Politics
Florida House moves forward with meeting on redrawing Florida’s congressional lines
The Florida House has announced what would be the first step in a highly anticipated mid-decade congressional redistricting effort.
A House schedule shows the Congressional Redistricting Select Committee will hold its first meeting on Dec. 4 from 1:30 to 3 p.m. But it’s unclear what the meeting will entail. A full notice and any agenda remain unavailable, and some members of the committee were surprised to see the meeting on the schedule.
The move came just a week after House Speaker Daniel Perez told POLITICO at the Lincoln Day Dinner in Miami that “redistricting hasn’t been a conversation that we’ve had yet.” Gov. Ron DeSantis shortly afterward made clear he still expects movement and encouraged people to “stay tuned.”
Meanwhile, the White House has aggressively pushed Republican-controlled states across the country to try to maximize seats where the GOP enjoys an advantage for U.S. House contests ahead of the Midterms.
After Indiana lawmakers opted against holding a Special Session on redistricting, Trump blasted GOP lawmakers there, specially state Sens. Rod Bray and Greg Goode, for resisting the push.
“The Democrats have done redistricting for years, often illegally, and all other appropriate Republican States have done it,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“Because of these two politically correct type ‘gentlemen,’ and a few others, they could be depriving Republicans of a majority in the House, a very big deal! California is trying to pick up five seats, and no one is complaining about that. It’s weak ‘Republicans’ that cause our Country such problems — It’s why we have crazy Policies and Ideas that are so bad for America.”
Perez, of note, enjoys a better relationship with Trump than he does with DeSantis, and many have expected he would ultimately defer to the desires of the White House.
The current map, signed by DeSantis and designed by his office in 2022 after he vetoed a map produced by the Legislature, has resulted in a 20-8 U.S. House delegation from Florida every cycle it has been in effect.
But Florida Republicans saw an opportunity to revisit those lines after the Florida Supreme Court this year upheld the map and rejected arguments that DeSantis wrongly broke up minority communities and eliminated two Black-controlled districts with his cartography.
The court decision called into question the enforceability of the Fair Districts Amendment to Florida’s Constitution, especially its ban on diminishing minority voting power.
Perez cited the decision when he announced he would name a Select Committee to explore redistricting in the upcoming Legislative Session.
Perez, the Speaker’s Office and Select Committee Chair Mike Redondo have not responded to requests for comment about the upcoming meeting.
Mills was a day-one Byron Donalds backer in the gubernatorial race.
A former House Speaker and current candidate for Governor is leading the charge for Republicans as scandal swirls around a Congressman.
Saying the “evidence is mounting” against Rep. Cory Mills, Paul Renner says other candidates for Governor should “stand up and be counted” and join him in the call for Mills to leave Congress.
Renner made the call earlier this week.
But on Friday, the Palm Coast Republican doubled down.
He spotlighted fresh reporting from Roger Sollenberger alleging that Mills’ company “appears to have illegally exported weapons while he serves in Congress, including to Ukraine,” that Mills failed to disclose conflicts of interest, “tried to fistfight other Republican members of Congress, and lied about his party stature to bully other GOP candidates out of primaries that an alleged romantic interest was running in,” and lied about his conversion to Islam.
The House Ethics Committee is already probing Mills, a New Smyrna Beach Republican, over allegations of profiting from federal defense contracts while in Congress. More recently, the Committee expanded its work to review allegations that he assaulted one ex-girlfriend and threatened to share intimate photos of another.
Other candidates have been more reticent in addressing the issue, including Rep. Byron Donalds.
“When any other members have been involved and stuff like this, my advice is the same,” said Donalds, a Naples Republican. “They need to actually spend a lot more time in the district and take stock of what’s going on at home, and make that decision with their voters.”
The response came less than a year after Mills, a New Smyrna Beach Republican, spoke at the launch of Donalds’ gubernatorial campaign.
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Staff writer Jacob Ogles contributed reporting.
The cold war between Florida’s Governor and his predecessor is nearly seven years old and tensions show no signs of thawing.
On Friday, Sen. Rick Scott weighed in on Florida Politics’ reporting on the Agency for Health Care Administration’s apparent repayment of $10 million of Medicaid money from a settlement last year, which allegedly had been diverted to the Hope Florida Foundation, summarily filtered through non-profits through political committees, and spent on political purposes.
“I appreciate the efforts by the Florida legislature to hold Hope Florida accountable. Millions in tax dollars for poor kids have no business funding political ads. If any money was misspent, then it should be paid back by the entities responsible, not the taxpayers,” Scott posted to X.
While AHCA Deputy Chief of Staff Mallory McManus says that is an “incorrect” interpretation, she did not respond to a follow-up question asking for further detail this week.
The $10 million under scrutiny was part of a $67 million settlement from state Medicaid contractor Centene, which DeSantis said was “a cherry on top” in the settlement, arguing it wasn’t truly from Medicaid money.
But in terms of the Scott-DeSantis contretemps, it’s the latest example of tensions that seemed to start even before DeSantis was sworn in when Scott left the inauguration of his successor, and which continue in the race to succeed DeSantis, with Scott enthusiastic about current front runner Byron Donalds.
Earlier this year, Scott criticized DeSantis’ call to repeal so-called vaccine mandates for school kids, saying parents could already opt out according to state law.
While running for re-election to the Senate in 2024, Scott critiqued the Heartbeat Protection Act, a law signed by DeSantis that banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy with some exceptions, saying the 15 week ban was “where the state’s at.”
In 2023 after Scott endorsed Donald Trump for President while DeSantis was still a candidate, DeSantis said it was an attempt to “short circuit” the voters.
That same year amid DeSantis’ conflict over parental rights legislation with The Walt Disney Co., Scott said it was important for Governors to “work with” major companies in their states.
The critiques went both ways.
When running for office, DeSantis distanced himself from Scott amid controversy about the Senator’s blind trust for his assets as Governor.
“I basically made decisions to serve in uniform, as a prosecutor, and in Congress to my financial detriment,” DeSantis said in October 2018. “I’m not entering (office) with a big trust fund or anything like that, so I’m not going to be entering office with those issues.”
In 2020, when the state’s creaky unemployment website couldn’t handle the surge of applicants for reemployment assistance as the pandemic shut down businesses, DeSantis likened it to a “jalopy in the Daytona 500” and Scott urged him to “quit blaming others” for the website his administration inherited.
The chill between the former and current Governors didn’t abate in time for 2022’s hurricane season, when Scott said DeSantis didn’t talk to him after the fearsome Hurricane Ian ravaged the state.
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