GOP infighting: Flare-up over failure to gerrymander in favor of Allen West

The intra-party infighting that emerges when the once-a-decade process of reapportionment begins has erupted. In an open letter to members of the Florida legislature's redistricting committees, the top brass of the Broward Republican Party have registered this complaint: your maps don't protect our incumbent -- namely Allen West, one of the two black Republicans in Congress.

They have launched a web site, saveallenwest.com, and are urging fellow GOPers to contact their legislators. The problem, they say, is the maps violate the constitutional requirement of compactness. (The Constitution also prohibits protection of incumbents.) West's current district stretches up the coast from Hollywood to Jupiter to capture the wealthier sections of Broward and Palm Beach Counties, while the new map stretches only up to Palm Beach Gardens and includes swaths of the more Democratic sections of Palm Beach and Broward counties farther from the coast, making the district less stringy and stretched out.

Broward GOP Chairman Richard DeNapoli argues the districts should be stretched and calls for a "compact coastal district."

"What does not make sense is that the 22nd Congressional District includes Plantation and Sunrise but excludes the northern parts of Palm Beach County, which would be a natural political and geographic boundary along the coast for what is mainly a coastal district,'' he writes.

"It seems that all the proposed maps for Congressional 22 make strenuous efforts to include the cities of Plantation and Sunrise at the southern end of the district yet exclude coastal areas of northern Palm Beach County, which would constitute a natural political and geographic boundary."

Here's DeNapoli's e-mail:

Streamlined House maps also create swing seats

If a goal of the proponents of the Fair Districts amendments was to make legislative seats more competitive and diverse, the House redistricting maps released this week may inch closer to that ideal.

The House staff created five different maps for redistricting the House of Representatives, each designed to keep county and city boundaries together.

In each of the maps, based on voter registration figures, 49 districts are solidly Republican, 33 are solidly Democratic and at least 21 districts could be considered swing districts. But voter registration doesn’t always determine who gets elected and, based on results of the 2008 and 2010 elections, there may be only 15 reliably swing seats, according to a Herald/Times analysis.

Nevertheless, that’s a big shift from the current House, where 81 Republicans hold a super-majority over 39 Democrats. Story here. Herald/Times interactive maps here.

Redistricting Round One in House -- Terms to know

As the House winds up for the first hearings of its redistricting maps we thought we'd offer you this helpful video about the terms to know in the redistricting debate produced by ProPublica, the independent non-profit journalism watchdog site. Also check out Pro Publica's interesting piece about the money behind redistricting.

Meanwhile, here's our handy interactive maps on the House districts.

Schale: House congressional maps draw 9 hot spots

Democratic political consultant Steve Schale offers his summary of the impact of the House redistricting proposals for congressional seats on his blog.

His assessment from our read have been pretty spot on. He suggests that the maps draw nine hot spots where the current districts for incumbent congressmen change dramatically. He suggests there will be a handful of more competitive districts as the maps clearly set out "to preserve the seats held by Congresswoman Brown and Wilson, and Congressman Hastings. The district numbers are different, but the districts really aren't. And just like the Senate proposal, most of the House proposals have a Hispanic (in this case Puerto Rican) heavy Central Florida seat. There are also three Hispanic majority seats in South Florida.

"Also, roughly a dozen seat are virtually (if not actually) identical across each of the seven House plans, with another five that have only modest differences. Essentially, the maps are identical for the Panhandle and Southeast Florida are the same in every proposal.  The rest of the map has some pretty significant differences across the seven versions." The hot spots he identifies include the districts of current incumbents Southerland, Mica, Webster, Adams, Young, Buchanan, Rooney, West, and Rivera. More here.

House map pits 11 incumbents against each other in MD and Broward

The Florida House's first attempt at mapping out the new districts of the 120-member chamber has produced five maps, all of them pitting incumbents against each other in a potential free-for-all to preserve their seats. Story here. For maps look here.

Of the 107 incumbents in the House, there are 37 Democrats and 70 Republicans but the House forces Democrats into the same district in nine seats in nearly all five plans. We analyzed Plan H000H9015, but nearly all of the maps treat Miami Dade the same. The most competitive matchup: a three-way fight in proposed Miami District 108, where three Democrats -- Daphne Campbell, John Julien and Barbara Watson -- are pitted against each other.

The same map also pits a Democrat and Republican against each other in five districts, including a three-way fight in Pinellas with two Republicans against a Democrat in St. Petersburg. And, to prove they have spared no one, the House plan also pits Republicans against each other in 10 districts.

Senate Democrats divided over first redistricting vote

The Democratic Party's unity veneer cracked on Tuesday as Senate Democrats divided over whether to support the introduction of the Senate's proposal congressional and state Senate maps.

The proposals, which drew no amendments despite criticisms from some Democrats, were approved for introduction by a 26-3 vote of the committee. Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston rallied against the proposals, saying they were unconstitutional but could persuade only two of the eight Democrats at the meeting to join her: Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami, and Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa.

“I believe we have some serious problems with the maps. The only districts that really look different are the ones where the seats are termed out and there is no incumbent," Rich said. “We need to go back to work and to figure out a way to do what the voters mandated us to do.”

Rich offered specifics as to why she believe the maps violate the requirements of the Fair Districts amendments: the Senate map includes District 14, drawn to encompass the Republican counties of Clay and Bradford and the Democratic-leaning county of Alachua. She said it is designed "to elect an incumbent" and "won't elect a Democrat for the next 10 years."

Senate gathered data on incumbent districts -- via one-on-one meetings

Senate Redistricting Chairman Don Gaetz said that in an effort to gather input on the districts he had the staff director meet with individual members in person and over the Internet but, he emphasized, they did not discuss partisan information. Neither Gaetz nor staff kept a record of their conversations, he said.

"We gave an open invitation for any senators to have access professional committee staff and discuss with us how individual senators felt,'' Gaetz said. "Everyone of the conversations that was held to which I was a party was preceded with an e-mail...It entailed no discussion to partisan advantage."

The result of the staffs efforts are Senate maps that draw 40 districts that secure a safe seat for 25 Republicans and 15 Democrats, according to a Herald/Times analysis. The proposed Senate map includes only one district with more than 50 percent Republicans but there are eight districts with more than 50 percent Democrats on each map. Neither map has districts with fewer than about 26 percent registered Democrats, but some are so packed with Democrats that there are as few as 11 percent registered Republicans.

Senate redistricting maps appear headed for swift approval

After a week of review, the Senate redistricting committee received no member amendments to its two redistricting plans -- for the state Senate and Congress -- but the public had an opportunity to provide input through the Internet and about 500 responses were received.

Committee chairman Don Gaetz said the committee “met every deadline” and its “work has belied all the cynics and the critics.” Meanwhile, the two Senate maps appear headed for swift approval. Gaetz announced that the committee will vote on the maps on Jan. 11 and bring it to the floor for a final vote on Jan. 17.

If the House can match that schedule, legislators hope they are on track to complete their maps in the first month of the 60-day session, submit it to the Florida Supreme Court for review and, if rejected have time to rewrite the maps before session is over.

The feedback was split, Senate staff said, with most of the criticism focused on the snake-like shaped Congressional District 3, a very divided Polk County and complaints about the districts drawn for the Tampa Bay, Orlando, Charlotte County and the Space Coast regions. Many people called to commend the committee for keeping more counties together than the existing districts and a handful of citizens appeared at the meeting to compliment the committee on an open process.

First House maps would create a free-for-all

The state House released its first maps of proposed new Congressional and House districts Tuesday and at first glance, the proposals appear to maximize minority voting rights at the expense of incumbent lawmakers. One of five state House maps creates 10 House districts that would pit Republicans against each other, seven districts where two incumbent Democrats would face each other, and four others that would pit a sitting Republican against a sitting Democrat.

Rep. Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, the panel's chairman, said the maps were created by staff members based on public input at 26 hearings around the state, and were drawn without regard to where incumbents live. Rather, he said, the goal was to follow federal and state law, reflect public input and keep counties and cities intact as fully as possible. The House maps are all online.

One result is a St. Petersburg-based seat, a new District 69, where three members live: Republicans Larry Ahern and Jim Frishe and Democrat Rick Kriseman. (Frishe is running for a Senate seat next fall). In South Florida, the House maps would pit Democrats Joe Gibbons and Evan Jenne against each other in one Broward seat; Democrats Eileen Schwartz and Perry Thurston against each other in another; and in Miami-Dade, three black lawmakers would be in the same minority-access seat. They are Reps. Daphne Campbell, John Patrick Julien and Barbara Watson.

Weatherford says the result proves the House is drawing maps without favoring a party or an incumbent, as Amendments 5 and 6 to the state Constitution require. "We do this once a decade," Weatherford said. "It has to be done right. It has to be done legally. It has to be done transparently."

Few seriously consider the maps to be the final product. Reapportionment plans must be reviewed by courts for legal sufficiency. "Put away the Maalox and the Pepto Bismol," said Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg. "These  are not the maps. These maps are just fodder for discussion and for creating angst."

-- Steve Bousquet

Senate map packs Dems to create 6 black and 1 Hispanic majority seats

The Senate redistricting committee will meet today to take up the first proposals out of that chamber and it already has it's first agreement with the House: the Senate will draw Senate maps and the House will draw the House maps. It's an accord reached out of pragmatism, and advantage: it allows leaders of both chambers to make incumbents happy.

The Senate map of the Senate is a good example. It is modeled after a redistricting map submitted by the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, packs Democrats into districts in order to strengthen neighboring Republicans seats, and gives incumbents on both sides of the aisle a good shot at reelection, a Herald/Times analysis has shown.

The NAACP’s map was submitted on Nov. 3 by Timothy Stallman, a demographer with the North Carolina-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice. In an email to Senate staff two days later, NAACP president Adora Obi Nweze asked that Stallman’s name be removed from the map and the name of the NAACP be substituted instead. Repeated efforts to reach Nweze were unsuccessful.

From the Panhandle to Miami, there have been few complaints from Senate Democrats or Republicans about the proposed map. The only trouble spots are a handful of districts that could provoke a court challenge because they might not comply with the requirements of the new Fair District amendments to the Florida Constitution. The Senate redistricting committee will discuss the map on Tuesday, while the House plans to take up the NAACP plan in a workshop Thursday.

Story here.   Herald/Times maps with performance data here.