How many incumbents lost in 2002 because voters wanted a change? Exactly zero.
By HOWARD TROXLER
Published February 15, 2004
In less than three weeks, the Florida Legislature will convene in Tallahassee for its annual session. As always, there will be pomp and bustle. As always, there will be pressing short-term emergencies. As always, our lawmakers will dicker over how to spend our money, and they will debate the laws of our state.
But look a little closer. Something is different in Tallahassee these days. Our state's democracy is no longer "as always." This modern Legislature is a new kind of animal - because its members are almost entirely immune to being defeated at re-election.
An exaggeration? Absolutely not. In Florida's last general election in 2002, only three members of our 160-seat Legislature were defeated. Even then, those unlucky three were not victims of voter dissatisfaction. Their districts were simply redrawn by the other party to make them vulnerable.
In other words, there was not a single incumbent kicked out of office purely because the voters wanted a change. (By way of comparison, at least 72 incumbents were defeated in last December's elections for the 225 district seats in the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, according to the editor of the journal Russian Election Watch.)
It's not that the voters are giddy with delight at the Legislature's performance - the polls show just the opposite. Neither is it that voters are too lazy to make a change. The core problem is that Florida's voting districts have been so rigged, and incumbents have so much money, that there is almost no true competition.
Except for eight-year term limits, a member of the Legislature these days doesn't leave office until he or she chooses to go. Voluntary retirements and bids for higher office are the principal causes of turnover. The only tough competition comes when a crowd of newcomers vies to fill a newly vacant seat; after that, being an incumbent is close to having tenure.
This changes everything.
This is the reality that explains every action of our Legislature that at first blush might seem inexplicable. Whether it's a pro-polluter law, a massive telephone rate increase, a poorly thought-out publicity stunt or a bald-faced attempt to defy a citizen voter initiative such as class sizes, the answer to the question, How can they do such a thing? is simply: Who's going to stop them?
"Democracy is about having a choice," observes Ben Wilcox, executive director of Florida Common Cause. "It's about having different ideas and opinions about issues.
"It's not an election if it's uncontested. It's a coronation."
* * *
The Invulnerable Incumbent in Florida stands on two sturdy legs. The first leg is partisan redistricting. The Legislature draws its own districts. Florida's 40 Senate districts and 120 House districts have been stretched, kneaded and distorted in such a way that almost all districts clearly "belong" to one party or the other - only a handful of districts are truly competitive any more. (This is a key point: incumbent Democrats benefit from safe districts, too.)
Here is how uncompetitive Florida's democracy is. Of 120 seats in the state House, just nine races were "competitive" in 2002, under the commonly used yardstick of being decided by 10 percentage points or less. Most of those competitive races were in vacant seats. Among the 71 House incumbents on the ballot, only four had a truly competitive race, and two of those were the redistricting victims.
Instead, the average margin of victory for a House incumbent was just over 50 percentage points. Fifty. The average House incumbent, Democrat and Republican alike, received 75 percent of the general election vote, compared to opponents' 25 percent.
Those are some mightily rigged districts.
The second leg on which the Invulnerable Incumbent stands, of course, is money - both the kind of money raised by the individual candidate, and unlimited "soft" money flowing through the Republican and Democratic party headquarters in Tallahassee, which the parties spend to boost local candidates. The combination is unbeatable for any incumbent who plays the game and obeys the party bosses on key votes.
The average House incumbent on the November general election ballot in 2002 raised $137,245.
The average House challenger raised $17,397. (Admittedly, that number was skewed by an unusual number of Libertarian candidates who raised little or no money. But even in the handful of races where a Republican and Democrat squared off, the incumbent usually enjoyed a huge fundraising advantage.)
"It's not working the way that the framers thought it would" on either the state or national level, says Steven Hill, a senior analyst for the Center for Voting and Democracy, a national think tank.
What would be a healthy percentage of defeated incumbents? There's no magic number, Hill says, but it's a pretty good bet that the number ought to be higher than zero.
Hill points out that the authors of The Federalist, published in 1787-1788 to advocate the proposed U.S. Constitution, assumed that up to half the members of the U.S. House would be swept out of office each election. They were worried about too much turnover in the House resulting from direct democracy, which is why they proposed a more stable Senate with six-year staggered terms.
"Boy, were they off on that one," Hill laughs. In 2002, four incumbents of the U.S. House were defeated, a record low.
"On the state legislative level, it's even worse than the U.S. House," Hill says. Forty percent of state incumbents had no opposition in the last election; almost all of those who did won easily.
Can this be reversed?
It is extremely unlikely that it will be reversed by the Legislature itself. Neither the Republican Party in power now, nor the Democratic Party when it was in power before, has been willing to give up the delicious ability to draw the maps. And why should they? The aim of power is always more power. Surrendering that power would be the greatest act of statesmanship in Florida history, but it is more likely that Martians will land on the Capitol tomorrow morning.
It's interesting to hear the words of Marilyn Evans-Jones, a Republican state legislator who represented Melbourne from 1976 to 1986, and who suffered under Democratic map-drawing abuse. "One time I got a call and they asked me which side of the street I lived on," Jones recalls. "I told them, "I'm not going to tell you. You'll have to go look.' " As a member of the Constitution Revision Commission in the late 1990s, she advocated nonpartisan redistricting. Ironically, her plan was blocked with the help of Democrats too.
House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, the current leader of the majority Republicans, recently spoke for incumbents everywhere when he pooh-poohed any attempt at change. It would not be "representative" for anyone other than the Legislature to draw the Legislature's districts, he said. Besides, the speaker opined, delivering the old chestnut, you can't take the "politics" out of politics.
Maybe not. But you can give it a good try.
* * *
The best solution, according to a growing number of reformers, is to put district-drawing in the hands of somebody other than the Legislature.
There is just such a citizen petition drive under way in Florida to amend the state Constitution, being organized by a group called the Committee for Fair Representation. (Remember that at the same time, the Legislature is considering ways to crack down on citizen petitions.)
The citizens' group actually is backing two amendments. Under the first, a bipartisan commission of 17 people - 16 named by the majority and minority parties in the Legislature, with the last chosen by the other members - would draw Florida's voting districts. Membership on this commission would be barred to state or federal elected officials, lobbyists or party officers.
To address Byrd's objection that you can't "take the politics out of politics," the second constitutional amendment would give this commission clear marching orders. Districts would have to be compact, respect existing political and geographic boundaries, and preserve communities of common interest. More to the point, districts could not "be drawn to favor an incumbent, political party or other person."
The chairman of the Committee for Fair Representation is state Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Dania Beach. Longtime observers might be amused to hear a Democrat now making exactly the same arguments the Republicans made when they were in the minority.
"The effect of redistricting by the Legislature is to allow self-interest, very clear self-interest, to drive the process," Ryan says. "Nowhere else in the political process do you have somebody who is able to choose for themselves how they are going to get elected."
Ryan says the damage to our democracy goes deeper than merely creating a protected class of incumbents. With almost every district safe for one party or the other, there is no reason to reach to the middle, no reason to attempt compromise or to work on our state's problems together. "Whoever is elected," Ryan says, "knows they need to satisfy only a certain base of support within one party."
The Citizens for Fair Representation can be contacted on the web at www.fairrepresentation.com where you can get a copy of the petition and sign it, or at P.O. Box 1701, Tallahassee, FL 32302-0000.
Perhaps over time, our political system will naturally find a way to pull the pendulum back toward balance, even without a constitutional amendment. The history of our democracy so far suggests that unchecked power can only survive for so long.
Nonetheless, the idea of a Legislature that cannot be held accountable at the polls is intolerable. This is the most important structural problem in Florida's political system today. Yet it is the one the Florida Legislature is least likely to address.
- Howard Troxler is a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times.
