As House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has taunted Florida to warn against a redistricting plan to favor Republicans, Gov. Ron DeSantis is now firing back.
“There’s nothing that could be better for Republicans in Florida than to see Hakeem Jeffries everywhere around this state,” DeSantis said of the New York Democrat. “Voters will not like what they see. They will not want that type of ideology. And so the door is open.”
The comments happened hours after Jeffries jabbed DeSantis over calling the Florida Legislature to Special Session next week to consider mid-decade redistricting.
“Our message to Florida Republicans is: F around and find out,” Jeffries said as a Washington press conference.
That came a day after Virginia voters approved an aggressive Democratic map that could net four U.S. House seats. That sparked debate whether Florida, with a Republican Governor and Legislature, will try to make up that ground, though an appearance of partisan response could run afoul of a ban on partisan intent in the Florida Constitution.
Virginia and Florida are the latest to step into the mid-decade redistricting debate. Republican states like Texas and North Carolina already approved maps aimed at boosting the number of GOP seats, while blue states like California responded with make to make back Democratic losses.
But GOP consultants have expressed a growing anxiety that the push for more Republican-friendly maps could backfire and leave once-safe incumbents vulnerable.
Jeffries practically begged DeSantis to draw new maps while standing beside a sign with eight Republican incumbents he threatened to target in the Midterms.
“If they go down the road of a DeSantis ‘dummymander,’ the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans, who are on the run right now,” Jeffries said.
“And under no circumstances are Texas Republicans picking up five seats. They’ll be fortunate if they get two or three, while in California we are going to get all five. The Republicans are ‘dummymander-ing’ their way into the minority before a single vote is cast.”
DeSantis made little mention of the coming redistricting Session, though he still included “reapportionment” in a list of topics to be discussed next week. If the use of the term is notable, reapportionment typically refers to the decennial process of awarding House seats to each state based on population. DeSantis has long maintained Florida was wrongly denied more House seats because of miscalculations by the U.S. Census Bureau.
But he kept his response to Jeffries personal instead of substantive.
“I heard this guy, Jeffries, popping off in Washington about Florida. He wants to be Speaker of the House, and he’s kind of more liberal than (Nancy) Pelosi and all this other stuff from New York City,” DeSantis said.
“Just, ‘Oh, Florida can’t do this or we’re going to go after Florida.’ Please, be my guest. I will pay for you to come down to Florida and campaign. I’ll put you up in the Florida Governor’s mansion. We’ll take you fishing, we’ll do all this stuff.”
Meanwhile, James Blair, a former White House Deputy Chief of Staff who recently took leave to head up GOP political efforts for the Midterms, demurred in a CNN interview on whether Florida should craft new cartography next week.
“Ron DeSantis has drawn the maps before. If he chooses to go forward, he will draw them in a way that is compliant with the law and we’ll see what happens,” Blair said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, for his part, said Florida should take up the redistricting process.
“Florida has a right and the intention to do it, and my view is that they should,” the Louisiana Republican said. He also suggested Democrats launched the redistricting wars in 2024, when New York produced a new congressional map mid-decade.
“Democrats started this. The Republican states are doing what they can do lawfully under their state laws, and in a state like California, Virginia, they had to defy their own constitutions to play a dishonest game,” Johnson said. “The people are taking account of this. They’re voting accordingly, and we are on track to win in November. Watch.”
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