Gov. candidate spills the beans on Florida’s redistricting — and who’s shocked? | Opinion

Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds might have committed a faux pas on Monday, but he said what everyone already knows in Florida political circles: That the state’s plans to reconfigure congressional maps are about helping Republicans and offsetting Democratic gains in other states.

It turns out, however, that the Florida constitution, under the voter-approved Fair Districts Amendments, bans politicians from manipulating voting maps to keep themselves or their party in power. Oops!

That’s why Republicans who control the House and the Senate have been careful not to say that’s clearly what they are doing. They are scheduled to convene next week in Tallahassee to redraw congressional districts in a special session Gov Ron DeSantis called. Anything they say could become fodder in a lawsuit that most likely will be filed to challenge the new maps.

Speaking in Coconut Creek on Monday, Donalds, a U.S. House member from Naples, said the state Legislature should proceed with redistricting despite warnings that the move could backfire by putting Republican incumbents at risk. Donalds mentioned a redistricting effort ushered by Virginia’s governor that could give Democrats four more House districts ahead of the November midterms.

“You have California and Virginia responding to Texas and we’ve been watching all this kind of happen in Florida,” Donalds said, as the Herald reported. “Because of what now has been done in Virginia, now Florida needs to respond.”

But Virginia and California don’t ban partisan redistricting as Florida does, the Herald reported. Also unlike Florida, both states required voter approval for their efforts. Californians already approved new House maps in November and Virginia is having a closely-watched referendum on April 21.

And let’s not forget that any state — blue or red — altering congressional maps months before the elections is doing so after President Trump pressured Texas to create new GOP-leaning districts last year. Trump has endorsed Donalds.

State legislatures usually redraw district boundaries following U.S. Census population counts every 10 years. The next Census is scheduled for 2030.

Mid-decade redistricting has created a race to the bottom among states. Rather than allowing voters to choose their representatives in Congress, lawmakers are manipulating the process to allow politicians to choose their voters.

When House districts are designed to elect candidates of a particular party, they become less competitive and the people elected are less likely to compromise once they are in Congress. If congressional gridlock is a problem now, imagine how much worse it could get.

Unfortunately, partisan control and squashing the opposition have become more important than serving voters.

In Florida, Republicans have come up with a slew of reasons to redistrict to avoid saying the obvious. Donalds himself said he believes the 2020 Census was “not done the best” and that the state’s population was undercounted in distributing 435 congressional seats across the country, the Herald reported.

Even if Donalds is right, Florida might be the one to blame. While other states spent millions on outreach during the Census, Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to use his power to make sure Floridians were accurately counted, saying in 2019 that “The federal government does that. We don’t have a role in it.”

Six years later, in 2025, DeSantis decried the results of the 2020 Census, saying the Biden administration’s undercount of Florida’s population robbed the state of an additional House seat.

It’s convenient to have such concerns on the eve of midterms that are worrying Republicans. The president’s party normally loses control of the House during midterms, and Trump’s low approval ratings have turned this year’s elections into a referendum on his presidency.

We appreciate Donalds’ candor. But Floridians must ask themselves: Who is truly winning these highly-partisan redistricting battles?