DeSantis, Florida GOP plowing ahead with new congressional maps despite risks

Florida is throwing itself this week into the national tug-of-war over redistricting as Republicans aim to keep control of Congress.

State lawmakers are convening Tuesday at Gov. Ron DeSantis’ behest, less than a week after Virginia passed a sweeping gerrymander allowing Democrats to pick up more seats.

But remaking Florida’s congressional map is a risky move for state Republicans, who face stringent redistricting rules and the hazard of turning safe GOP seats into competitive ones.

It’s not clear how much Florida’s redrawn map would impact Congress’ makeup. DeSantis’ office hasn’t released a proposal yet. The Florida Senate on Friday said it was “awaiting a communication” from the governor’s office.

But with national Republicans and Democrats at essentially a draw after back-and-forth redistricting across about a half-dozen states, Florida could tip the scales.

Though DeSantis has been careful to avoid mentioning politics as a motivation for the mid-decade map redo, he first raised the idea after President Donald Trump last summer exhorted red states to create more GOP-held seats.

The political backdrop can’t be dismissed, said Amy Keith, the executive director of Common Cause Florida, an advocacy group that pushes for voting rights.

“The governor keeps throwing excuses at the wall to see what’ll stick because he has to have an excuse,” she said.

When the state Senate and House gavel in Tuesday for the four-day-long special session, they will look only at DeSantis’ plan. Neither chamber created its own proposal.

Lawsuits are inevitable. And it will be impossible to escape scrutiny from the national parties, who are waiting to see if the maps counterbalance Virginia’s push.

Read More: Eyes are on South Florida for redistricting after SCOTUS voting rights hearing

Here’s what to know ahead of the session.

How did we get here?

DeSantis’ office drafted Florida’s current map in 2022 in an aggressive move that broke legislative precedent. The map favored Republicans to win 20 out of 28 seats.

The Florida Supreme Court upheld the map last July following a legal challenge, and DeSantis touted that his map was “always the constitutionally correct” one.

But later that summer, as Trump pushed for redistricting, DeSantis said there may be legal “problems” with the map his office had created.

In January, DeSantis said “the context is different” going into this cycle because of the Florida Supreme Court ruling that upheld his map. In that decision, the court said that a North Florida district that DeSantis’ map dismantled had over-relied on race.

“Now, I think you’re probably in a situation where the map can’t be upheld unless we make some changes,” DeSantis said in January when he first called for a special session.

In recent months, several other states — Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio — have redrawn their maps to give Republicans more seats. And California, Utah and Virginia have recut maps that favor Democrats.

After all the back-and-forth, the parties are essentially at a draw, with a slight Democratic advantage. Florida could change that.

Do lawmakers want to redistrict?

Most Republican state lawmakers have shied away from publicly acknowledging whether they’re in favor of redistricting. That’s at least in part because they’ve been warned that their public comments and private conversations could become part of litigation.

House Speaker Daniel Perez, though, has said he is “ready to go.”

“I think it’s something we should absolutely take the conversation on,” Perez said. “[We’re] seeing it in left-leaning states, seeing it in right-leaning states. This is a conversation that everyone is having across the country.”

Senate President Ben Albritton has also indicated that the Senate will take up the governor’s proposal.

State Democrats, on the other hand, have accused the governor’s redistricting plan of being a ploy to reduce their party’s already-diminished power to appease Trump.

Nikki Fried, the chairperson of the Florida Democratic Party, called redistricting mid-cycle “illegal, expensive, unnecessary and anti-democratic.”

Redistricting typically only happens every decade based on new census data. Redrawing maps mid-cycle, when not compelled by a court order, is unusual.

Several Florida Republican members of Congress have cautioned that redistricting could leave them more vulnerable.

After Democrats flipped two red seats in recent special elections, Republicans have worried that being too aggressive with a map could destabilize their odds.

This week, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said Florida could be a pickup opportunity if the state redraws its maps.

U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Miami Republican, told Punchbowl News last month that lawmakers should look toward the special elections as a warning.

“By trying to create more, you may end up with less,” he said.

What could a changed map mean for Florida?

Without DeSantis’ office presenting its plan, experts on the issue said it was hard to weigh in.

But analysts said it seemed likely that Florida would cut into seats in Central and South Florida if it attempts to eke out more Republican districts.

M.V. (Trey) Hood III, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, said he sees parallels between Texas’ attempt to gain Republican seats and Florida’s effort. In both states, maps hoping to favor the GOP are based on Hispanic and Latino turnout in 2024.

But without Trump on the ballot, and with immigration enforcement alienating some Latino voters, Hood said there’s no guarantee that those voters will stand as strongly with the Republican Party.

Christopher Kenny, the co-founder of the Algorithm-Assisted Redistricting Methodology Project, looks at thousands of randomly generated maps to see how a state’s redistricting plan differs from a neutral simulation.

The computer-simulated plans have Democrats winning anywhere from about 11 seats to 14 seats, with 12 seats as the most common outcome. Florida’s current map has eight seats for Democrats.

“Florida’s 2022 plan, the current plan, is already a very careful gerrymander,” Kenny said.

He said it’s hard to challenge legally, though, because the districts are compact. If Florida redraws the map to get more of a partisan edge, some of those districts could end up splitting communities and lose their compactness, which makes the state vulnerable to lawsuits.

(Lawsuits, though, take time. If Florida does redistrict, a map could be in place for the 2026 election, regardless of any legal challenge.)

Genesis Robinson, the executive director of the left-aligned group Equal Ground, said redistricting has a real impact on communities that could lose out on resources and representation as a result of gamesmanship.

And he said Floridians have already rejected that.

More than 60% of voters approved the Fair Districts Amendment in 2010, which bans partisan gerrymandering and redrawing maps to dilute the power of racial minorities.

Robinson said that with that vote, Floridians decided they wanted to “insulate our democracy from cheating.”

“That’s essentially what gerrymandering is,” he said.

“This country was founded on the ideal that the consent of the governed matters,” Robinson said. “Those people have spoken in this state and we want the Legislature to simply listen.”