Q&A – How Many Additional GOP Seats Could Florida Redistricting Net?

The bottom line is that redistricting could rather easily create at least one more GOP leaning congressional seat within Florida, with as many as three being a possibility.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Your questions, Brian's answers. It's time for today's Q and AM.
Today this is the Brian Mud Show. Yeah, Today's Q
and A. How many additional geop seeds could Florida Redistricting Net.
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(00:26):
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Joel especially likes the love. I appreciate it. Joel's like,
bring it on. I'm just I'm looking at a photo
you just sent me. Oh, I was just a cute bear.

(00:47):
Say they're cute, right? I just sent it to our
contractor up there. We're still having work done on our
place in the North Carolina Mountains following Helen damage and
then problems with the subsequent contractor. And so any contractor
took a picture of a bear watching them on a
job yesterday, waiting for them to break out the lunchboxes.
I have no doubt that's why the bears as interested.

(01:09):
It's like, hold on, there's probably food around here. So anyway,
how many additional jew p seeds could couldford redistricting that
So that is where we're talking. Then as we take
a look at the talkback feature, one of the things
I would like to remind you if you go into
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number one preset and the Brian Mudshow podcast my podcast
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message right there, maybe for a future Q and a
today's notice. This Hi, Brian, My question for you is
about redistricting. Last week you reported that Governor de Santis
was considering redistricting before next year's elections. The reports about

(01:50):
the Texas redistricting plan suggests Republicans could gain perhaps five
additional seats through redistricting. How many additional seats could Republicans
potentially gain in Florida? Okay? So Governor DeSantis's recent announcement
that he is considering a congressional redistricting plan is on
the back of the effort in Texas, but also following

(02:12):
the recent ruling by Florida's Supreme Court allowing the current
map to remain in place. And that is a very
important piece of this because the legal win by the
DeSantis administration not only clear the path for new redistricting
to take place, but with stronger legal footing to make
potentially aggressive changes to Florida's congressional districts which could impact

(02:34):
the minority majority communities. And that was the impetus behind
DeSantis saying this. He said, there's a lot of people
who believe that the Fair District Amendments is unconstitutional because
what it does and mandates having race predominate, whereas neutrality

(02:55):
should really be the constitutional standard. Okay, so what DeSantis
is referring to is ra racial jerrymandering that has historically
been implicit within the redistricting process in Florida. If you've
ever taken a look at the map of our congressional
districts and you're like, does somebody like cough with paint
in their hand and that became the congressional districts, I

(03:18):
mean it's almost that bad, right, I Mean you look
at it, it's like none of this really adds up. Well,
that's because there was intentional jerry mandering, most commonly along
racial lines, trying to achieve certain type of racial outcomes.
And this was only further driven home to try to

(03:40):
achieve a certain number of what are called majority minority
districts after twenty ten. So in twenty ten, Florida passed
two constitutional amendments called the Fair District's Amendments that DeSantis
was referencing. Questionable language in those amendments included this, districts

(04:00):
shall not be drawn with the intent or result of
denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language
minorities to participate in the political process, or to diminish
their ability to elect representatives of their choice. Okay, so

(04:20):
you know how on occasion we've had amendments make ballots,
voters think it's going to do one thing, it does
the exact opposite. That is precisely what these twenty ten
amendments did. It was one of these third party groups
that had that really wanted racial gerrymandering to take place,
but they worded it in a way it's like, well, yeah,
I want equal opportunity. Who doesn't want equal opportunity? We

(04:41):
should do that? No, not, you got just the opposite.
You got just the opposite. So anyway, that subjective language,
that kind of impetus, for example, is why we had
jerrymandered districts like, for example, the Northern Florida districts, the
former al Lawson district that was really the central focus

(05:05):
of the map challenge to Florida's map that was just
finally resolved after how many years now, four years of
legal battles before the Florida Supreme Court also went through
the federal court system, before the Florida Supreme Court rolled that, Yeah,
that was illegal racial jerry mandarin to achieve that Al

(05:26):
Lawson majority black districts. You disenfranchise voters all over the
state by doing that. Now, you remember how often in
the first couple of years of those legal battles you
heard about how the Alt Lawson district was. You know
that would be it was so important and blacks were
going to be disenfranchised. Right, How much reporting has there

(05:46):
been since the Supreme Court said, yeah, that was illegally
racially jerrymandered. I'm still looking for a story. Uh huh,
funny how that works, right, your GSS news media. But anyway,
having been seemingly liberated of the racial jerrymandering that has
impacted redistricting decisions in Florida, and with Florida having added

(06:09):
over two point one million citizens since the twenty twenty census,
these hants does see the opportunity to significantly redraw districts
and likely benefit the Republican Party in the process with
more leaning seats. So that takes us to the crux
of today's question. So Florida currently has twenty eight congressional
seats in the US House. You know that will not
change no matter what. It only changes with the census.

(06:31):
The current political makeup of Florida's delegation is twenty Republicans
and eight Democrats. Now, attempting to discern how many seats
might lean towards Republicans without a newly proposed map having
been produced, it really speculative to say the least. But
with that said, a lot has changed, not just within
Florida's population, but also the political demographic shift since the

(06:52):
previous census. For example, Miami Dade's emergence as the latest
Republican majority county, in addition to Palm Beach County's consistent
trend towards the right's produced additional opportunities to reshape the map,
especially throughout South Florida, where the majority of Democrats are
left in the state, in a way that likely could
create two GOP leaning seats in South Florida. To give

(07:12):
you an idea, Florida's twenty third House district currently represented
by Jared Moskwitz. It was won by him by fewer
than five points last year. The twenty second district, represented
unfortunately by Lois Frankel, was won by ten percent last year.
Subtle map shifts may be possible to swing those two
districts towards the right, and, with Hillsborough County having also

(07:33):
recently flipped to a GOP and majority, may also be
possible to maneuver one more GOP leaning seat out of
the central part of the state, with the current seat
held by Darren Soto perhaps being the most vulnerable in
that scenario. So the bottom line is that redistricting could
rather easily create at least one more GOP leaning seat
within Florida, as many as three being a possibility, So

(07:56):
it'll be interesting to see what happens from here now.
In order to put this in place in time for
next year's midterms, DeSantis would likely need to call a
special session given the tension that he's had with Forlores
House Speaker Daniel Perez. Not necessarily given even if he
attempts this, that he's going to get cooperation from the legislature.
But anyway, should we arrive at that place, it's likely

(08:18):
that President Trump would then weigh in, and he could
be the needle mover because not only would this impact
his home state, but also for that matter, potentially flip
his home district.