Dem
47
GOP
53
Well, that did not take long. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) thinks that he is a viable Republican presidential candidate in 2028, despite the ample evidence from 2024 that GOP voters are not buying what he is selling. And he has determined that the key to being a Republican hero, and to paying fealty to the Dear Leader, is to gerrymander the living daylights out of the Florida House district map.
DeSantis "anticipated" the Supreme Court decision that further hollowed out the Voting Rights Act, and so was ready to hit the ground running with a map that rips apart several districts that previously could not have been ripped apart. The map was approved by the Florida legislature yesterday, and then promptly signed into law by the Governor. So, big win for Captain Ron, right?
Maybe, or... maybe not. The immediate problem is that U.S. law and jurisprudence is 100% OK with partisan gerrymanders, but Florida law and jurisprudence is not. In fact, Florida voters specifically approved an anti-gerrymandering initiative that forbade shenanigans like the ones DeSantis just pulled. So, at very nearly the moment he applied his signature, a lawsuit was filed in Florida court, asking for the map to be struck down. We have no prediction as to what will happen, but the following outcomes all appear to be possible: DeSantis wins in court, DeSantis loses in court, and the decision takes long enough that the new map can't be used this year.
There are also a couple of longer-term problems. The first, of course, is that if the new map is implemented, it could turn out to be a dummymander. Florida's operating with pretty small margins of error, and in a blue wave, DeSantis could come to rue the day he waded into the Gerrymandering Olympics. Needless to say, he won't be a GOP hero if he ends up costing his party seats. Truth be told, he would probably be happier if the new map cannot be used until 2028. Then, he gets to "own the libs" without risking any actual consequences until it's too late for them to affect his presidential run.
The other longer-term problem is that if DeSantis really and truly thinks that he and Trump can somehow be buddies again, and that Trump might just pass off the MAGA scepter in 2028, then the Governor is delusional. Trump loves, loves, loves to string someone along like this, and then to pull the rug out from under them. Remember this photo of not-quite-Secretary-of-State Mitt Romney, where the story had a subhead "What's for dinner, Donald?" "Your dignity."
It's hard to imagine a Republican Trump would more like to see end up on his ass than DeSantis. We tend to doubt that Trump will happily hand over the throne to anyone not named Trump, but if he does, there are at least a dozen people in line ahead of DeSantis, starting with his fellow Floridian Marco Rubio.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court yesterday told Louisiana it could get right to work on the district maps there. Yes, the ruling gutting the remaining portions of the VRA came down last week, but technically, it's up to a lower level of the court system to apply that ruling. Normally, SCOTUS waits 32 days to return a case to a lower court, but this time it decided to chop that down to 2 days. This led to some sniping between Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Ketanji Brown Jackson yesterday, with Alito decreeing that speed is of the essence under the circumstances, and Jackson suggesting that speed is only "of the essence," it seems, when it benefits the Republican Party.
We're just going on gut feel here, but our sense is that Jackson has the right of it. SCOTUS could very well have kept this decision under their hats (well, under their robes) until well after the Louisiana primaries, so as to give 2 full years for any consequences and/or countersuits to play out. It sure looks like they rushed to announce, and then they rushed to put the lower court in a position to take action. Meanwhile, note that we wrote that DeSantis "anticipated" the ruling. The Governor was working with a tight timeline, since the Florida legislature is in special session, and yet was willing to risk wasting precious time on a map that might not be legal. Did someone tip him off as to both the finding and the timing of the decision? Maybe someone with the code name Arenceclay Omasthay? We report, you decide. (Z)