Race Front and Center in New Congressional Maps and Legal Challenges

In its most recent special session, the Florida legislature approved new Congressional maps that were immediately met with lawsuits alleging racial discrimination. Barring an injunction, the maps will be used at least for the upcoming midterm elections. However, the uncertainty is presenting a myriad of challenges for candidates, voters, and supervisors of elections offices.

On a local note, the new maps would remove Sarasota County from Vern Buchanan’s District 16, marking the first time in modern history that the two counties did not share a Congressional representative. On a broader level, the maps raise questions about race and whether districts should be created or sustained merely on the basis of racial representation.

There is no question that when it comes to disenfranchising the African American vote, few states have a worse record than Florida. As a result, five Florida counties were subject to judicial review for changes to election procedures as part of the 1965 Voters Rights Act until the Supreme Court of the United States found that element unconstitutional in 2013.

However, when Floridians passed the "Fair Districts" initiative via ballot referendum in 2010, it set up an interesting paradox. The referendum amended the state constitution to require that congressional district boundaries be redrawn only in such ways that they establish "fairness," are "as equal in population as feasible" and use "city, county, and geographical boundaries," whenever possible.

This was complicated by the fact that it also prohibited districts from being redrawn in ways that would dilute the minority vote or reduce the chance for minority representation among elected officials, with a similar element existing in federal law. The problem is that one of the oldest tricks when it comes to gerrymandering is a tactic known as "packing.“

Packing is when the party in power draws the maps in such a way that they pack enormous majorities of their opponent's votes into a small number of districts that they can effectively concede while drawing thinner majorities across a greater number of districts, all but ensuring that their Congressional delegation will be larger.

In Florida and other Southern states, this was sometimes used as a sort of Trojan horse in that a district would be gerrymandered in a way that would make a Black representative very likely while hurting the party Blacks overwhelmingly vote with (Democrats) by packing so many likely voters into such districts.

A prime example was former Rep. Corrine Brown’s district which once narrowly snaked all the way from Jacksonville to Orlando. When the district was redrawn more equitably in accordance with Fair Districts, Brown sued, alleging that it was racially discriminative. The district was eventually redrawn by court order and Brown lost a primary to another Black candidate before ultimately being sent to jail on felony fraud charges related to an education charity scam she used to fund a lavish lifestyle.

This year, Florida Republicans were worried that the maps Governor Ron DeSantis wanted wouldn’t pass muster with the courts. However, DeSantis sent them back to the drawing board via a special session, and the result was something much closer to what he himself had envisioned. The new maps would likely add four Republican seats and remove two districts currently held by Black Democrats. DeSantis seems to be directly challenging the issue in that he has said that he wanted the districts drawn in a "race-neutral manner."

The Black population in Florida has remained static in terms of percentage of the total population from 2010 to 2020, according to census data. With that considered, it makes sense that if there is a "race-neutral“ approach, Black representation would be reduced. Black Democrats are counting on a favorable interpretation of the law, while DeSantis seems intent to see what the courts, which have become increasingly conservative at the federal level, will decide.

Also at issue is the Latino vote. While Blacks have continued to vote overwhelmingly Democrat, Latinos have become increasingly more open to voting Republican, particularly when immigration policy is not their primary concern. Polling data suggests that the culture war is driving more Latino voters to the right, especially when they are from South American cultures that tend to be more religious, more conservative on social issues, and more apprehensive to policies that can, accurately or not, be tied to Marxist Socialism.

As a result, many Republicans are raising the issue of whether it is equitable to make map concessions to one minority group and not others (the impetus for "race-neutral"), which could have the effect of driving more non-Black minorities to their camp. Whatever the courts ultimately decide, the effect will be a confusing election cycle (and maybe more than one) in which everything is a moving target. I guess we can chalk this up to yet one more way in which our partisan and cultural divides have rendered us incapable even in matters of self-governance as simple as who runs and votes in each race.