As I have written before, the over-exertion of political desires has always hurt reapportionment. Historically, those lawmakers who chair the committees in the Legislature tasked with reapportionment have ended up with Congressional seats of their own. Karen Thurman. Mario Diaz-Balart. Ginny Brown-Waite. Peter Deutsch. What do all of these current and former U.S. Representatives have in common? If you said they all ran away from their own voters to run in their brother's district, well, you only got one out of four.
But more than likely, you correctly guessed that each one as redistricting chair made sure districts were drawn which made their own promotion to the U.S. House much easier. This isn't about party. This is all about power, and very personal power at that.
Of course, there was something particularly disturbing about the way the process went down in 2002. It reached beyond a few specific districts, and was more important than the GOP's determination to get two to four more seats in Congress. While we in the press were focused on the upcoming Thurman v. Brown-Waite contest that would inevitably come, most of the lawmakers in Tallahassee were doing something more selfish. The GOP at the time had three-to-one control of the state House and near that in the state Senate. But the partisan domination was not the biggest thing that really happened that year.
The first wind I got of it came when all the state Senate districts got renumbered. Why would that happen, I asked? Soon it was pointed out to me that in most cases, even-numbered districts became odd-numbered. The reason was a complicated loophole in Florida's term limit rules, limits which had just gone into effect shortly before the redistricting process. Florida voters had decided "Eight is Enough" when it came to years of service for lawmakers. For those in the House, "Eight" meant eight. State representatives run every two years, and there was no way around that. But the state Senators found a fix. Because the even-numbered districts run staggered from the odd-numbered, changing the numerology offered the chance for incumbents to cheat an extra two years, presuming they had not already served their eight years and were not already planning to retire.
Too much techno-babble? Let me use this Central Florida example. I lived in District 11, and my state Senator had been elected to a four-year term in 1996, then re-elected in 2000. Every seat had to go up for re-election after redistricting, but theoretically,my Senator in 2002 should only have run for a two-year term, then been forced to retire. Instead, I suddenly found myself in District 20. That meant my Senator, after serving a four-year term and a two-year term, was running for another four-year term. If she had served out her term, she would have gotten 10 years before being term-limited. The same situation benefited nearly every Senator, regardless of party.
Incidentally, I was told then that state Sen. Dan Webster engineered this trick. He is now challenging Alan Grayson for a seat in the House.
But that was only the beginning. Even more discreet things were being done by the lackies drawing the lines. Computer technology offered lawmakers tools and skills unheard of in the prior 1992 redistricting process. Racial gerrymandering? Kid stuff. With new demographic software and precision election records, lawmakers could cut neighborhoods where they had performed poorly clear out of their districts. Democrats and Republicans could literally swap constituent strongholds. Sure, Democrats made a fuss about the GOP protecting its majority, but somehow lawmakers in hotly contested districts in 2000 suddenly had districts so one-sided challengers could not be found for them by November 2002.
Indeed, lawmakers suddenly found themselves better protected than ever before, enough so that the Legislature in 2004, which polls showed as the most unpopular in the nation, had every single member seeking re-election emerge victorious. This doesn't even discuss the number of districts where no re-election battle need be waged at all. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, more than half the state House districts in the state this year only have one of the two major parties competing for the seat, and many of those saw lawmakers elected with no opposition.
Fair Districts Florida wants the next process to go better. I have my doubts over how effective their ballot language will be. Promises to eliminate any "intent" not to favor a political party seem to me rather hard to enforce. But it's a start. Should they end up on the ballot, I will vote for Amendments 5 and 6. The intent is good, even if the proposals lack sharp enough teeth.
Of course, the amendments are being challenged in court as well, and by none other than Reps. Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, and Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville. At least the two can each offer some humor to this saga. After getting elected in a new, custom-fit district in 2002, Diaz-Balart is running for his life away from his own voters and running for his retiring brother Lincoln's seat instead. (Get the joke now?) Brown represents one of the worst gerrymandered districts in Florida, one that actually had to be redrawn by a judge more than a decade ago but still looks crooked. These two are bipartisan poster children what is wrong with redistricting the way it works in Florida today.
With any luck, things will be better in the near future, but in the meantime I would rather not trust my political opponents with the redistricting process come 2012. If one party has 3-to-one margin control of either Chamber at that point, we are in for another decade of very ugly politics in the Sunshine State.
