TALLAHASSEE – Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed boundaries drawn for Florida’s 28 congressional districts Tuesday and will call lawmakers back into an April special session to meet his demand to reduce seats seen as likely to elect Black Democrats. The Republican governor specifically targeted Congressional District 5 as unconstitutional and racially gerrymandered. Stretching from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, it's where voters have elected Black Democratic U. S. Rep. Al Lawson since 2016. As he has argued for months, DeSantis insists that Florida’s constitutional standard for protecting Black-oriented districts conflicts with requirements in the U. S. Constitution and recent federal case law involving redistricting. He also is hinting that the state's Fair Districts constitutional amendments passed by voters in 2010 and aimed at "prevent(ing) legislators from drawing lines favoring political parties or incumbents," violate federal law and even the U. S. Constitution. Even as lawmakers ended their two-month session earlier this month, the governor vowed to veto the congressional plan when it was sent to him. It arrived on his desk Tuesday morning and, as he’d earlier said, it was “D. O. A.,” or dead on arrival.“It’s absolutely the responsibility of the Legislature to actually produce a map that can be signed into law,” DeSantis said Tuesday about his plan to call lawmakers back to the Capitol. The governor later Tuesday set the special session for April 19-22. It's now a race against the clock: A final congressional map has to be in place in time for June’s qualifying period for federal candidates. DeSantis earlier had submitted his own proposed congressional map that erased two of the state’s four districts with large minority populations, those currently represented by Lawson of Tallahassee and U. S. Rep. Val Demings, a Black Democrat from Orlando who is running for U. S. Senate. The governor’s approach also would’ve made it likely for Republicans to win 18 of Florida’s 28 congressional districts, while a second map proposed by DeSantis upped that to 20 of the state’s seats. The GOP currently holds 16 of the state’s 27 seats in Congress, with Florida this year adding a district because of population gains revealed in the latest census. Republicans nationally are looking to maximize their seats in Florida as the party is riveted on recapturing control of Congress in this fall’s midterm elections. But DeSantis’ fellow Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature wouldn’t go along completely with the governor. Still, the congressional plan approved by lawmakers was crafted to curry some favor with the governor. A primary map was approved that turned Lawson’s Congressional District 5 into a Duval County only district — which followed some of the governor’s recommendations — but still with a strong plurality of Black voters, which DeSantis didn’t want.
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