Judge Throws Out Unconstitutional Florida Republican Gerrymandering Of Congressional Districts

There was a virtual earthquake in Florida politics Thursday when Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis threw out Florida's congressional map. The grubby Florida legislature has a long and sordid history of gerrymandering the state to create congressional districts for themselves and their allies and this has featured collusion from both parties, so not just slime-ball former Republican legislators like Ander Crenshaw, Daniel Webster, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Adam Putnam and Lincoln Diaz-Balart who created congressional districts for themselves but equally sleazy and corrupt Democrats like Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In fact, Wasserman Schultz, was so eager to create an all-Jewish district she felt she would be safe in forever that she was key in approving a shocking gerrymander that gave the Republicans far more seats than their numbers would have ever predicted. The 112th Congress had 19 Republicans and just 6 Democrats. Today, a slightly less gerrymandered map gives the 113th Congress 17 Republicans and 10 Democrats. The current party registration for Florida is:

• Democrats- 4,781,978 (40.1%)
• Republicans- 4,245,991 (35.6%)
• Independents and others- 2,906,477 (24.4%)

The simplest and most straight-forward model based on those numbers would predict 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans-- not 17 Republicans and 10 Democrats.

Florida voters, sickened by their gross careerist political opportunists on both sides of the aisle passed the Fair District amendments in 2010, Amendment 5 for the legislature and Amendment 6 for Congress. This was the ballot summary for Amendment 6: "Congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party. Districts shall not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Districts must be contiguous. Unless otherwise required, districts must be compact, as equal in population as feasible, and where feasible must make use of existing city, county and geographical boundaries." And the first argument in favor was that it would "prevent incumbents from redrawing district lines to insure their seat is safe." It passed with an overwhelming 62.9% of votes cast-- a landslide. But career politicians challenged it in court-- and lost.

You can read Judge Lewis' entire ruling here. The case decided Thursday was brought by the League of Women Voters, the principle sponsor of the Fair District amendments and it is likely to be appealed by the career politicians again-- who will use taxpayer money for a long and expensive battle-- and will make it to the Florida Supreme Court, if not the U.S. Supreme Court. He found that putting downtown Orlando into Webster’s district violated compactness and extending Corrine Brown's district from Jacksonville to Orlando also violates compactness and that's a real problem for Republicans. If the current decision stands, then 100,000 African-American voters west of downtown Orlando could drop drop into either Webster’s district or Mica’s district or Grayson's district. 100,000 African-American voters in either Mica's district or Webster's district would be the end of the line for those two and the end of any shot of the Republicans ever winning back those districts. If they put those voters into Grayson's district, Mica, Webster or Posey are going to wind up with a lot of Puerto Rican voters from FL-09 are are traditional Democratic voters. It would force Mica and Webster into retirement and would make Posey's district a swing district that a talented Democrat could win from him.

Lewis rejected challenges to districts in South Florida and Tampa Bay, but said that District 5, held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown of Jacksonville, and District 10, held by Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Webster of Winter Park "will need to be redrawn, as will any other districts affected thereby."

The judge agreed with the coalition's prime argument: that Republican legislators and staffers collaborated with political consultants to create "a shadow redistricting process" that protected incumbents and the GOP.

…The 13-day trial lifted the veil on the once-a-decade process of redrawing political boundaries and was rife with political intrigue that involved numerous side lawsuits, a closed hearing to keep the testimony of GOP consultant Pat Bainter off the public record, and closing briefs filled with redacted references to Bainter's documents… Lewis said political consultants "made a mockery of the Legislature's transparent and open process of redistricting" while "going to great lengths to conceal from the public their plan and their participation in it."

"They were successful in their efforts to influence the redistricting process and the congressional plan under review here," he wrote. "And they might have successfully concealed their scheme and their actions from the public had it not been for the Plaintiffs' determined efforts to uncover it in this case."

He concluded that the circumstantial evidence proved that the political operatives "managed to find other avenues… to infiltrate and influence the Legislature."

Lewis drew no conclusions that House Speaker Will Weatherford, former House Speaker Dean Cannon and Senate President Don Gaetz were aware of the scheme, but he raised doubts that they were not in some way complicit. The judge detailed the involvement of Cannon's aide, Kirk Pepper, and repeated evidence that came out at trial about Pepper forwarding draft maps to GOP operative Marc Reichelderfer.

Lewis also noted that legislative leaders and the political operatives destroyed almost all of their emails and other documents related to redistricting and concluded that the circumstantial evidence surrounding all of those developments, and the evidence that the consultants attempted to influence the same districts he has found problematic, proved the GOP operatives were trying to influence the process.

It still isn't clear if the districts will have to be redrawn in time for the elections in November-- although no one I've talked to in Florida thinks that's a realistic outcome. Remember, Corrine Brown's 5th district has a D+21 PVI and snakes through the northern and central part of the state gobbling up Democratic voters to make FL-06 (Ron DeSantis- R+9), FL-07 (John Mica- R+4) , FL-10 (Daniel Webster- R+6) and FL-11 (Richard Nugent- R+11) all safer for Republicans by making their districts much whiter and more reactionary. Webster, who only managed to survive by the skin of his teeth in 2012-- 164,873 (52%) to 153,646 (48%) against a very weak Democratic opponent, Val Demings-- only managed a 50/50 tie in massive Orange County which will be the core of the new district and which will make FL-10 an easier target for Democrats without Lake County, Webster's bastion. If the Democrats run popular former state legislator Scott Randolph, Webster might as well retire. Randolph was reelected to his Orange County-based seat with 73% and 60%.

Taliban Dan is losing his unfairly drawn safe red seat