Bipartisan hypocrisy over redistricting in Florida
Lordy, some of Florida’s Republican state senators were about to start singing “People Get Ready.”
As they tried and failed this month to comply with a court order for a new congressional map, GOP lawmakers kept proclaiming that black votes matter. My favorite moment came 16 days ago.
U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, who is African-American, fumed to the Senate Reapportionment Committee about the Florida Supreme Court’s demand to change her District 5 seat. It meanders through black neighborhoods from Jacksonville to Orlando, as it has for the 23 years Brown has held it. The court wants the district to run east-west.
Brown invoked the federal Voting Rights Act, which she also invoked in her unsuccessful lawsuit against the Fair Districts Amendments that outlawed gerrymandered seats like hers. She invoked Selma.
Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, drawled that Brown’s speech had reminded him of when “Mama put me in the front row at church.” Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Orange Park, speculated about judicial revenge. The court ruling noted Brown’s lawsuit. My goodness, Bradley wondered, did the court single out Brown for exercising “sacred political speech?” Replied Brown, “It is chilling.” No, it’s nauseating. The same Republican Party now supposedly concerned about black voters is the same Republican Party that in 2011 tried to suppress black turnout by eliminating the second Sunday of early voting — Souls to the Polls day for black churches — and otherwise hindering early voters, who are disproportionately black.
As for Brown, she and Republicans have exploited the Voting Rights Act since the 1990s by conspiring on political mapmaking. Their deal, cemented in 2002 and 2012, gives black Democrats a set number of safe congressional and state Senate seats by packing them with black voters. Republican voters are then spread over many other districts, helping the GOP win them. The court ruling threatens that deal.
Brown may be mad at the courts, but the courts got this deal started. In 1992, Democrats controlled the Legislature. They packed Republicans and spread Democrats. Republicans challenged the map, saying that it violated changes to the Voting Rights Act designed to create districts that minorities could win.
Three federal judges drew the map. Florida’s 1990 congressional delegation had no blacks and one Hispanic. The 1992 delegation included two Hispanics, both Republicans from Miami, and three black Democrats.
Brown won that Jacksonville-Orlando seat. Alcee Hastings won a minority-access district that ran through black neighborhoods from St. Lucie County to Broward. Carrie Meek won a new, heavily black district in Miami.
Democrats had 13 seats to the GOP’s 10. In 2002, however, the new Republican map and low turnout in a non-presidential year gave the GOP 17 seats to just nine for the Democrats — two years after George W. Bush and Al Gore basically tied.
Florida got two new seats. One went to Tom Feeney, who had been speaker of the House during the map-drawing. The other went to Mario Diaz-Balart, who had been chairman of the House committee in charge of redistricting. Republicans didn’t mess with the African-American districts.
Since 2002, Brown has never received less than 60 percent of the vote. She has run unopposed twice and against a write-in once. Hastings has never dropped below 77 percent and has been unopposed twice. Kendrick Meek, who succeeded his mother, faced three write-ins and ran unopposed. Since 2010, Frederica Wilson has run unopposed once and received 86 percent twice.
Yet Brown is furious that the percentage of black voters in her district would drop from 50 percent to 45 percent. She doesn’t want a chance that a minority will win. She wants a guarantee.
In the lawsuit that led to the Florida Supreme Court ruling, the trial judge found that Republicans in 2012 drew parts of Brown’s district not to benefit black voters but to benefit the GOP. Florida still has just those three black members of Congress, all Democrats. All three Hispanics are from Miami and Republicans, despite the many Hispanic Democrats in the Orlando area.
The beauty of the Fair Districts Amendments lawsuit is that it targets entrenched politicians in both parties. It targets the hypocrisy behind the drawing of Florida’s political boundaries. It seeks to make politicians more accountable to the public. People get ready.
Randy Schultz, a former editorial page editor of The Palm Beach Post, blogs for Boca Raton Magazine.