In advance of the Florida Legislature meeting next week to redraw congressional districts, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is decrying the move as a partisan effort to eliminate Democratic seats.
“The Governor clearly designs this process to be secret, late, and throw as many obstacles as possible in the path of actually having fair districts,” she told CBS Miami’s Jim DeFede. “The most obvious reason for this special session to redistrict our map is that they’re responding to both Trump’s call for states that Republicans run to come in and politically gerrymander. The result is that legislators are choosing their voters, not the other way around.”
In an interview on Facing South Florida, Wasserman Schultz said the Governor’s efforts to redraw the maps will almost certainly violate the Fair Districts constitutional Amendment voters in Florida passed in 2010 that prohibits political gerrymandering.
“The voters were very clear that they wanted to prohibit the Legislature and the Governor [from] intentional political partisan gerrymandering, intentional incumbent gerrymandering,” she told CBS Miami’s Jim DeFede. “They wanted to make sure that districts included whole cities and counties so that [voters] could actually know who represented them.”
Asked how this effort in Florida is any different than the actions taken recently by states like California and Virginia to eliminate Republican seats, Wasserman Schultz noted that in both those cases, the maps were approved by voters. And she noted the Fair District Amendment makes Florida unique.
“Our state specifically, in our constitution with a 63% [approval in 2010] by our voters prohibited partisan gerrymandering, incumbent gerrymandering, required the districts to be inclusive of whole cities and counties to the degree possible,” she said.
In other news, Wasserman Schultz said she thought Sheila Cherfilus McCormick made the right decision in resigning from Congress. Cherfilus McCormick was facing an almost certain vote for expulsion from the House after her indictment in federal court for allegedly stealing $5 million in FEMA funds and a House Ethics Committee report that found she violated more than two dozen House rules.
“My reaction to her resignation is that that was a decision that made the most sense because she now can concentrate on her defense and on the necessity to get a just resolution and a fair hearing in the legal proceedings and judicial process,” she said. “It was the right outcome for her constituents because this is a large shadow – very serious allegations, serious and disturbing allegations related to federal funding. So, the distraction and cloud that hung over her was impeding her ability to effectively represent her constituents.”
