Weatherford blasts no-show Fair Districts supporters, shoots down their maps

Article Courtesy of The Sun Sentinel
By Aaron Deslatte

Published January 29, 2012

 

TALLAHASSEE -- House Redistricting Chairman Will Weatherford lambasted Fair Districts supporters Friday morning for proposing amendments to new legislative and congressional maps this week and not showing up to defend them.

Weatherford’s committee today is slated to pass amendments offered by Rep. Steve Precourt, R-Orlando, to all three House, Senate and congressional maps and send them to floor.

But in an eleventh-hour bit of theater, the groups that helped push the Fair Districts anti-gerrymandering reforms in 2010 have introduced alternative maps and, in a 12-page letter sent Thursday night, argued its amendments were better because they include fewer city and county splits, as well as score higher in statistical analyses of compactness.

Further, they argue the ones Republicans are prepared to pass appear intended to help incumbents and the party in power.

“Although we have only had a day to analyze the Committee’s latest Congressional and House maps, it appears that they, like previous submissions and like those passed by the Senate do not comply with the FairDistricts Amendments,” reads the letter sent last night, signed by Deirdre Macnab with the League of Women Voters, Eric Rodriguezwith La Raza and Peter Butzin with Common Cause of Florida.

“Specifically, it appears that all maps under consideration were drawn with an intent to gain partisan advantage and/or to protect incumbents.”

But the move drew a firm rebuke from Weatherford, who offered the groups' amendments as a courtesy, and implored a Common Cause representative in the audience to defend the map. When he demurred, Weatherford was prepared to pounce.

"Frankly, I find it disappointing that anyone would suggest … that [House maps] don't follow the letter of they law, and then refuse to stand before us and say why theirs does," Weatherford said, adding the maneuver was "an unfortunate political and more likely legal stunt."

Rep. Eric Eisnaugle, R-Orlando, also teed off on the groups for implying that the maps benefit incumbents when he is actually drawn into the same district as Precourt -- meaning the two will have to run against each other in a primary if they both want to come back next year.

"Frankly, you and I are drawn into the same district," Eisnaugle said to Precourt, complaining the letter "fails to even put it in a footnote."

House staff director Alex Kelly took issue with the implication in the groups' letter that lawmakers' House map appeared to be gerrymandered because it divides Reps. Janet Adkins, R-Fernandina Beach, and Ronald Renuart, R-Ponte Vedra Beach, into separate coastal House seats, noting the dividing line is a short distance from Renuart's home.

"What they fail to mention in the letter is that the division is the St. Johns-Duval counties line," Kelly told lawmakers. "What they also fail to mention is that in their own map they use the same line to divide districts."

The House's outside redistricting legal team -- Gray Robinson lawyer George Meros and former GOP legislator Miguel De Grandy-- also told the panel the LWV/La Raza/Common Cause maps would appear to make it harder to elect Hispanic and African-American lawmakers, and thus violate Amendments 5 and 6.

"A lot of people predicted there would be a January or February surprise when we put out our maps. Many members in this room thought these would not be the real maps," Weatherford said.

"Little did we know that we were going to stay the course and do what we said we were going to do ... but that the January surprise has come from the very groups that accused us of not following the intent of the law."

The committee then unanimously voted down the League's amendment for House and congressional districts.


NEWS PAGE HOME

LEGISLATIVE SESSION 2012