Florida may be Trump's last chance to gain GOP seats through redistricting

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida could be the final state the White House can count on to pick up additional seats as part of the rare mid-decade redistricting cycle it has pushed ahead of the midterm elections

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida could be the final state the White House can count on to pick up additional seats as part of the rare mid-decade redistricting cycle it has pushed ahead of the midterm elections.

The Republican-controlled state officially entered the fray this past week by holding a legislative hearing, kick-starting a lengthy process that will stretch into the new year. Florida is following the lead of GOP-led states like Texas, Missouri and North Carolina that have enacted new congressional maps at President Donald Trump’s behest to protect the GOP’s narrow House majority.

But as Democratic states like California follow suit with new district lines of their own and GOP efforts in states like Indiana have been rockier than anticipated, the advantage Trump and his allies thought they could gain through the push could be much smaller than they initially hoped.

That’s where Florida comes in. Though all elements of the state government are dominated by Republicans, infighting between some lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis has gotten messy and appears poised to have some impact on the state’s redistricting effort. In addition, Florida’s state constitution has anti-gerrymandering language — though watered down in recent years — that broadly bans lawmakers from redrawing maps with the intent of helping or hurting certain political parties.

Those thorny legal issues are among the reasons the White House applied less pressure on Florida to draw a new map than it did on other states, and why the state is one of the last to begin its process. DeSantis has long urged lawmakers to redraw Florida’s congressional map but has said the state should wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on a Louisiana case that could erode a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that was enacted to protect minority voters.