Opinion: The politics of redistricting

House Speaker Tom Feeney, a Republican, is aghast that Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a Democrat, is asking the Florida Supreme Court to send the Legislature back to the redistricting drawing-board. Noting that Butterworth did not oppose a Democratic design 10 years ago, Feeney implies that politics -- politics! -- is to blame.

Politics aside, Butterworth appears to have a strong case that the federal courts, applying standards that have evolved since 1992, might overturn the entire scheme if the Legislature isn't made to rationalize some very odd-looking districts.

For example, what standards -- uniform or otherwise -- explain why Alachua County is split among four House districts? Why Broward, now almost entirely self-contained, would share seven seats with adjacent counties? Why the Senate maps for Orange County suggest the work of a painfully demented jigsaw puzzle designer? Why Republicans in Lee County on the Gulf Coast are so incensed at being linked with Palm Beach on the Atlantic that they're threatening to sue a Legislature run by their own party?

The obvious explanation for this gerrymandering, though neither Feeney nor any other legislative leader can afford to admit it, is politics. Yes, politics. The Republicans wielded their majority in such a way as to not only protect but enlarge it, much as the Democrats tried to do -- unsuccessfully -- in 1992. To that end, communities were balkanized no matter how their civic leaders had urged against it. County and city boundaries were respected when it was convenient and ignored when it was not. Some Democratic districts were strengthened so that more could be weakened. The party that still holds a plurality of registered voters and both U.S. Senate seats, and which earned a statistical draw in the last presidential race, would be marginalized to barely a fourth of the membership of the state House.

"The reapportionment process," Butterworth tells the court (echoing a U.S. Supreme Court decision six years ago) "should result in a fair plan by which voters may select their legislators, rather than legislators selecting their voters."

Legislators usually get that backward, which is why Florida needs an independent redistricting commission. Feeney was instrumental in keeping that good idea off the ballot when the Constitution Revision Commission was about to propose it four years ago. Feeney complains now that the attorney general owes blind loyalty not to the Constitution -- which does not say what position he should take -- but to the Legislature. "Indeed, as attorney for the people of Florida, speaking through their elected representatives, you have a duty to defend that plan zealously against all legal challenge, and without partisan influence," Feeney wrote to Butterworth.

If anyone is speaking for the people in this matter, it's Butterworth. The elected representatives spoke only for themselves. And now they complain about politics?

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