Remember the Fair District Amendment? Thankfully, the Florida Supreme Court did, and that 5-2 ruling against those tainted, gerrymandered, congressional maps–and their “unconstitutional intent to favor the Republican Party and incumbents”–will now be revisited and redrawn. As long as we have an FDA, declared the court, we might as well be in compliance with it.
And the court, as we’ve seen, has ordered eight of this state’s 27 congressional districts, including Tampa Bay’s Districts 13 and 14, redrawn. More than a dozen other bordering districts will also be impacted.
As we await implementation details, including transparency, two subplots–one ironic, one common sensical–will be notable.
Among the districts affected is U.S. District 5, home to U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, a 14-term, African-American Democrat who likes her Jacksonville-to-Orlando salamander just fine. She has threatened to sue to keep it that way. The irony, of course, is that it is a minority-access district and minority communities, as Rep. Brown has noted, “do not live in compact, cookie-cutterlike neighborhoods.”
Partisans have sometimes defended gerrymandering as the only means of securing any representation for minority groups. Violating local boundaries, in effect, can be seen as an acceptable tradeoff to risking a muted voice for a politically cohesive group. Politics as usual, shall we say, for a greater good.
But arguably both parties need to be part of any transparent solution to end partisan gamesmanship. No more salamanders, no more Rorschach-test patterns. Just sanely drawn, contiguous districts that enable meaningful democracy and don’t traffic in demographic herding.
If the Supreme Court’s rebuke is to mean anything, and if the order to the Legislature to present new maps by October 17 is to be complied with, Rep. Brown may have to take one for the team and hope to win a 15th term on her overall record.
The other notable plotline is one already referenced by the U.S. Supreme Court when it recently ruled that Arizona voters could create an independent redistricting commission to draw district lines. While there are no political panaceas, having directly impacted politicians determine their own political borders makes no sense.