McCoy drove from her home on the Westside to Tallahassee to speak against the maps, which the Florida Legislature will consider Wednesday.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Proposed-Florida-congressionap-map-2026-1024x993.webp.webp\")
Gov. Ron DeSantis shared this proposed map for mid-decade redistricting with Fox News on Monday, April 27, 2026. DeSantis shared the proposed map with the network prior to the Florida Legislature. | Florida Senate<\/p>\n
McCoy says too many elected officials lack integrity and a spirit of public service.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we have a choice, we can pick someone in our best interest,\u201d McCoy says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter the race of the person, or the party. If you have the interest of the people equally. We are humans; we are not property.\u201d<\/p>\n
One-party dominance<\/p>\n
The maps are widely seen as a response to President Donald Trump\u2019s desire to create more Republican-leaning districts to preserve the Republican majority in the U.S. House. But DeSantis says the mid-decade maps are necessary to account for Florida\u2019s rapid population growth in recent years. He told Fox News his proposed map \u201cmore fairly represents the makeup of Florida today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The redistricting bill passed the Florida Senate Rules Committee 14-9 on Tuesday afternoon. All the Democrats on the committee, including Sen. Tracie Davis, D-Jacksonville, voted against the bill. They were joined by Sen. Jen Bradley, R-Fleming Island, and three others. Bradley said in committee the bill was unconstitutional and hinged on legal theory.<\/p>\n
The maps could give Republicans as many as 24 of the 28 seats in Florida\u2019s congressional delegation.<\/p>\n
With one party represented by 85.7 % of Florida\u2019s available congressional districts, it would mark the highest percentage of single-party representation in the Sunshine State since the 1950s.<\/p>\n
At the time, Democrats controlled seven of the state\u2019s eight congressional seats. Republican William Cramer beat incumbent Democrat Courtney Cambell by 1,543 votes to represent the Tampa Bay area in Florida\u2019s CD-1 in 1954<\/a>. Cramer became the first Republican to represent a portion of the Sunshine State in Congress since Jacksonville attorney Horatio Bisbee<\/a> was seated in CD-2 after multiple contested elections in the 1880s.<\/p>\n Activists and members of the Florida Legislature are concerned the DeSantis team is trying to return Florida to that era of one-party domination.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have that cotton belt mentality,\u201d McCoy says. \u201cInstead of moving forward \u2026 we are sitting here in America tearing everything down. That\u2019s the way I look at the state of Florida and our nation as a whole.<\/p>\n \u201c(Redistricting) affects everyone. Once they create these policies, it\u2019s going to affect everyone. I don\u2019t care if you are a rich person, a poor person, a homeless person, you\u2019re going to be affected. The impact will not be in your favor.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022, at the height of Florida\u2019s prior redistricting conversation, historian Tameka Bradley Hobbs told Jacksonville Today that Florida\u2019s one-party dominance post-Reconstruction and\u00a0throughout the early half of the 20th century was predicated on disenfranchising minority voters as well as implicit and explicit threats of racial violence.<\/p>\n Finding out on Fox<\/p>\n This week, racial minorities in the Florida Legislature expressed their annoyance at the proposed maps. Rep. Rita Harris, D-Orlando, and Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, D-Orlando, said they learned of the congressional maps after DeSantis\u2019 appearance on Fox News on Monday morning.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, state Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, in a social media video shared Monday, said the maps were illegal and unconstitutional.<\/p>\n Northeast Florida\u2019s congressional maps remain similar to the 2022 maps the Governor\u2019s Office drew.<\/p>\n Those maps removed a minority-access district in Northeast Florida. It was challenged in federal court by groups that included the ACLU of Florida, Florida Rising, the Florida Conference of the NAACP and others.<\/p>\n The Florida Supreme Court rejected the challenge<\/a> in July 2025, finding there \u201cis no possible, non-racial explanation for using a nearly 200-mile-long land bridge to connect the Black populations of Jacksonville and Tallahassee.\u201d<\/p>\n Voting rights advocates express dismay<\/p>\n Florida Rising\u2019s chief advocacy and political officer, Mon\u00e9 Holder, says she was outraged but not surprised that Florida seeks to redraw its congressional maps six years early.<\/p>\n \u201cCalling for mid-decade redistricting is about more than maps. It\u2019s about whether the people of Florida have any real say in the issues shaping their day-to-day lives and our shared future,\u201d Holder said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernor Desantis is reaching for an illegal power grab and it must stop. When politicians draw districts to protect themselves, they stop having to answer to voters. And when that happens, families across this state, from those struggling with rising housing costs to those rebuilding after disasters, pay the ultimate price. There\u2019s nothing fair about deciding elections before voters do. Over half of Floridians oppose partisan gerrymandering, not to mention it is banned by our state\u2019s constitution. Which begs the question: do voters still have power in Florida or are politicians taking it for themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n McCoy says she is disgusted by the political system that allows for the redistricting conversation to take place during the middle of a decade.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the River City, the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville says it will fight the proposed maps, which it believes violate the letter and spirit of Article III, Section 20 of the Florida Constitution<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Florida Constitution states that no individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party. The state constitution also declares districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying equal opportunity of racial or language minorities from the ability to elect representatives of their choice.<\/p>\n \u201cBlack voters are used to illegal tactics being used to suppress\u00a0representation, and Governor DeSantis\u2019\u00a0new Congressional redistricting map is just one more attempt,\u201d Northside Coalition President Kelly Frazier wrote in a statement. \u201cIn Jacksonville, NCOJ sued the city council and won when city council \u2018packed\u2019 Black voters into a few districts to reduce our influence. Now, DeSantis is openly \u2018cracking\u2019 Democratic districts to dilute Democratic influence \u2014 which is illegal under the Florida Constitution\u00a0\u2014 in order to send more Republicans to Washington.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will fight this map, and, win or lose, will work to get out the vote in November so that, as much as the politicians try to pick their voters, it will be the people who pick their representatives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018Maps, they don\u2019t love you like I love you\u2019<\/p>\n Once Northeast Florida\u2019s \u201cminority access district\u201d was removed during the 2022 redistricting process, voters in Nassau, Clay and portions of Duval County elected Republican Aaron Bean<\/a>, R-Fernandina Beach, to the newly drawn Congressional District 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bean said during his victory party in Fernandina Beach that the \u201copportunity didn\u2019t even exist\u201d as recently as seven months before his election. He added at the time that he planned to change course after he was term-limited from the Florida Senate.<\/p>\n \u201cThen, under Ron DeSantis, something happened. A little over six months ago this new seat was created \u2014 one of four,\u201d Bean said in his victory speech. \u201cIt caused us to start chatting about it. I felt a calling. We felt a calling. We thought we could do something. If we could take a chance and make that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Bean\u2019s congressional colleague, Rep. Darren Soto<\/a>, CD-9, quipped on Monday night that the DeSantis administration\u2019s latest maps resembled those a 3-year-old would draw on an Etch-A-Sketch.<\/p>\n After getting his jokes off, Soto claimed the maps DeSantis\u2019 office released Monday morning would dilute the vote of 1.3 million Puerto Ricans who live in Florida.<\/p>\n Soto\u2019s seat is one of four that could be affecte by redistricting.<\/p>\n All four seats are currently occupied by Democrats who are women, religious minorities or racial minorities. They include Rep. Kathy Castor<\/a>, CD-14, Rep. Lois Frankel,<\/a> CD-22, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz<\/a>, CD-25.<\/p>\n Politico reported Monday<\/a> that Rep. Jared Moskowitz<\/a>, CD-23, would be shifted to a new congressional seat.<\/p>\n McCoy is hopeful elected officials devote their time to tackling affordability, housing access, wages and cost of living rather than redistricting.<\/p>\n But she doesn\u2019t hold her breath.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is so unbalanced,\u201d McCoy says. \u201cThey are going to vote in the way they want to vote. It\u2019s not in the best interest of all people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rosemary McCoy says it is a waste of Floridian resources for Gov. Ron DeSantis to call a special…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[43323,88005,116,118,117,99028,115,99,10351],"class_list":["post-250340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-distribute","tag-government-politics","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jaxtdy1","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-redistricting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Rosemary-McCoy-1024x576.webp.webp\")
Rosemary McCoy speaks during a rally in March 2025 that decried Florida\u2019s 4th Judicial Circuit for not bringing charges against a Duval County 18-year-old who wielded a machete outside a polling location in October 2024. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n![\"State](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Angie-Nixon.webp.webp\")
State Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, touts her union bonafides during a December 2023 rally by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters at the Anheuser-Busch facility in Jacksonville. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Mone-Holder-1024x576.webp.webp\")
Mone\u2019 Holder, pictured in October 2022, is the senior director of advocacy and programs for Florida Rising, a progressive voting rights group. Florida Rising is among the plaintiffs in lawsuits against the state of Florida and the city of Jacksonville for the maps each produced during the redistricting process. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/aaron-bean-wins-cd4-2-scaled-1024x576.jpg\")
Aaron Bean of Fernandina Beach became the first Nassau County resident elected to Congress in November 2022. Bean previously served in the Florida Legislature for 16 years. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n