Headaches grow for Florida Democrats amid retirements and redistricting

Florida Democrats are scrambling to organize for an already difficult midterm election year as redistricting drama slows recruitment of potential Congressional candidates.

Redistricting arose as an issue last week when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis submitted an alternative map to the ones the state legislature had been working on for months. When the state Senate ignored it and passed their own map on Thursday, 31-4, DeSantis reminded everyone that the final congressional map required his signature.

“We have lawyers that had had concerns about what they were doing,” DeSantis said of the state legislature’s work on redistricting. “So that process will work itself out, and we’ll be able to hopefully end up with a product that makes a lot of sense.”

The uncertainty he created over redistricting with his veto threat has effectively frozen Democrats in key house races, with potential candidates waiting to see how the map pans out before declaring their intent to run.

Democrats were already contending with the retirement of Rep. Stephanie Murphy, the Vietnamese-born representative of Florida’s 7th District. They are also losing Reps. Charlie Crist and Val Demings are forgoing reelection to run for governor and Senate, respectively.

The Hill reported there are also questions about who will challenge Republican Reps. Maria Salazar and Carlos Jimenez, who flipped two competitive South Florida districts into GOP hands in 2020.

“It’s a headache,” Thomas Kennedy, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) member from Florida, told The Hill. “The process is being rigged and dragged on to make this as painful as possible. We need candidates to announce now. There’s still time between now and November, but it has to happen soon.”

State Democrats were largely satisfied with the version drafted and passed by the Republican-controlled Senate, which divided the state’s 28 seats between 14 Republican-heavy districts, eight that favor Democrats, and six that would remain competitive.

DeSantis’s redistricting map favored Republicans for 17 seats, ensured eight for Democrats, and left only three competitive.

Redistricting now moves on to the state House, which has proposed two maps of its own.