MIAMI — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) knows what it’s like to have a redistricting fight on his hands.
DeSantis redrew congressional lines after the 2020 census — when his state gained one congressional seat — weathering claims that the map disempowered minority voters and defeating opponents in a court case contesting the map.
Now, as a redistricting battle plays out in Texas and is capturing the nation’s attention, Florida could once again redraw its congressional lines to try to bolster efforts by President Trump and the GOP to keep its House majority in Washington.
“We were the laboratory here in Florida,” said Democratic strategist Fernand Amandi, who is based in Miami. “[DeSantis] was able to do it, and not only got away with it but showed the bottom-line success of the approach.”
Assessing the situation, Amandi wasn’t optimistic for his party.
“I think we can expect the worst,” he said.
DeSantis last week inched closer to a repeat of his earlier fight, expressing support for a recent Florida Supreme Court decision that upheld his map after the 2020 census.
The Florida governor also made the case for further redistricting efforts in his state.
“I think if you look at that Florida Supreme Court analysis, there may be more defects that need to be remedied apart from what we’ve already done,” DeSantis told reporters at a press conference last week. “I also think the way the population has shifted around Florida just since the census was done in 2020, I think the state was malapportioned.”
“So I do think it would be appropriate to do a redistricting here in the mid-decade,” he concluded.
As the political debate heats up around redistricting, Republicans say DeSantis is simply trying to showcase strength.
“You don’t have to win, you don’t have to land a punch, you just need to show a willingness to fight,” Republican strategist Doug Heye said of DeSantis’s latest assertions.
Gregory Koger, a professor of political science at the University of Miami, said it would be harder for DeSantis to once again execute a redistricting effort because of the state’s Fair District amendments.
But the provisions — which are aimed at preventing partisan and racial gerrymandering — would not be enough to stop the governor if he does choose to move forward, Koger added.
“I think he still tries. Although he has a law degree from Harvard, he has not been inclined to refrain from actions that were legally dubious in a wide variety of ways,” Koger said.
“Governor DeSantis’s political strategy seems to be to keep up with or keep ahead of what’s going on in other Republican states,” he said. “If Texas goes forward, I think that increases his interest in matching Texas’s actions on behalf of the Republican Party.”
But Democrats say that off-cycle redistricting does not come without its risks for DeSantis, which they say the 2028 hopeful should weigh.
“When you redistrict too aggressively, it makes the odds of losing smaller, but it makes the odds of a wave in a loss substantially higher. And so if DeSantis becomes the guy responsible for Florida Republicans getting washed away in 2026, he doesn’t look very smart,” said David Litt, a former speechwriter for former President Obama and the author of “It’s Only Drowning,” a new book about searching for common ground during a politically divisive moment for the nation.
“As somebody with an eye on 2028, people are going to look at that and say, ‘Wait a second. Are you really the person we want to entrust our political future to because your biggest decision backfires spectacularly for the party,’” Litt said.
DeSantis’s renewed efforts come as Democratic governors in California, Illinois, and New York have responded to redistricting efforts in Texas by threatening to redraw congressional lines in their states to favor Democrats.
Some political observers have concerns about the implications of off-cycle redistricting, whether in Republican or Democratic states.
“Redrawing districts in between the decennial censuses will just lead to a redistricting arms race,” said Grant Reeher, the director of Syracuse University’s Campbell Public Affairs Institute. “What both parties are doing is bad for the political system generally, the state legislatures and the Congress, and the citizens. … And it’s also not a smart look for either party politically.”
“The American political system is already the most complicated and fragmented in the Western world — by a mile,” Reeher added. “All this does is make that problem worse than it already is.”
But political observers say the redistricting play has been far from a problem for Republicans, with DeSantis originating the latest iterations of the strategy in Florida.
“A lot of people credit the Republican majority … certainly in 2022 and then again in 2024 to what DeSantis was able to do,” said Amandi. “I mean, it was DeSantis who overruled his own legislature and came up with his own set of lines that he thought were better and indeed managed to squeeze out a few extra seats that otherwise might not have been there.”
Amandi said that DeSantis has opened the door to “a brave new world for what representative democracy means in the United States.”
“No one knows where this is ultimately headed because it’s so unprecedented,” he added.
