Florida House Speaker forms redistricting committee
Related video: Vice President JD Vance met with Republican leaders Thursday in Indiana as the national redistricting debate intensifies.
Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez (R) said on Thursday he will form a redistricting committee as Republican-led states across the country move to redraw their congressional lines ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
“Exploring these questions now, at the middecade point, would potentially allow us to seek legal guidance from our supreme court without the uncertainty associated with deferring those questions until after the next decennial census and reapportionment,” Perez wrote in a memo to state House members, referring to a recent Florida Supreme Court decision on the state’s congressional map.
“We will focus our inquiry on the congressional map, which was the subject of the recent Florida Supreme Court case, and any relevant legal questions. To that end, I am creating a Select Committee on Redistricting,” he continued.
Perez added that the committee’s members would be announced in September, but he did not provide a specific timeline for carrying out the redistricting process.
The Florida Democratic Party called Perez’s move “corruption, plain and simple” in a statement following the memo’s release.
“The Speaker is abusing his power and breaking with decades of precedent to rig the system in favor of Republicans. Congressional maps are drawn once a decade, after a Federal census, not when a political party is afraid of losing power,” the statement said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has voiced his support for redistricting in recent weeks. A number of Democratic-held congressional seats could be impacted if redistricting were to take place, including those held in South Florida by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jared Moskowitz and Lois Frankel. Rep. Kathy Castor (D) in the Tampa area and Rep. Darren Soto (D) outside of Orlando have also been floated as possible targets.
The state’s Republicans saw a victory last week when the state’s Supreme Court ruled to uphold a congressional map that blocked a challenge to the elimination of a majority-Black congressional district in the north of the state that previously was represented by former Rep. Al Lawson (D). The area that comprised the former congressional district is now divided among three Republican lawmakers.
The development comes as red states across the country follow Texas’s lead in redistricting in an effort to help Republicans hold on to their majority in Congress in next year’s midterm elections. Other red states expected to take part in redistricting include Indiana and Ohio. Unlike other states, lawmakers in Ohio are facing a deadline to redraw their maps.