts of the county, along with smaller shifts in voting-age residents.

Six of the 13 commissioners must leave office in 2022 or 2024 due to term limits, while the rest will be voting on boundaries on districts for their reelections if they seek to stay on the board.

It’s part of a redistricting plan using the 2020 U.S. Census data, and is happening at all levels of government. For the county, an advisory board is meeting publicly to review the map proposals while commissioners meet individually with the county’s hired consultant, ARCBridge out of Herndon, Va. While commissioners said some of their requests were granted for changes to the initial ARCBridge maps, others were not.

In District 4, outgoing Commissioner Sally Heyman told an advisory board Friday the map of her coastal district splits part of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in the North Miami Beach area. While the entire neighborhood is part of District 4 now, the proposed map moves part of it into District 2, which incorporates parts of the city of Miami, North Miami, North Miami Beach, Hialeah and northwest Miami-Dade and is represented by Jean Monestime. He’s facing a term-limit exit in 2022.

“I’m fundamentally opposed to it, and will campaign against it,” Heyman told the Citizens Redistricting Advisory Board. “For decades, it has been one commissioner in that area. Please do not separate it.”

ARCBridge’s Priti Mathur told board members the proposed new districts even out the population figures within a 10% range. That essentially means the most populous district (South Miami-Dade’s District 8, represented by Danielle Cohen Higgins, with 217,160 people within its proposed boundaries) should be no more than 10% larger than the least populous district (District 1 in the Miami Gardens area, represented by Oliver Gilbert, with 197,288 people in its proposed boundaries).

Two of the districts with the most new residents are District 8 and District 9, represented by Kionne McGhee. Both are in South Miami-Dade, and grew by about 75,000 people since the last Census in 2010 — accounting for more than a third of the overall growth in Miami-Dade.

To shrink District 8, ARCBridge proposed shifting areas north and west of Palmetto Bay and Pinecrest into District 7, currently represented by Raquel Regalado. For District 9, portions on the northern area roughly between Southwest 128th and Southwest 152nd streets would migrate to District 7 and District 11, represented by Joe Martinez.

The new districts would be in place for the 2022 elections, and commissioners could vote on the final boundaries by the end of 2021. A series of public meetings will be held in October for feedback on the boundary proposals, but no dates have been released.

Among the changes in the proposed map:

▪ District 5 Commissioner Eileen Higgins would represent all of Miami’s Brickell neighborhood under the proposed map. Currently, the southern portion of Brickell falls in Regalado’s District 7.

▪ Portions of Opa-locka would shift from Gilbert’s district to District 2, represented by Jean Monestime.

▪ In Hialeah, portions of that city, the second-largest in Miami-Dade, would shift from District 12, represented by Commission Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz, to Commissioner René Garcia’s District 13.

▪ South Miami currently falls fully in Regalado’s district, but the proposed map has part of the city moving into a new southern leg of District 6, represented by Rebeca Sosa.

Regalado said she objects to the change, but that a much larger portion of South Miami was going to shift to District 6 in a draft ARCBridge showed her before the final version was released.

“If we have the opportunity to retain a municipality in one district, we should do that,” Regalado, up for reelection in 2024, said in an interview.