Then-General Counsel Jason Teal sets up proposed maps at a 2022 redistricting meeting after a federal court ordered the Jacksonville City Council to redraw its district maps. | Andrew Pantazi, The Tributary
Published on July 6, 2025 at 4:21 pm
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Most readers of this column have had failed relationships. You know the type: the toxic, high-maintenance ex who frustrates at every turn, only for the whole schmozz to end in tears and litigation.
Would you go back to those people? Probably not. As Great White observed in song: “Once bitten, twice shy.”
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While most sane people don’t want to revisit traumatic time-sink processes, the same can’t be said for local and state members of the Republican Party, who seemingly have a hankering for putting people through the toxic process of redistricting yet again.
Why? The stated rationale is simple. Despite best efforts, supposedly, undocumented immigrants are weighing in disproportionately on elections. So there needs to be a new Census, see, and a new round of redistricting.
And all that needs to be wrapped in the next few months, suggesting a lightning round approach to the process that defies credulity.
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican member of Congress best known for her prescient stock picks, has a bill coming out requiring voters to prove citizenship and – here’s the kicker – mandating an “immediate” census.
As someone who actually worked on the Census back in 2010, I can tell you it is a drawn-out process. Offices take time to staff and open up. From there, lots and lots of temporary hires, the kind of people who don’t have anything better to do (like me 15 years ago). All of whom need to be fingerprinted and background checked and who get good hours at first then winnowed out.
Many residents respond timely to the phalanx of tedious and invasive questions, and that’s great. Those itinerant workers make multiple visits to the same addresses when people don’t voluntarily participate in the canvas, though – and a lot of people didn’t want to even a decade and a half ago, when folks were somewhat less cynical about government than they are now.
In 2020, data collection took 7 months, starting in March of that year and ending in October. Yet it took until April 26, 2021, to deliver redistricting counts to the states.
The process takes close to two years. That means it couldn’t be completed realistically until the 2028 cycle.
But don’t tell that to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or Jacksonville City Councilman Rory Diamond, who somehow think the Census is only as complicated as voting for your favorite contestant on American Idol.
During his press avail at “Alligator Alcatraz” last week, DeSantis claimed Florida was “gypped” out of a congressional seat because an undercount means we have “millions of people in Florida that don’t have representation because of that flawed census.”
Never mind the fact that DeSantis did very little to encourage people to participate in that Census, leading to the lower number. He’s definitely not going to take blame when he can punt it to someone not within earshot.
His solution is to do another Census under the MTG rules, and then to rush the state Legislature through a redistricting process.
“I would love for them to redo the Census for ’26. My Legislature will redistrict those lines. We’ll get it to where it’s fair,” he said.
The governor is counting on people having short memories about his Legislature, which had to come back for a special sessions because the maps they wanted in the first place had too much minority representation (like a Duval-only CD 5 that would have created an opening for a Black Democrat) to retain the seat once held by Corrine Brown and Al Lawson). Now in year seven of his administration, the Legislature who once went along with his whims has grown increasingly independent, as we saw this session.
Long story short, he might not get the map he wants.
And even if he does, it might be held up by a court challenge. Democrats and minority groups would certainly find potentially exploitable quotes from the governor and legislators themselves, further delaying the timeline.
Not to be outdone, Beaches council member Rory Diamond wants the city council to put the city through another round of redistricting, as he suggests a wave of undocumented immigrants has somehow swayed city elections that led to a supermajority GOP Council who marginalized Democrats and RINO Matt Carlucci in committees (specifically the all-important finance and rules committees), in a way that simply has no historical precedent.
And he believes that can be done before January 2027’s qualifying deadline for local elections.
Good luck! Especially given that the process last time had to include town halls and committee meetings.
Remember that the last time Council drew a map, a court threw it out on the grounds of what Judge Marcia Morales Howard called “unnecessary racial segregation” and “failure to address Jacksonville’s 30-year history of racial gerrymandering” through having “packed excessive numbers of Black voters into four bizarrely shaped districts in Northwest Jacksonville.”
Republicans and Democrats were far more concerned about protecting incumbents than protecting voters in that process, in an illustration of where the rubber hits the road in the St. James Building.
And Rory wants to do the time warp again? Especially given the same plaintiffs who beat the council last time understand the process better now than they did three years ago?
DeSantis and Diamond know that, logistically speaking, they couldn’t get this done in time for the next elections without flawless execution and nothing going wrong, and they also know that redistricting is an absolute mess that picks winners and losers on the map.
Beyond that, there are questions. Florida definitely has a GOP plurality at this point, but is it really one that can be leveraged beyond the current +12 advantage Republicans have in the 28-person delegation?
Likewise, local Republicans improbably hold a City Council supermajority, despite Dems still holding a registration advantage in Duval County.
On the state level and local level, federal funds are drying up, meaning that tough budget and policy decisions will be unavoidable, and that as exciting as partisan posedowns are, rushing maps comes at the expense of people who are going to need subsidiary levels of government to step up amid the frayed federal safety net.
These are serious times. But do we have serious leaders to meet the challenges?
