Gov. DeSantis floats idea of redrawing districts while speaking in Manatee County
Gov. DeSantis floats idea of redrawing districts while speaking in Manatee County
FOX 13's Ariel Plasencia reports.
BRADENTON, Fla. - Governor Ron DeSantis floated the idea of redrawing congressional boundary lines during a speaking event in Manatee County, citing Florida's population growth.
"I also think the way the population has shifted around Florida – just since the census was done in 2020 – I think the state is malapportioned," DeSantis said during Thursday’s media event at the Manatee Performing Arts Center in Bradenton. "So I do think it would be appropriate to do a redistricting here in the mid-decade."
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Big picture view:
Florida’s congressional delegation has 20 Republicans and eight Democrats. Redistricting typically happens once a decade after the U.S. census, which most recently occurred in 2020.
"Florida, you know, we got a raw deal in the census. We only got one seat. When some of these other states were getting seats – when we've obviously had more growth – we should have gotten at least two," DeSantis added.
His comments come as Republicans in Texas are also looking to redraw districts amid the Trump administration’s push to help the GOP keep its slim control of the U.S. House.
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The backstory:
The state constitution directs the state legislature to redraw district boundaries every ten years around the census. The next census is in 2030.
"What redistricting means is that you reassess where boundaries are between districts based upon how and if the population shifts of a current state," USF political science professor J. Edwin Benton told FOX 13.
While a mid-decade re-map is rare, it’s not unprecedented.
The other side:
The Florida Democratic Party released the following statement on Friday, "slamming" DeSantis’ suggestion of redistricting:
"This is nothing more than a desperate attempt to rig the system and silence voters before the 2026 election. Now, after gutting representation for Black Floridians and stacking the court to uphold it, he wants to further gerrymander and suppress the vote of millions of Floridians. We have a federal census every ten years for a reason. What DeSantis is doing is inappropriate. He’s not responding to population growth, he’s responding to polls. Because he knows the Republican party is on the verge of losing its grip. If Ron DeSantis spent half as much time solving real problems as he does scheming to steal elections, maybe we wouldn’t be in the middle of a housing, insurance, and education crisis."
"These are Republican politicians, who are so power hungry and feel so entitled that they are willing to convene another redistricting process that we just completed to draw maps that only benefit their party, that only benefit the influence of large corporations in our political operations, that will silence half of the state of Florida," State representative Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) told FOX 13 Friday.
House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell (D-Tampa) derided DeSantis’ plan as a "dangerous abuse of power and an attempt to put Donald Trump’s agenda ahead of the people of Florida."
"Redistricting is intended to occur once every 10 years — following the census — to reflect population changes, not to serve as a political weapon whenever those in power fear losing their grip," Driskell said in a statement to the News Service of Florida (NSF).
Dig deeper:
On July 17, the Florida Supreme Court, in a 5-1 decision, upheld a congressional map that DeSantis pushed through the Legislature in 2022, according to NSF.
The ruling centered on North Florida’s Congressional District 5, which in the past stretched from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee and elected Black Democrat Al Lawson.
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During the 2022 redistricting process, DeSantis argued that keeping such a district would be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and pressured lawmakers for an overhaul that included drawing District 5 in the Jacksonville area. White Republicans have won all North Florida congressional seats under the new map.
Rejecting arguments of voting-rights groups, the Supreme Court ruled that using a design similar to the old Lawson district would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause because it would involve racial gerrymandering.
The Supreme Court reached the same conclusion as DeSantis about the old design of District 5, saying there "is no plausible, non-racial explanation for using a nearly 200-mile-long land bridge to connect the Black populations of Jacksonville and Tallahassee."
The Source: Information for this story came from interviews conducted by FOX 13 and a news conference by Governor Ron DeSantis on Thursday, July 24 in Manatee County. Additional details were provided by the News Service Florida.