Congressional races will be hot this year
With the drama of Florida’s presidential primaries done, some of the most competitive battles in decades over several Central Florida congressional seats have just begun.
Thanks to a court-ordered change in how districts are drawn, this year’s races feature a congressman leaving his district entirely to run somewhere else and an entire district disappearing.
Even in the districts that have not changed much, there’s a fight to replace fiery U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson and a better chance than before of unseating Republican Rep. John Mica, who been in office for 23 years.
“The redistricting situation in Florida has been really interesting, and really different than the last five or six decades,” said UCF political science professor Aubrey Jewett. “To sum it up, the Legislature didn’t do a very good job when they drew the congressional
lines.”
He was referring to a long court fight over the districts that resulted in the state Supreme Court ordering new boundaries. As the legal battle raged and districts shifted back and forth, a voter in one part of downtown Orlando would have technically lived in districts represented by Republican Daniel Webster, Grayson and Mica over the course of a year and a half, without ever changing addresses.
District 5
The most interesting change, Jewett said, is U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown’s District 5, which has been wiped clean from the region.
First drawn by federal judges as a majority African-American district, Brown’s district stretched from Jacksonville to Orlando. The new map shifts it to stretch from Jacksonville to Tallahassee along the Georgia border, shifting scores of mostly Democratic voters into Central Florida districts.
“When that was switched, it really changed the Central Florida districts significantly,” Jewett said. “We have several more districts that are either more competitive, or — at least in one case — probably a lot more Democratic than it used to be.”
District 10
That biggest change came in District 10, once made up of parts of Orange, Lake and Polk counties and dominated by Republicans.
Now it’s entirely in Orange and has a doubledigit lead for Democrats in registration.
“The net effect is to
change District 10 to a Democratic district,” said Lew Oliver, Orange County Republican chairman. “[District] 10 transformed from a competitive district into noncompetitive.”
Webster, who represents District 10, quickly announced he was leaving the seat and would run in the safer District 11 farther west.
That left several wellknown Democrats to battle for the seat, including former Orlando Police Chief Val Demings, state Sen. Geraldine Thompson and former state Democratic Chair Bob Poe.
District 9
District 9, which includes Osceola County and parts of southern Orange County, hasn’t changed as much politically, but it has changed demographically.
“It’s still pretty heavily Democratic, and it was fairly Democratic before as we l l ,” Jewett said, but the Hispanic makeup has fallen from about 40 percent to about 30 percent.
Grayson, who was elected there in 2012 and 2014 and is leaving to run for U.S. Senate, didn’t face any Hispanic opposition when he ran.
“Possibly, under exactly the right circumstances, it’s winnable for us,” the GOP’s Oliver said. “If Democratic Hispanics in the district remain frustrated that the Democratic candidate is [again] not Hispanic … it might be somewhat more competitive.”
On the Democratic side, Grayson’s former district director Susannah Randolph, state Sen. Darren Soto and former state
Rep. Ricardo Rangel are all running for that seat, which Orange County Democratic Chair Juan Lopez said should remain in his party’s hands.
“It’s still a Democratic-plus district,” he said. “Regardless of demographics.”
District 7
District 7, represented by Republican John Mica since 1993, lost parts of Volusia County and added sections of Orlando. “It’s not quite as Republican as it used to be, although it’s still a little bit Republican by registration,” Jewett said. National Democrats have recently been targeting Mica, “but press releases are not the same thing as lots of money,” Oliver said.
Lopez acknowledged the difficulty of beating Mica, saying that “it ’s hard to uproot somebody who’s been there for 20 years now. We’ll look at the numbers after this quarter, to see if John Mica is in danger, and if [he is], we’ll take advantage of it.”
Overall, Lopez said, “it’s more of 2008 all over again: a lot of primaries, a lot of candidates. I guarantee more will join in before qualifying [in June], and some will drop out.”
But there could be one more major surprise.
Brown, who is being investigated by the House ethics committee for her ties to the director of a possibly bogus charity, might just jump into the already crowded race for District 10.
“I have represented the Central Florida area for 23 years,” she hinted in December when asked about moving to District 10. “So it’s not ‘moving back.’”