By Jeffrey A. Rendall
Florida seeks to counteract Virginia Democrats’ House stealing gesture in favor of fairness
“I will see your plus-four seat gerrymander and raise you (x number of districts) in return.”
No, this wasn’t a snippet from a very politically-centered poker game where the card-playing participants dither back-and-forth wagering congressional representative power instead of coins and devalued paper currency in the pot. If fictional hero Jack Dawson (in the movie Titanic) won his way across the Atlantic ocean on a “very lucky poker hand”, why couldn’t crafty politicos bet redistricting map fluctuations as a measure of something supremely valuable?
Such was the type of thinking from Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis last week when the term-limited Sunshine State leader unveiled his proposal to redraw the sunny enclave’s district delineation map to reflect new realities down south.
It’s no secret that Americans have relocated to Florida in droves, attracted not only by the state’s all-sun-all-the-time climate but also due to the locale’s emphasis on good government – low taxes, a friendly business climate and a culture that emphasizes traditional Americana rather than woke nonsense and leftist gobbledygook so common in places farther north.
The next constitutionally mandated national census, set to take place in 2030, will surely account for the migratory trends in DeSantis’s direction. Numbers crunchers have predicted that Florida stands to pick up several seats, the recipient of additional Electoral College and House of Representatives say-so at the expense of colder northern “blue” states mostly run by Democrats.
Perhaps because of current political intractability, a growing number of states, both red and blue, have initiated efforts to redraw congressional district maps to bring things up-to-date. It’s kicked off a tug-of-war with control of the House of Representatives lying in the balance.
In an article titled, “Florida jumps into the national redistricting battle with a new gerrymandered map”, Susan Ferrechio reported at The Washington Times last week:
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled a reconfigured congressional map Monday that would likely erase all the gains Democrats thought they scored in Virginia when voters narrowly approved new district lines to eliminate nearly all the state’s Republican representation in Congress.
“Facing Virginia’s four-seat gerrymander in favor of House Democrats, Mr. DeSantis counterpunched with a proposed Sunshine State congressional map that, if approved, would likely enable Republicans to win an additional four House seats in the midterm elections in November. …
“In a letter to Republican leaders of the state Legislature, officials from the DeSantis administration urged state lawmakers to adopt the map. They argued that Floridians have been deprived of adequate representation in Congress because of mistakes in the 2020 census and the state’s significant population growth over the past decade. The map pitched by Mr. DeSantis would likely give Florida Republicans an additional four seats in the House, neutralizing all of Virginia’s gains.”
Well, I’m not a Virginia Democrat politician, and I don’t even play one on TV, but this certainly sounds a lot like the Democrats’ version of “fairness”. How about you?
Or, “turnabout is fair play”? That one, too.
(Note: The Supreme Court of Virginia denied a request from Democrats and the state to pause last week’s ruling by a Tazewell County judge, which blocked the State Board of Elections from certifying the results of the April 21 redistricting referendum…. Now what?)
When the Virginia redistricting ballot question narrowly passed a few weeks ago, I tried to remain calm and keep things in perspective realizing that Newton’s third law of motion applies to politics just as readily as it does to objects colliding in the void of space.
Newton’s law number three simply states, “[F]or every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” I used to visibly illustrate the concept by suggesting that my kids envision the violent collision between a Max Scherzer fastball and a well-swung opposing player’s bat. At the time, Scherzer was the Washington Nationals’ best pitcher, but I was humble enough to concede that the future hall-of-famer did give up an awful lot of home runs because of how hard he threw and penchant for throwing strikes.
Parents no longer require baseball allusions to give kids a visual on what Newton’s third law entails; no, they just need to explain how ridiculous the Virginia Democrats acted this spring when they proposed and then devised a relatively painless means to steal four House seats from the commonwealth’s Republicans, purportedly to place a check on President Donald J. Trump’s federal executive branch.
Yeah, sure, like gifting the Speaker’s gavel to Hakeem Jeffries would do great things for America as a country. What a farce.
The subject is well worn, but Virginia Democrats – led by the impossibly awful smirking snakehead of a lying, elitist politician, Gov. Abigail Spanberger – took their gains from the 2025 off-year state elections to attempt to single-handedly defeat the improvements President Trump and congressional GOPers (in the One Big Beautiful Bill) made in the federal government in the first half of his second term.
So, Virginia Democrats fixed a new redistricting map mid-decade that had nothing to do with population or demographic shifts (like rapidly expanding states in the south) and everything to do with national politics in order to counterbalance what other local bodies were doing in places like blood red Texas.
In the process, Democrats used outside influences – and money – from shameless for-sale politicians like Barack Obama to goad their low-information voter base into turning out for the ballot issue. The question narrowly passed despite the “no” side being vastly outspent by the Spanberger faction. The Virginia Supreme Court put a halt to certification, however. We’ll see what happens.
In the meantime, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has launched the latest salvo in the redistricting battle and decided to do a little equitable re-shuffling himself, but, unlike in Virginia, based his logic on the rapidly evolving numbers of folks moving into his state rather than naked political reasons. Florida’s gain is blue states’ loss. I personally know a couple born-and-raised Virginians who now call themselves Floridians.
DeSantis wants these new voters to be represented in Congress, if for nothing else, to serve as a counterweight to the Virginia Democrats’ sinister scheme.
Many commentators have criticized states like Texas – and now Florida – for their actions to truly restore “fairness” to ballots in mid-decade. The 2020 census might as well have been conducted last century for how much has changed in just a few short years in these Republican-led states. Starting with COVID at the beginning of the decade, states that largely stayed open for business (and schools) attracted common sense freedom-lovers from all over.
Under DeSantis’s leadership, Florida has measurably expanded in the past decade. Having visited the Free State on a handful of occasions in recent times, I can attest to the urgency people there have experienced to make a change towards domiciles with leaders who govern based on constitutional rules and plain and simple good sense.
No state income tax helps further convince the would-be American migrants. Florida’s looking mighty attractive to those who are being oppressed by governors and legislatures that view the wealthy and successful as owing them something other than already massively contributing to their tax base.
Talk about “fairness”. What’s equitable about a confiscatory “wealth tax” (like Washington state just enacted and California has proposed) on a person just because he or she was fruitful?
By barely passing the Virginia redistricting scheme, the commonwealth’s liberals effectively disenfranchised most of the voters there. As someone who speaks from experience, with Democrats in full control of Virginia’s elected offices and heavy D majorities in the legislature, conservatives have no voice of sanity speaking up for our preferences at current.
Governor Ron DeSantis doesn’t want to see Florida head down the same disastrous path as other states. In addition, Virginia, at the direction of Abigail Spanberger, no longer cooperates with ICE to deport illegal alien criminals. Gerrymandering had real-life policy implications that could mean life or death to… someone.
One surmises that the gerrymandering/redistricting back-and-forth can’t go on indefinitely. A few states, such as Indiana, refused to reopen the map re-drawing this year. President Trump has let it be known that Republicans deserve to win seats they’d be competitive for but for poor elections monitoring or no longer relevantly distributed districts.
Let’s hope Florida serves as a trendsetter on the redistricting issue, too.
Jeff Rendall is editor and publisher of GolfintheUSA.com and has written about golf and politics for over a quarter of a century. A non-practicing attorney from California, he moved to the east coast three decades ago to pursue and combine his interests in all things American history and culture. Jeff has worked as an intern on Capitol Hill and in various capacities in grassroots organizing and conservative organizations and publications, including a nearly two-decade stint at ConservativeHQ.com. Column republishing or other inquiries: Rendall@msn.com .