Florida’s Republican governor signs state’s new congressional map into law

Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, signed a new gerrymandered congressional district map into law Monday that gives Republicans an electoral advantage in four additional races in November’s midterm elections.“Signed, Sealed, and Delivered,” DeSantis said in a post on X, with a map of the new districts attached.With the stroke of a pen, DeSantis, a Republican, has done more to determine the outcome of congressional elections in Florida than any political operative or field organizer in the state. The new map slices and dices districts around Miami, Orlando and the Tampa Bay area.As an example of the effect of the mid-decade redistricting, mapmakers packed reliably Democratic voters around Orlando into a single district, forcing Democratic representatives Darren Soto and Maxwell Frost to compete for the same voters.Conversely, the new map splits the Tampa Bay area from two districts into three, somewhat shoring up the 13th district for Republicans, now held by firebrand Trump supporter and influencer congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, while weakening a left-leaning district for Democrats held by congresswoman Kathy Castor.Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a longstanding figure among the Democratic National Committee, has had her seat drawn out from beneath her. Miami’s Democrats have been packed into three tight districts along the coast.Florida’s current delegation has 20 Republicans and eight Democrats.Criticism of the redistricting has come from both the right and the left. Democrats accuse DeSantis of violating the state’s constitution, which has a plain-language prohibition passed by popular mandate on partisan gerrymandering. Republicans fear the aggressive redraw endangers at least as many of Florida’s Republican representatives as it protects, and may backfire.Immediately after DeSantis’s announcement, opponents filed a lawsuit in Leon county challenging the redistricting. The Elias Law Group, which has been challenging redistricting in courts across the country over the last year, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Equal Ground Education Fund and 18 Florida voters, arguing that the new congressional map is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander in violation of the Florida constitution’s fair districts amendment.