Florida is the last of the states with the happy task of creating a new congressional district.  In states in which legislatures draft the new lines, one of the motivating factors in the new lines is legislators thinking about their future plans.   If your state house or state senate district (in other words, your base) is the core of a congressional district, you have a decent shot of winning that district if you choose to run.  And the best time to run is when the congressional seat is open.  While the decision of the incumbent to retire (or run for higher office) is one way that the seat can become open, a new seat is automatically an open seat.

Of course, new/open is not the number of the district.  It’s the geography of a district.  If an incumbent is seeking another term, they are most likely to file in the district that has their old district as the core even if the district has a new number.  (unlike Texas which has just tended to give the “new” districts the new number leading to numbers leapfrogging all over the map, Florida has tended to have the districts flow somewhat logically from the northwest to the southeast.)  If you are a member with influence wanting to run for Congress, you want:  1) no incumbent members of Congress residing in your district (although it is possible to run for a district that you do not live in); 2) no incumbent member of Congress who represented the majority of the district; 3) to have the entirety of your current legislative district in the congressional district; and 4) to have the district favor your party as strongly as possible.  In theory, under the Florida Constitution, the new lines are not supposed to be drawn to unfairly favor either party or to protect incumbents.  And while courts can intervene if the legislature goes too far, the odds that any partisan legislature will strictly obey those constitutional provisions are slim approaching none.

These types of concerns influence redistricting in every state.  Unfortunately, to address those personal concerns of those drawing the lines would require knowing the local politics of every state.  Instead, these articles assume that the main concern is the battle between maximizing partisan advantage (in those states with legislatures in charge) versus trying to draw proportional and competitive lines (in those states with commissions in charge).    With the current map (drawn after the courts struck down the previous map as too partisan), the state is actually roughly proportional.  The Republicans have a 16-10 advantage (with one Democratic seat vacant), but the map is theoretically 14-13. Continue Reading...