Florida’s 11th congressional district
The nation’s oldest congressional district is Florida’s 11th Congressional District. The 11th district covers a wide swath of central Florida, facing the Gulf Coast in places but mostly covering the state’s interior north of Tampa and west of Orlando. It’s an area of mostly nondescript suburbs, many of which are planned retirement communities, and much of this district was simply empty several decades ago. Case in point, the largest town in the district is a place you’ve probably never heard of: Spring Hill, Florida. Spring Hill had a population of 98,621 in 2010 … and a population of 6,468 in 1980.
The best-known place in the district isn’t really a town at all: it’s The Villages, a sprawling retirement community of around 50,000 people, which isn’t incorporated. Instead, it’s a “community development district,” which is basically a fiefdom where the developers have all responsibility for the local infrastructure, where the residents don’t have a voting interest in what happens and where all public space is essentially privatized. But, on the plus side: endless free golf for the residents! The Villages is also known as one of the epicenters of the conservative movement in Florida, and Republican candidates, both at the presidential and state level, regularly trek to the Villages to make appearances before legions of fans.
When one of the nation’s largest retirement communities is the heart and soul of a district, it’s a pretty good bet that that district is going to be the oldest in the nation. There are several different ways to approach the question: does “oldest” mean the highest median age among all residents, or does it mean the highest percentage of senior citizens? Well, either way, the 11th takes the honors. It has the highest median age (52.8 years), and it also has the highest percentage of persons over 65 years old (32.8 percent). (The 11th doesn’t, however, have the highest percentage of persons 85 years or older; that honor goes to Florida’s 21st district (4.2 percent), further south in Palm Beach County, which was already a retirement destination back when the 11th was mostly just orange groves.)
And when one of the nation’s most notorious Republican strongholds is the anchor of a district, it’s likely that the district will be dark red. Under the slightly rejiggered lines resulting from the court-ordered re-map of Florida that'll take effect in 2016, Mitt Romney defeated Barack Obama 59 to 40 in this district in 2012, while John McCain won it 56 to 43 in 2008. It’s also likely that the district would elect a Nugent to the House, although in this case, it’s Rich Nugent, previously the sheriff of Hernando County, not Ted Nugent.
Nugent, a social-conservative Republican backbencher who has attracted little attention, has represented this area since 2010. However, Nugent is retiring in 2016, meaning an open seat, though given the district's lean he’s almost certainly going to be replaced by another Republican. Nugent is trying to hand the seat off to his former chief of staff, Justin Grabelle, but he’ll be joined in the primary by well-connected rancher Kelly Rice, who has the endorsement of Nugent’s predecessor, ex-Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite. What could really shake things up here, though, would be if Republican Rep. Dan Webster, who currently represents the next-door 10th district, decides to move over here. Webster’s 10th district just got radically remade in the 2016 re-map, moving from a mostly suburban district to one that takes in central Orlando, becoming a 60 percent Obama district with a large African-American population. If Webster wants to stay in the House, carpetbagging next-door into the 11th may be his only hope.
“The Most District” is an ongoing series devoted to highlighting congressional district superlatives around the nation. Click here for all posts in this series.