US Rep. Brown asks federal judge to stop Legislature

Brown has furiously fought the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling that her district should no longer run from Jacksonville in the north to Orlando in the south and should instead have an east-west orientation. They would be wise to ignore U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden, who showed up to complain that the legislative staff had carved his Orlando area district into several districts and left him nowhere he can win. It sensibly placed almost all of Manatee County and all of Sarasota County in the same district.

The Supreme Court found last month that GOP political operatives colluded to submit maps favoring the Republican Party that were eventually passed by lawmakers.

Their questions were often indirect swipes at the Florida Supreme Court for mandating that the Legislature draw the maps in a certain way, and for further ordering that legislators record conversations with staff and preserve all documents involved in the redistricting process.

“It is probably, in my opinion, the least polarized county in the state of Florida”, said Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho. On Day 2 of the special session, a joint committee of House and Senate members began the process of redrawing the state’s congressional district lines. The lawsuit challenged the current shape of her district on the grounds that it creates “racial packing” by unnecessarily putting a large number of African-American voters together in a district. The court said those districts, drawn in 2012, did not comply with a voter-approved “Fair Districts” constitutional amendment aimed at preventing gerrymandering. Graham’s Northwest Florida swing seat would become heavily Republican, while Webster’s Central Florida district would become friendly to Democrats. The dilution of the black voting population in her district is in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, she contends. That map, which legislative leaders have made it hard to amend, would dramatically change District 16 – for the worse.

An amendment filed in the House by Rep. Dave Kerner, D-Lake Worth, would continue to allow the districts of Congressman Ted Deutch and Congresswoman Lois Frankel – both Democrats – to run from north to south. The court asked lawmakers to redraw the districts, but said the Legislature didn’t necessarily have to use a “stacked” formation – with one district taking up most of the northern territory and another to the south. “This new plan not only disfavors the incumbent but appears to be an attempt to eliminate the incumbent”.

“The new configuration for District 10 makes the seat uncompetitive for anyone in my party, including me….”

The proposed map rolled out last week would affect most of the state’s 27 congressional districts and could result in a shift in the partisan balance of the state’s delegation.

Senate Reapportionment Chairman Invoice Galvano, R-Bradenton, defined that in contrast to different instances during which a regulation is struck down as unconstitutional, the redistricting case not permits the Legislature the good thing about a presumption that what it did was proper. “If the Supreme Court upholds it, they’re the appeal”, Webster said.

Webster would not say whether he would seek reelection should the redrawn district remain.