Ending the gerrymandering of legislative districts must be the biggest priority for anyone in Florida who is tired of business as usual... but we have to have a better strategy than "hope amendments #5 and #6, but not #7 get at least 60% in November."
Ending the gerrymandering of legislative districts must be the biggest priority for anyone in Florida who is tired of business as usual.
If you click right here, you can see a map of state house districts in Pinellas. But may you think to yourself "This doesn't look so bad. It even makes a sort of sense."
Of course, you would be completely wrong. Let me illustrate this with a quick link to the COMPLETE map of State House District 55.
Isn't that just a little nightmare? It crosses from South St Pete and Gulfport over into Hillsborough and then leaves the core of Tampa Bay and snakes down south towards Sarasota.
The only point of this district is balkanize large numbers of Democratic voters so that incumbent Republicans are safe from real challenges.
Right now, there are two legitimate ballot measures that would reform redistricting - #5 and #6. These two ballot initiatives address state legislative and Congressional redistricting, respectively.
As most of you probably already know, there is also a #7, which gives the legislature unfettered power to ignore the previous initiatives.
What this does, is increase the likelihood that all three initiatives to fail. The legislature, busy clinging to power, knows that, especially with the new 60% threshold for passing ballot initiatives (which itself, ironically, passed with only about 55%). They are counting on people hearing just enough bad stuff about the legislature’s “poison pill” redistricting measure that at least 40% + 1 on Florida voters will decide to vote them all down, for fear of voting for the wrong measure.
I will be fervently hoping and praying (yes, I am religious!) that #5 and #6 pass with the necessary 60%. But, we must also think about the alternatives. Even without Tallahassee’s unethical and greedy meddling, it is very hard for ballot measures to reach 60%. Voters who don’t feel very well educated on such measures tend to feel that the safest thing to do is just vote “no.”
As a second line of defense – and I say this at the risk of contradicting my last post, which encouraged people to look at down ballot races – we must elect Alex Sink as governor.
I will not pretend that her campaign has not been less than stellar (though her fundraising is very strong), but I think she is starting to find her voice. Also, I had a chance to spend some time with her in 2006, when she was running against the Senate President for CFO and it was clear, even then, she a special lady. We don’t agree 100% on every policy, but I never doubt her heart is in the right place. You can’t say the same about would-be politician-for-life and the mediocre master of the Tallahassee-Two-Step, Bill McCollum.
Leaving aside the fact that a Governor Bill McCollum would, apparently, have no problem sending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to pay for his friends’ gay rentboys, a Democratic governor could be the first line of defense against a bad redistricting scheme by the legislature.
Our third line of defense (or our second second line - I don't know - there might be a sports metaphor in there somewhere) is to make gains in the legislature.
No one is saying that the Democrats can take back the state house or senate this year, but if we can keep what we have and make some key gains, we can give a Governor Sink enough legislative support to force the GOP to submit a redistricting plan that is fair and just to the voters, rather than one designed to maximize their majority.
With Florida constantly changing, it does no harm to launch aggressive campaigns for every open seat. Many long time Republican politicians are being termed out seats that, since they were drawn, now feature a registration edge for Democrats.