Issue #39: The Florida Senate's Faustian Bargain over Redistricting
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Issue #39: The Florida Senate's Faustian Bargain over Redistricting
The legislature was always doomed trying to appeal to DeSantis
Today marks the final day of the normal legislative session. While the budget is set to be passed on Monday, all other bills are currently scheduled to die at midnight.
And we still do not have a final Congressional plan.
Oh, we have a plan that passed both chambers, but it is a plan the Governor has already pledged to veto. It is a plan the lawmakers have yet to formally send to the Governor at all. In Issue #34 I said redistricting was heading toward an impasse. Nothing has changed that outlook. The vision of the legislature and Governor were always too far apart to ever be reconciled. Despite this GLARINGLY OBVIOUS fact, the legislature still managed to debase and degrade its integrity; limply trying to accommodate the Governor in ways that would never work. No chamber did more damage to its reputation in this process than the Florida Senate.
Wait a minute. Lets back up and cover how we got here.
A Timeline of Insanity
Redistricting for Florida has been ongoing for months. We got our first draft maps for Congress in early November. You can go back and read the play-by-play of events in previous issues. The shortest version ever is….
The Florida Senate was first to pass a map. The Senate had four drafts, all similar racial and partisan breakdowns. These plans preserved the four African-American performing districts, the three Hispanic-majority seats, and added the 9th as a new Hispanic-majority district. The plan was balanced on a partisan scale, taking no obvious efforts to cement Republicans over Democrats.
This plan was hated by right-wing accounts across the activist community online. For months, alt-right activists were convinced that the solidly Republican courts and government would just ignore fair districts and ram through a 20-8 plan.
They refused to listen to the arguments myself and countless others made - that the legislature did not want to end up in years of lawsuits and depositions.
As that right-wing anger built, Governor DeSantis would release plans of his own. His first plan came in January, right before the Senate would pass its plan. I covered DeSantis’ first plan in Issue #29. The governor’s plan was an extreme Republican gerrymander that also erased the black-performing 5th and 10th districts. He released an updated plan weeks later.
After an effort by the Governor to get the Supreme Court of Florida to make a ruling about the 5th district failed, the Florida House resumed its map-making process. They released their updated plan, which was similar to a draft from November. This plan was still more Republican-tilting, but it kept the 5th district.
The House and Senate still differed, however, on Orlando. In essence, the House did not view black voters in Orlando as a protected group while the Senate did. The Senate plan continued to give African-Americans control of the Democratic primary for the deep-blue CD10, while the house plan made white voters the largest Democratic primary group.
So those differences needed to be worked out. But first the House had to advance an actual plan through its committees. First the subcommittee on Congressional redistricting met. That meeting featured a speaker, Robert Popper, who was sent by Governor DeSantis to argue against the 5th district. Republican members were visibly angry that the Governor had sent Popper to lecture them. They questioned Popper on payments and conflicts. It was a tense meeting.
At the end of the meeting, the map was advanced to the full redistricting committee.
Then, suddenly, new plans emerged from the house. The House revealed plan 8019 (originally 8017 but that was amended with small technical changes). This plan made some changes to Orlando while also moving the 5th district entirely to Duval. This actually followed a compromise I outlined in Issue #33; though I was clear I did not like the actual idea. This 5th would likely perform as an African-American seat; very likely Democratic and 65% black in a primary.
Since the seat had the potential to go red (Rubio won it in 2016), it wasn’t as sound for black voters as the current 5th. I delve into the data of that here. As a backup in case of the a court strike down, the house added plan 8015 below; which is only different in North Florida.
Plan 8015 maintains the current 5th district configuration. It only exists as an option for the courts if plan 8019 is struck down.
Republicans leaders said this plan offered to meet the Governor’s demands. DeSantis had, after all, criticized the length of the 5th district. This new seat was much more compact. So surely this would make him happy. Right????
As I laid out to the Washington Post, the Governor did not care about the actual lines. He wanted to be seen as a conservative warrior. Anything he signed would have to be an extreme 20-8 plan or something along those lines. If a veto was overridden, or courts picked a plan, it didn’t matter for him.
When the committee voted to pass the map plan, two conservative Republicans, Brad Drake and Cord Byrd, voted no. This was a clear sign the map would not have DeSantis’ support. All the warning signs were there that the Governor would not accept this plan. Legislative leaders didn’t listen.
It came as ZERO SHOCK to me that when the House was taking up the plan, the Governor issued a veto pledge.
As the house debated the map, the news of the Governor’s tweet spread. The map, drawn to appease the Governor, was DOA. The House had radically altered North Florida for nothing. In the end, the plan would pass with several conservative Republican defections.
All of these changes were a gigantic waste of time. The House had at least been on the right path with its Plan 8011. The Duval-only proposal only served to put the legislature in potential legal risk - and deny Representation to the tens of thousands of rural African-American voters across the panhandle. A population that has a history that dates back to the old plantations of North Florida
The House had passed a plan, but it was notably different from the Senate. A conference was widely expected.
The Senate’s Betrayal
Just hours after the house had passed its map, breaking news emerged; the Senate would take up the house plan. With no time to even process events, the Senate took up the house plan that same day. This had been hinted at the night before, where Senate President Wilton Simpson praised the house map.
The original map passage in the Senate had been a bipartisan affair, getting all but three Democratic votes. This time the debate was much more heated and partisan. Senators questioned why the house plan was being prioritized over the Senate plan. Leaders insisted they house plan was a valid and legal proposal. They never directly answered why the house plan was better than the senate plan. It was clear, as I opined the night before, lawmakers just wanted to go home
With some short debate, the plan passed the senate. All Democrats except for Audrey Gibson (JAX) voted no. Gibson’s vote YES was clearly due to a Duval-only 5th being a perfect seat for her to run in. Gibson had been one of the four Democrats to vote NO on the original Senate proposal. She was the only NO to YES vote in the process. Meanwhile, Republican Senator Manny Diaz voted NO on the plan; with no real explanation to why. Well, yesterday’s news gave me a theory
Now plan 8019 is off to the Governor. Well, it will be whenever the legislature formally sends it over. It has been reconfirmed that the Governor intends to veto the plan. An override does not seem likely (though the possibility still floats around) - but the likelihood is we are heading for the courts.
So, considering where we are, I am forced to ask…. why did the Senate go along with the house? Why not even wait a couple days to see if a conference could be held? The Senate betrayed its own logic in backing the house plan. The Senate drew a east-west 5th district; which not only linked two major cities but also gave representation to the rural black voters.
Thanks to the Senate caving, 85,000 registered African-American voters in the panhandle have lost their say in a minority-performing district.
All that representation lost for a plan the Governor won’t even sign.
Then there is Orlando. The Senate made its position on CD10 very clear; the seat was protected. It was no surprise then, to see a district that largely mirrored the current 10th; maintaining a plurality-black Democratic primary.
The house plan, however, still gives white Democrats the narrow advantage. Already we have a case where African-Americans lost control of the district.
While the two plans are not far off, the black share is 5 points lower in the house plan. Why did the Senate not offer an Orlando-area amendment? Why not take a day to have Senate staff explain their thoughts? We got nothing. We had a couple statements from the Senate leadership saying they thought it was fine. What did staff say? How did they determine the house plan was good enough? We got NO real answers.
The Senate wants to go home. Senate President Wilton Simpson wants to focus on his Agriculture Commissioner run. As a result, they cast their lot in with the house, dumping their own product. They did all this for a plan the Governor has said they will veto.
There really is only one thing that can be said to both chambers of the legislature at this point.
To court! (most likely)