What? Ron DeSantis Had (Illegal) Partisan Help Creating His Jim Crow Gerrymander?

In the spring, Florida was one of the slowest states to finalize its redistricting process, mostly because Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) kept rejecting the district maps the Republican-controlled state legislature had drawn. They just weren’t Jim Crowified enough for DeSantis, who ultimately handed legislators his own map and told them to pass it, which they did.

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Everyone knew that DeSantis was skewing the map for maximum Republican advantage and practically demanding federal voting rights lawsuits, because DeSantis’s map vastly expanded the number of safe GOP seats — from a 16 to 11 Republican advantage over Democrats in the previous districting arrangement, to a ridiculously partisan gerrymander giving Republicans 20 safe seats, and just eight majority-Democrat seats.

While he was at it, DeSantis eliminated a majority-Black district in northern Florida altogether, scattering Black voters into four majority-Republican districts, as this handy map from ProPublica illustrates. DeSantis insisted the district, represented by Rep. Al Lawson, had to be done away with because it “illegally” took race into consideration, never mind that the district was created by the state Supreme Court in 2015 to protect Black citizens’ voting power under the Voting Rights Act and the Florida Constitution. Given the direction of the US Supreme Court, DeSantis seems to have been betting that the Voting Rights Act would be gutted again, which was probably a safe bet.

All of this was clear from the moment DeSantis forced the new map on the legislature back in April, when he made clear he’d veto anything that wasn’t his map. The lawsuits are already flying. But as ProPublica reported this week, what we hadn’t known was just how DeSantis came up with his own map. Following an in-depth investigation of public records and a lot of interviews with those in on the process, the journalism nonprofit found that

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.

That consultation with partisan actors may even have violated Florida’s 2010 anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment, which forbids partisan-driven redistricting. Not surprisingly, the consultants who helped put the map together insist that they are not partisan at all, despite having worked closely with Republican legislatures across the country.

For what it’s worth, former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Pariente, who retired from the Court in 2019, told ProPublica that the whole situation stank to high heaven, telling 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.

Well gosh, how partisan of her!

The piece explains that under Florida’s “Fair Districts” amendment, the legislature is prohibited from creating district maps with “the intent to favor or disfavor a political party.” The amendment also protects minority voting power, hedging against the likelihood that the US Supreme Court would weaken the Voting Rights Act, which was a pretty good bet.

The amendment was useful right away, since in 2010 the Florida Lege promised a very fair, very open redistricting process that turned out to be anything but — it was partisan as fuck, but carefully hidden. After years of lawsuits, in 2015 the Florida Supreme Court threw out the partisan map the Lege came up with, and imposed its own map that complied with the amendment, in the process creating that district that Lawson represents.

When Florida’s Lege approached redistricting again after the 2020 Census, it kept the previous decade’s mess in mind and, miraculously, very carefully adhered to the law, coming up with maps in November 2021 that were pretty close to the existing arrangement, with a map that would give the GOP 16 likely seats and Democrats 12.

Presented with maps that would probably pass court scrutiny and even give his party a slight advantage in Congress, DeSantis, predictably, lost his shit.

“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.”

DeSantis put his deputy chief of staff, Alex Kelly, in charge of creating “better” maps, and Kelly got to work bringing in a crowd of GOP redistricting experts including who worked their magic to create the hyper-partisan map that DeSantis handed to the Legislature to replace those wimpy but legal maps the Lege came up with.

We’re going to skip over the names and details here, but ProPublica makes very clear that, however much they may protest they were working independent of the national GOP, the consultants were “nonpartisan” in name only. Maybe their letterhead even said “NONPARTISAN.” Like, one of the guys, Adam Kincaid, is the executive director of an outfit called the “National Republican Redistricting Trust,” but he also emailed ProPublica to insist that DeSantis merely sought a perfectly legal electoral map, “unlike the gerrymandered plan the Governor rightly vetoed.”

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.

They may all have been redistricting experts who work for Republicans, but don’t you go calling them partisan, you. And what the hell, they delivered a map giving Republicans a huge advantage in Florida, in a surprisingly nonpartisan way that they are sure will hold up to legal scrutiny.

As we like to say, go read the whole thing and be amazed at how far the adjective “nonpartisan” can stretch.

The line that’s likely to stick with us is the observation that, for all of DeSantis’s publicity stunts aimed at stirring up the rightwing base, the real danger he poses gets less attention, by design: “It’s the governor’s less flashy commandeering of the redistricting process that may ultimately have the most long-lasting consequences.”

And yes, this man really wants to be president. God help us.

[ProPublica]

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