Re-election impact of drawing new Senate maps causes disagreement.

Disagreement arises over re-election impact of new map

TALLAHASSEE — Florida lawmakers ran into a major hurdle right out of the starting blocks of a special session convened Monday to redraw 40 state Senate districts.

Attorneys for the Republican-led Florida House and Senate disagree on whether senators whose district lines change will have to run for reelection in 2016 if they weren’t already scheduled to do so.

Under the Florida Constitution, senators serve staggered four-year terms, with 20 up for election in a given election cycle. In 2016, only odd-numbered districts are scheduled to be on the ballot.

But in redistricting years, all senators are up for election, and any districts that are changed force the incumbent senator to run for re-election again. Although 2016 isn’t a normal redistricting year, the redrawn maps could significantly alter nearly every district throughout the state.

House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said he thinks any district that changes would mean that seat would be up for re-election.

“We’ve always understood it to be everybody has to go back and run again,” Crisafulli said.

Some Senate leaders disagree, claiming they have sufficient grounds to not require incumbent senators elected in 2014 and whose districts are altered to run again in 2016.

“We have substantial legal support for it,” said Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, the Senate redistricting chairman.

Despite the early friction, Crisafulli said he’s willing to defer to the Senate to redraw its own districts — as long as they meet with courts’ approval.

“The House will not be a rubber stamp for just anything that the Senate sends over to us, but I do expect us to be good partners in passing a constitutionally compliant map,”

Crisafulli said.

The ill will between the chambers still hangs over the Capitol amid a year that has seen public sniping among leaders during a dispute over health care funding that required a special session to resolve.

And during an August special session to redraw 27 congressional districts, the chambers failed to reach a consensus. Lawyers for the House and Senate ended up arguing against each other in court, each saying their chambers’ map was better. That case is pending before the Florida Supreme Court.

The court threw out the congressional maps in July, ruling that Republican lawmakers colluded with GOP operatives to pack minorities in some districts to make surrounding districts safer for Republicans. Since a separate case over the Senate maps contained much of the same evidence, Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, took the unprecedented step of admitting his chamber violated the constitution and agreed to redraw the maps.

Another factor complicating efforts to reach consensus is the ongoing battle between Sens. Joe Negron, R-Stuart and Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, to succeed Gardiner, who is term-limited, after the 2016 elections.

Negron earlier this year declared he had a majority of Republican pledges and called for a Senate GOP caucus meeting in December to name him Senate president-designate. But Latvala contends that some of the senators supporting him are term-limited. That fight raises the stakes on which senators would have to run for re-election in 2016.

Several House members also have their political futures at stake in the new Senate maps. Rep. Victor Torres, D-Orlando, is running for a Senate District 14, currently held by Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, even though as an even-numbered district, the seat wouldn’t normally be up for re-election.

Torres said he’ll push to make sure the voting power of Hispanic voters in Orange County isn’t diluted.

“The bottom line is the Senate and the House, how we’re going to come to an agreement – if we come to an agreement on these maps,” Torres said.