2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Florida

[Donerail]

I don't see them dropping the FL-5 AA seat.  Minority access seats pretty much never go away.   Even with the R State Supreme Court it'll exist in some fashion somewhere.  The optics of drawing it out to replace it with a bunch of 55% R seats is absolutely horrible.

Yes because the current fl5th looks so clean and nice on the optical side to the average voter.

The much more moderate GA gop was also willing to draw out the similarly non sensible Ga 12th even if it was a minority access seat.

Democrats could argue for a seat purely based in Jacksonville and that had a chance in a lawsuit. I do not see current courts requiring Fl 5th in current form.

Pretty shape of a district < Denying Blacks representation

I'm not sure GA-12 is fitting the role of "minority access" either.  It was a new seat when they drew it and only lasted two elections.   If it was it was a really terrible one.

Its not just the shape. Its the fact that Tallahassee and Jacksonville are 2 separate cities quite far apart. Just like how the old GA 12th in the 2000s originally went from Savanah to Augusta to Athens. The GOP made it drop Athens in 2006 and in 2010 they dropped Savanah .  To most people they would vote for an improved fair amendment only if the districts are ugly as those are easy to propagandize. Leaving FL 5th as is,increases the chances of a ballot measure succeeding if anything.

I agree it's hard to justify FL-05 from a VRA/state law equivalent perspective . It's almost impossible to justify FL-05 while opposing LA-02 and agreeing that the 2011 VA-03 and NC-12 were unconstitutional. 

At the same time, it's not crazy to think R's would benefit strategically from keeping FL-05 this decade.
 Northeast Florida has significant dummymander potential for R's down the line and the backlash to drawing out a black congressman would only accentuate that. 

The worst case scenario for Republicans if they draw out FL-05 is a swingy seat in Jacksonville electing a Democrat, which is still better than a safe seat electing a Democrat.

I guess they might be worried about a Gwen Graham doppleganger in FL-02, but that seems fairly unlikely to me. Even if that was a major risk, having 2 seats for most of the decade and 0 seats for like 2 years at the worst seems like a better deal.

It's important to remember that these districts are drawn by members of the state legislature; their concern first and foremost is not a Republican majority in Congress (though they certainly wouldn't mind that), it's a continuing Republican majority in the state legislature.

In that context, the continued existence of FL-05 and its predecessors make sense. There has always been an informal, unspoken alliance between Republicans and black/Hispanic Democrats on the gerrymandering issue — Republicans would like to pack Democrats into as few districts as they can, and black/Hispanic Democrats would like as many majority-minority districts as possible, two goals that go hand in hand. This alliance matters, despite the lack of formal power that the Democrats hold in Tallahassee, because of the state's process for constitutional amendments by referendum; Republicans have relied on minority Democrats to block (in the case of independent commissions) or water down (more recent redistricting standards) proposals that would take power over redistricting from the state legislature.

What they have to worry about here is losing the tacit support of black Democrats, which could lead the FDP to more aggressively pursue an amendment on gerrymandering that would permanently remove the process from GOP hands. The Democrats are not and will not ever be able to win majorities under the lines that exist, but they would be able to pass an amendment if they put some effort into it. Maps that deliver comfortable-but-not-maximal GOP majorities, while affording substantial opportunities for minority representation, is the payment to ensure that doesn't happen.

[Donerail]

Has anyone taken on the chore of drawing a FL CD Pubmander that intelligently balances the risks and rewards associated with the legal constraints to which the map is subject (assuming a Pub friendly but not hackish, FL Supreme Court)? Is so, I would appreciate being directed to it.

Well, that depends a lot on how hackish the court is. To take S019's example, looking at FL-13, a non-hackish court wouldn't send FL-14 into Pinellas at all — there's precedent directly on point saying that violates the Fair Districts Amendment. A slightly more hackish court would allow it, but might require FL-13 to stay within Pinellas instead of extending into Pasco or west Hillsborough; an even more hackish court would allow that kind of solution.

In general, I would assume a Pub friendly and extremely hackish court — DeSantis has stacked it that way for a reason — but that the Legislature may not go for maximal R gain because of other factors (like keeping Bilirakis's Pinellas residence in FL-12, which limits how aggressively you can draw FL-13).

[Donerail]

Reminder that Rep. Gus Bilirakis lives in Palm Harbor, and is a member of a minority ethnic group based in north Pinellas so would be very displeased were he to be drawn out. Have to maintain that north county split, as a practical matter if not a legal one.

[Donerail]

As I have said many times before, I have more faith in the courts than that, even partisan courts. I think that for an obviously partisan reason, a map makes additional county chops, or significant city chops, or makes a map significantly more erose, is very vulnerable to being struck down under the Florida law. For example, if FL-14 is going to cross the bay , it had better take in the entirety of St. Petersburg, and eliminate a county chop elsewhere or greatly mitigate it, or make some CD materially more compact. A line change that benefits the Pubs, while also adding some other negative factor as described above, has no talking points to go to the court with. The Pub case in such event has no clothes, and the court is quite unlikely to ignore that fact the way the emperor's subjects did when the he was in his birthday suit. I am not changing my mind of this one. Color me obtuse or stubborn if you must. I won't mind too much.

I believe your talking point will not be county chops or material compactness but physical connection. The old FL-14 relied solely on water connections to take in south St. Pete; it should be possible (though maybe more trouble than it's worth, haven't run the numbers) to draw a FL-14 that includes the Gandy and Howard Frankland bridges between Tampa and St. Pete.

Is that a bullsh**t distinction? Sure, but it's exactly the type of fine-grained distinction that I could imagine this court (which, remember, has been remade almost entirely by DeSantis and Scott) buying. HD-70, also a Pinellas seat, relies on the same logic to go down to Sarasota and has not been successfully challenged.

[Donerail]

As I have said many times before, I have more faith in the courts than that, even partisan courts. I think that for an obviously partisan reason, a map makes additional county chops, or significant city chops, or makes a map significantly more erose, is very vulnerable to being struck down under the Florida law. For example, if FL-14 is going to cross the bay , it had better take in the entirety of St. Petersburg, and eliminate a county chop elsewhere or greatly mitigate it, or make some CD materially more compact. A line change that benefits the Pubs, while also adding some other negative factor as described above, has no talking points to go to the court with. The Pub case in such event has no clothes, and the court is quite unlikely to ignore that fact the way the emperor's subjects did when the he was in his birthday suit. I am not changing my mind of this one. Color me obtuse or stubborn if you must. I won't mind too much.

I believe your talking point will not be county chops or material compactness but physical connection. The old FL-14 relied solely on water connections to take in south St. Pete; it should be possible (though maybe more trouble than it's worth, haven't run the numbers) to draw a FL-14 that includes the Gandy and Howard Frankland bridges between Tampa and St. Pete.

Is that a bullsh**t distinction? Sure, but it's exactly the type of fine-grained distinction that I could imagine this court (which, remember, has been remade almost entirely by DeSantis and Scott) buying. HD-70, also a Pinellas seat, relies on the same logic to go down to Sarasota and has not been successfully challenged.

When you say "not successfully challenged," was the Florida law that bans favoring one party and respecting jurisdictional lines on the books at the time? The point is not so much bridges, but more having a rationale other than just a partisan one, for the way the lines are drawn.

If the Pubs do a St. Pete chop, the odds are 100% that it will end up in Court, and if the FLST upholds it, then yes, that would be a disgrace, and the Court Pub members exposed as utter  hacks with no redeeming virtue whatsoever.

Yes, Florida's "Fair Districts" Amendments (Amendments 5 & 6) were adopted in 2010, and the Court relied on it to strike down some of the Senate districts in that cycle. The Court rejected the FDP's challenge to District 70 (which, to be fair, is able to fulfill some VRA requirements by using the Skyway), and, while they found illegal partisan bias in some state senate districts, their ruling didn't extend to District 22, which included parts of St. Pete and south Tampa (via the Gandy and the Howard Frankland).