DeSantis broke Florida precedent and maybe the law, too, in making congressional map
New details show that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office appears to have misled the public and the Legislature and may have violated Florida law in drawing congressional districts.
This article was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was incensed. Late last year, the state’s Republican Legislature had drawn congressional maps that largely kept districts intact, leaving the GOP with only a modest electoral advantage.
DeSantis threw out the Legislature’s work and redrew Florida’s congressional districts, making them far more favorable to Republicans. The plan was so aggressive that the Republicancontrolled Legislature balked and fought DeSantis for months. The governor overruled lawmakers and pushed his map through.
DeSantis’ office has publicly stressed that partisan considerations played no role and that partisan operatives were not involved in the new map.
A ProPublica examination of how that map was drawn — and who helped decide its new boundaries — reveals a much different origin story. The new details show that the governor’s office appears to have misled the public and the state Legislature and may also have violated Florida law.
DeSantis aides worked behind the scenes with an attorney who serves as the national GOP’s top redistricting lawyer and other consultants tied to the national party apparatus, according to records and interviews.
Florida’s Constitution was amended in 2010 to prohibit partisan-driven redistricting, a landmark effort in the growing movement to end gerrymandering as an inescapable feature of American politics.
Barbara Pariente, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court who retired in 2019, told ProPublica that DeSantis’ collaboration with people connected to the national GOP would constitute “significant evidence of a violation of the constitutional amendment.”
“If that evidence was offered in a trial, the fact that DeSantis was getting input from someone working with the Republican Party and who’s also working in other states — that would be very powerful,” said Pariente, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Democrat Lawton Chiles.
A meeting invite obtained by ProPublica shows that on Jan. 5, top DeSantis aides had a “Florida Redistricting Kick-off Call” with out-of-state operatives. Those outsiders had also been working with states across the country to help the Republican Party create a favorable election map. In the days after the call, the key GOP law firm working for DeSantis logged dozens of hours on the effort, invoices show. The firm has since billed the state more than $450,000 for its work on redistricting.
A week and a half after the call, DeSantis unveiled his new map. No Florida governor had ever pushed their own district lines before. His plan wiped away half of the state’s Black-dominated congressional districts, dramatically curtailing Black voting power in America’s largest swing state.
One of the districts, held by Democrat Al Lawson, had been created by the Florida Supreme Court just seven years before. Stretching along a swath of
North Florida once dominated by
tobacco and cotton plantations, it had drawn together Black communities largely populated by the descendants of sharecroppers and slaves. DeSantis shattered it, breaking the district into four pieces. He then tucked each fragment away in a majority-white, heavily Republican district.
To reconstruct DeSantis’ groundbreaking undertaking, ProPublica interviewed dozens of consultants, legislators and political operatives and reviewed thousands of pages of documents obtained through public records requests and from the nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to detailed questions for this story.
“Florida’s Governor fought for a legal map — unlike the gerrymandered plan the Governor rightly vetoed,” Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, whose top lawyer was hired by DeSantis’ office, said in an email to ProPublica. “If Governor DeSantis retained some of the best redistricting lawyers and experts in the country to advise him then that speaks to the good judgment of the Governor, not some alleged partisan motive.”
Analysts predict that DeSantis’ map will give the GOP four more members of Congress from Florida, the largest gain by either party in any state. If the forecasts hold, Republicans will win 20 of Florida’s 28 seats in the upcoming midterms — meaning that Republicans would control more than 70% of the House delegation in a state where Trump won just over half of the vote.
The reverberations of DeSantis’ effort could go beyond Florida in another way. His erasure of Lawson’s seat broke long-held norms and invited racial discrimination lawsuits, experts said. Six political scientists and law professors who study voting rights told ProPublica it’s the first instance they’re aware of where a state so thoroughly dismantled a Black-dominated district. If the governor prevails against suits challenging his map, he will have forged a path for Republicans all over the country to take aim at Black-held districts.
“To the extent that this is successful, it’s going to be replicated in other states. There’s no question,” said Michael Latner, a political science professor at California Polytechnic State University who studies redistricting. “The repercussions are so broad that it’s kind of terrifying.”
Al Lawson’s district, now wiped away by DeSantis, had been created in response to an earlier episode of surreptitious gerrymandering in Florida.
Twelve years ago, Florida became one of the first states to outlaw partisan gerrymandering. Through a ballot initiative that passed with 63% of the vote, Florida citizens enshrined the so-called Fair Districts amendment in the state Constitution. The amendment prohibited drawing maps with “the intent to favor or disfavor a political party.” It also created new protections for minority communities, in a state that’s
17% Black, forming a backstop as the U.S. Supreme Court chipped away at the federal Voting Rights Act.
After the Fair Districts Amendment became law in 2010, state legislators promised to conduct what one called “the most transparent, open, and interactive redistricting process in America.” Policymakers went on tour across the state, hosting public hearings where their constituents could learn about the Legislature’s decision-making and voice their concerns.
The hearings also served a more nefarious purpose, a judge would later rule. They were instrumental in what state circuit Judge Terry Lewis described as “a conspiracy to influence and manipulate the Legislature into a violation of its constitutional duty.”
For months, a team of state-level Republican operatives worked in secret to craft maps that favored the GOP, coordinating with both statehouse leadership and the Republican National Committee. Then they recruited civilians to attend the hearings and submit the maps as their own.
An email detailed the advice the operatives gave their recruits. “Do NOT identify oneself orally or in writing,” it read, “as a part of the Republican party. It is more than OK to represent oneself as just a citizen.”
STATE SUPREME COURT DRAWS A MAP
It took years of litigation for the details of the scheme to come to light. But in 2015, the Florida Supreme Court responded with force. In a series of rulings that ultimately rejected the Republicans’ efforts, the court laid out the stringent new requirements under Fair Districts, making clear that partisan “practices that have been acceptable in the past” were now illegal in the state of Florida.
After ruling that the Legislature’s process was unconstitutional, the court threw out the Republicans’ congressional district lines and imposed a map of its own. That is how Lawson’s district came to be.
“It was important,” Pariente, who authored the key opinions, told ProPublica, “to make sure the amendment had teeth and was enforceable.”
In 2021, state legislative leaders were more careful.
The Senate instructed its members to “insulate themselves from partisanfunded organizations” and others who might harbor partisan motivations, reminding legislators that a court could see conversations with outsiders as evidence of unconstitutional intent. The Legislature imposed stringent transparency requirements, like publishing emails that it received from constituents. And it ordered staff to base decisions exclusively on the criteria “adopted by the citizens of Florida.”
The Senate leadership “explained to us at the beginning of the session that because of what happened last cycle, everything had to go through the process,” Sen. Joe Gruters, who is also chairman of the Florida Republican Party, told ProPublica.
In November, the state Senate proposed maps that largely stuck to the status quo. Analysts predicted they would give Republicans 16 seats in Congress and Democrats 12.
“Were they the fairest maps you could draw? No,” said Ellen Freidin, leader of the anti-gerrymandering advocacy group FairDistricts Now. “But they weren’t bad Republican gerrymanders.”
THAT DIDN’T SIT WELL WITH THE GOVERNOR
DeSantis wasn’t satisfied. “The governor’s office was very pissed off about the map. They thought it was weak,” said a well-connected Florida Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could be candid. “They thought it was ridiculous to not even try to make it as advantageous as possible.”
In early January, DeSantis’ deputy chief of staff, Alex Kelly, was quietly assigned to oversee a small team that would devise an alternative proposal, according to Kelly’s later testimony.
State employees often spend years preparing for the redistricting process — time that DeSantis did not have. As Kelly and his colleagues set to work, they brought in critical help from the D.C. suburbs: Jason Torchinsky, a Republican election attorney and one of the leading GOP strategists for redistricting nationwide.
On Jan. 5, Kelly and two other top DeSantis aides had the redistricting “kick-off call,” according to the meeting invite, which was provided to ProPublica by American Oversight. The invitation included Torchinsky and another guest from out of state: Thomas Bryan, a redistricting specialist.
In an interview with ProPublica, Bryan explained the connection between the national Republican Party and his work with DeSantis. “There’s a core group of attorneys that works with the party and then they work with specific states,” he said. “It’s not a coincidence that I worked on Texas, Florida, Virginia, Kansas, Michigan, Alabama.”
He added that the main lawyer he works with is Torchinsky: “Jason will say, ‘I want you to work on this state.’ ”
A BIG PLAYER IN GOP’S STATE STRATEGY
A top partner at a conservative law firm, Torchinsky has represented the RNC, the Republican Party of Florida and many of America’s most influential right-wing groups, such as the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity.
He also occupies a central role in the Republican Party’s efforts to swing Congress in its favor in 2022. Torchinsky is the general counsel and senior adviser to the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the entity the Republican National Committee helped set up to manage the party’s redistricting operations.
In a statement to ProPublica, Kincaid said that the trust is one of Torchinsky’s many clients and that the lawyer’s work in Florida was separate.
Torchinsky’s involvement in the creation of DeSantis’ map has not been previously reported. His role in the process appears to have been intimate and extensive, though the specifics of his contributions are largely unclear. He spent more than 100 hours working for the DeSantis administration on redistricting, according to invoices sent to the Florida Department of State.
Torchinsky held repeated meetings with DeSantis’ team as the group crafted maps and navigated the ensuing political battles, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. And he brought in other operatives who’d worked around the country in priority states for the national GOP.
PUTTING TOGETHER A REDISTRICTING TEAM
A week after the kickoff meeting, Torchinsky scheduled a Zoom call between Kelly, Bryan and a second consultant, Adam Foltz.
Foltz and Bryan arrived in Florida just as they were becoming go-to mapmakers for the GOP. They appeared together in multiple states where the NRRT was directly involved last year, generating controversy in their wake.
Foltz and Bryan’s rapid ascension culminated in Florida. On Jan. 14, Torchinsky set up a third call with Foltz and Kelly. Then two days later, DeSantis released his map.
According to Kelly’s subsequent testimony, Foltz drew the map himself.
“I was completely blindsided,” said Rep. Geraldine Thompson, a Democrat on the House redistricting committee. “That is the purview of the Legislature.”
Foltz declined an interview when reached by phone and did not respond to subsequent requests for comment. Kelly and Torchinsky, who went on to defend DeSantis in a lawsuit against the redistricting, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The House redistricting subcommittee later brought Kelly in to answer questions about DeSantis’ proposals. Before the deputy chief of staff testified, the Democrats’ ranking member moved to place him under oath. Republican legislators blocked the committee from swearing Kelly in.
In his opening statement, Kelly took pains to emphasize that the governor’s office colored within the lines of the Florida Constitution.
“I can confirm that I’ve had no discussions with any political consultant,” he testified. “No partisan operative. No political party official.”
THERE’S CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE
This appears to have been misleading. By the time he testified, Kelly had been personally invited to at least five calls to discuss redistricting with Torchinsky, Bryan or Foltz, records show.
Kelly mentioned Foltz only briefly in his testimony. Torchinsky and Bryan’s names didn’t come up.
DeSantis holds as much sway in Tallahassee as any governor in recent memory. But even after he publicly weighed in with a map of his own, Republicans in the Legislature didn’t bow down. The state Senate refused to even consider the governor’s version. In late January, it passed its original plan.
On Feb. 11, DeSantis ratcheted up the pressure. He held a press conference reiterating his opposition to Lawson’s district. He vowed to veto any map that left it intact. But he still needed to win over Republican policymakers. Again, DeSantis’ top aides turned to Torchinsky.
In February, Torchinsky helped DeSantis’ staff pick out an expert witness to sell the governor’s vision to the Legislature, according to emails provided to ProPublica by American Oversight.
Once the group chose an expert, Torchinsky had a call with him in advance of his appearance.
With a deadline to prepare for the November midterms looming, the Legislature moved toward compromise. In early March, it passed a new bill that was much closer to DeSantis’ version — but still kept a Democratleaning district with a large Black population in North Florida.
The governor’s attempts at persuasion were over.
POWER OF THE VETO
On March 28, Foltz and Kelly had another call, along with a partner at Torchinsky’s law firm.
The next day, DeSantis vetoed the compromise plan.
Democrats were outraged; many Republicans were shocked. “A veto of a bill as significant as that was definitely surprising,” Gruters, the state senator and chair of the Florida GOP, told ProPublica.
Kelly soon submitted a slightly modified version of Foltz’s map to the Legislature. This time, the Legislature took DeSantis’ proposal and ran with it.
The Legislature had required everyone submitting a map to file a disclosure form listing the “name of every person(s), group(s), or organization (s) you collaborated with.” Kelly left the form blank.
The Legislature voted on party lines and passed DeSantis’ proposal the next day. Anticipating litigation, they also allocated $1 million to defend the map in court.
Before DeSantis even signed the bill into law, a coalition of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit challenging the map in state court.
They soon scored a major victory. Circuit Court Judge J. Layne Smith, a DeSantis appointee, imposed a temporary injunction that would keep Lawson’s district intact through the midterm elections.
That victory was shortlived. Torchinsky’s firm quickly filed an appeal on DeSantis’ behalf. Then, in a unanimous decision in late May, the appellate court allowed DeSantis’ map to move ahead.
The broader case is still pending and is expected to eventually be decided by the state Supreme Court. Every justice on Florida’s Supreme Court was appointed by Republicans. The majority of them were chosen by DeSantis.
‘‘ IF THAT EVIDENCE WAS OFFERED IN A TRIAL, THE FACT THAT DESANTIS WAS GETTING INPUT FROM SOMEONE WORKING WITH THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ... WOULD BE VERY POWERFUL. Barbara Pariente, former Florida Supreme Court chief justice