It’s been nearly a decade since President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder left the White House. Yet according to Gov. Ron DeSantis, Obama’s legacy created a butterfly effect that necessitates congressional redistricting ahead of the 2026 elections.
“Well, Obama and Holder gerrymandered brutally across the country in this decade’s census,” DeSantis said on “Hannity.” “They actually even got into Florida, and I had to veto the Legislature’s map, and I ended up proposing one, which was a much fairer map and much better.”
DeSantis’ framing raises timeline questions.
It’s unclear how the Obama administration, which ended in January 2017, would have affected the 2020 census, which began in the first Donald Trump administration and completed early in the term of Joe Biden.
Likewise, it’s unclear how Obama would have influenced Florida’s congressional map in 2022, a work product crafted by DeSantis’ staff at the time.
DeSantis went on to say that Florida was “shortchanged in the census” of 2020, and said his team was leaning on the Trump administration for correction.
“We’re hoping that they’re going to be able to do that to give us that extra seat that we should have had. That would obviously force us to have to redistrict. And so we’re working with the Commerce Department to see how that’s going to shake out,” he added.
Regardless of how it shakes out, DeSantis says the “basis to redistrict in Florida” is predicated on “some racial gerrymandering that’s still lingering” in the map he signed in 2022.
Florida was “gypped” out of seats, according to DeSantis, despite the 20-8 majority Republicans now hold in the congressional delegation. To put that supermajority in perspective, there are a little more than 1.3 million more Republicans than Democrats in a state with nearly 13.6 million registered voters.
Despite the GOP advantage being more substantial than their edge in party registration, DeSantis believes new maps would be “fairer” than the one he authorized three years ago.
“The state has grown by many millions of people,” DeSantis said.
He then went on to conflate land mass with population to make a point.
“If you look at a state like Florida, we’re a red state with a few blue dots, right? And so if you do fair maps, Republicans are going to do much better,” he said.
“Florida has gone very red during my 10 years as Governor. Our population has grown, and we have every right to be able to do new districts.”
Indeed, House Speaker Daniel Perez, whom the Governor has attacked repeatedly in press conferences and friendly interviews, has already announced plans for a Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting. That means the work has begun independently of DeSantis’ Office.
The committee will exclude people who might want to run for Congress in the map they are helping to draw, the Miami Republican said last week.
And despite the claim that Florida demographics have changed drastically in recent years, there will be no new maps for the Legislature from the panel Perez will appoint.
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