The Florida House, Feb. 2, 2022. (Phto by Michael Moline\/Florida Phoenix)<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump\u2019s unprecedented plan to redraw state congressional maps to preserve the GOP\u2019s narrow majority in the House ahead of the 2026 election has hit some bumps, but Republicans appear confident they can flip several Democratic seats in Florida, where the first steps in that process will begin this week.<\/p>\n
A select House committee on congressional redistricting will convene Thursday afternoon in Tallahassee. It\u2019s the first legislative meeting on the issue since Gov. Ron DeSantis said<\/a> in July that it would be \u201cappropriate to do a redistricting\u201d in the middle of the decade. He followed up on that in August,\u00a0saying<\/a> that he and Attorney General James Uthmeier supported an update to the 2020 Decennial Census.<\/p>\n DeSantis said Florida had been \u201cshortchanged in the reapportionment stemming from the last census\u201d in 2020, although no new update to that census has taken place.<\/p>\n Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell slammed the proposal Monday, saying the only reason it is happening is because Trump wants to \u201crig\u201d next year\u2019s midterm elections because \u201che wants to stop Americans from holding his administration accountable for their bad decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Swamp-like cynical behavior\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAny attempt to draw new maps in Florida right now is a direct response to the president\u2019s pressure to stack the deck before the midterms, and that is illegal in Florida,\u201d Driskell said on a Zoom press conference for Florida reporters.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Fair Districts amendments to the Florida Constitution outlaw drawing maps to benefit one party over another. Redistricting decides who represents us in our government. A process that must serve the people, not politicians. This isn\u2019t something that the people asked for. This is just the swamp-like cynical behavior that people hate about politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s Fair District amendments prohibit line-drawing that intentionally favors or disfavors a political party or incumbent.<\/p>\n With the Democrats in superminority status in both chambers of the Legislature, Driskell acknowledged her party can\u2019t stop GOP members but said she is putting some hope in the Senate rejecting the move.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have the numbers to stop this, but we haven\u2019t seen what\u2019s going to happen in the Senate yet and, interestingly, more and more we\u2019re watching our state Senate become a backstop to guard against some of the more dangerous whims of the legislation that we see coming out from the House.\u201d<\/p>\n Senate Republicans, who hold a 26-11 advantage over Democrats in that chamber, haven\u2019t said much about the idea of congressional redistricting since the governor\u2019s comments over the summer.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d like to see some data on the magnitude of people in the state of Florida who might be here illegally who have been part of the calculation on re-districting,\u201d Pinellas County Republican state Sen. Nick DiCeglie told the Phoenix last month.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that we should have redistricting based on United States citizens, and we\u2019ll see how that plays out here, if possible. It\u2019s always good to focus on U.S. citizens and see exactly what needs to be done to accomplish that.\u201d<\/p>\n Senate President Ben Albritton hasn\u2019t made any comments about redistricting, and no committee that would oversee the issue has been formed yet in that chamber.<\/p>\n Driskell said she has taken solace from the fact that several Republicans in Indiana have spoken critically<\/a> of congressional redistricting in their state. However, after pressure from the White House, Indiana House Republicans Monday proposed a redrawing that would let their party control all nine House seats<\/a> (Democrats hold two of the state\u2019s nine seats).<\/p>\n The first congressional redistricting took place in Texas earlier this year. That came after Trump said<\/a> during the summer that Republicans were \u201centitled to five more seats\u201d in the Lone Star State.<\/p>\n