After the Texas state legislature voted on and passed a measure to redraw congressional lines, Governor Ron DeSantis and the state Republican lawmakers are now seriously considering following the Lone Star State's redistricting lead.
Gov. DeSantis recently expressed his support for a mid-census redraw of the congressional lines because he feels that Florida was cheated out of about 756,000 residents. In other words, there was a miss count by the U.S. Census Bureau that should have given Florida two congressional districts and not just one when the Census was conducted in 2020.
Back in 2022, the Census Bureau itself admitted that it had undercounted.
Florida Speaker of the House Daniel Perez recently announced the creation of a House select committee to address the congressional redistricting issue.
In other words, mid-census redistricting is going to happen, but when?
In speaking to several lawmakers who asked that we keep their names out of this article, redistricting will probably happen through a special legislative session that could be called as early as mid-October of this year.
Now, the Florida Legislature could wait until January 2026 when the annual legislative session begins, but why postpone the inevitable?
As you can imagine, Florida Democrats are fuming mad.
Why wouldn't they be?
“This is corruption, plain and simple. The Speaker is abusing his power and breaking with decades of precedent to rig the system in favor of Republicans," the Florida Democratic Party said. "Congressional maps are drawn once a decade, after a Federal census, not when a political party is afraid of losing power." (Source)
Democrats only hold 8 of 28 congressional seats in Florida.
There is a very good chance that U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jared Moskowitz, Daren Soto, Lois Frankel, and Frederica Wilson, could all lose their seats in the House of Representatives as a result of a new congressional redraw.
If the lines are drawn fairly, and if Democratic-controlled congressional districts dip 2-4 points across the board, Reps. Soto, Wasserman Schultz, and Moskowitz would be in a world of hurt.
The Floridian has learned that several key, high-profile Republicans are waiting to see what happens with redistricting.
If one or two of these potential candidates were to jump into at least two of these South Florida congressional races, it could throw Democrats into panic mode. One of these candidates will surely bring the house down on Democrats.
Stay tuned...
