State: Bush backing off deal on suit over districts

Bush backing off deal on suit over districts

The governor says he mistakenly thought two black members of Congress agreed to the settlement.

By TIM NICKENS Times Political Editor

A Republican plan to trim black voters from the South Florida congressional districts of two prominent black Democrats is coming unglued.

After a day of harsh words and posturing from lawyers and legislators, Gov. Jeb Bush is reconsidering the deal he signed earlier this week.

The reason for the governor's backpedaling is that U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings and Carrie Meek, perhaps Florida's best-known black politicians, oppose the proposed settlement of a federal lawsuit contesting the boundaries of their districts.

While they probably could win re-election next year even with the proposed new boundaries, Hastings and Meek fear black candidates would not succeed them because the number of black voters in the redrawn districts would be lower.

Wednesday afternoon, Bush told Attorney General Bob Butterworth that he agreed to the settlement because he thought Hastings, Meek and all of the other parties tied to the lawsuit also had approved it.

Now the governor wants to talk to Hastings, who is out of the country.

"We learned in the newspaper that apparently all parties had not agreed on the settlement, and as a result the governor asked for more information," said Sally Bradshaw, the governor's chief of staff. "Until he speaks with congressman Hastings, we are not sure which way we will go. We are a minor player in this."

But as governor, Bush has much to lose.

The Republican aggressively campaigned in black, predominantly Democratic neighborhoods last year. He won 14 percent of the black vote, double what he won in 1994. During his first seven months in office, he has been praised for appointing minorities to top positions.

On the horizon, though, is a battle over affirmative action that many Republicans fear could jeopardize their efforts to win over black voters. Bush has ordered a review of the state's policies, but Californian Ward Connerly continues to push constitutional amendments that would ban affirmative action and inject a divisive issue into the 2000 elections.

Against that backdrop, the outcome of the fight over the congressional districts represented by Hastings and Meek takes on additional importance for Bush.

"It certainly questions his credibility," Florida NAACP president Leon Russell said of the governor's initial approval of the new congressional districts. "Am I going to trust somebody who snatches districts away from me to go back and do an honest review of affirmative action? I think not."

That was one of the shots fired Wednesday as lawyers and politicians from both parties scrambled to justify their positions.

One of Butterworth's top lawyers sent a vitriolic letter to Peter Dunbar, former general counsel for Republican Gov. Bob Martinez who is a private lawyer representing the state Senate.

"We write to express our dismay over the events surrounding the presentation of a purported "settlement' brokered by your firm in this case," Assistant Deputy Attorney General Gerald Curington wrote. "We and our clients were misled regarding the status of this proposed settlement, as were the intervenors, by the manner in which this was handled."

Butterworth, a Democrat, represents two Republicans, Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, in the lawsuit. The letter indicated Butterworth intended to scrap the deal and focus on motions to dismiss the lawsuit at a hearing Monday that apparently has been postponed.

"People have not bought into this deal, so we're back to arguing our motions to dismiss," Deputy Attorney General Richard Doran said in an interview.

Bradshaw said neither she nor Bush saw the letter to Dunbar.

By late afternoon, the lawyer for the private citizens who brought the suit and a key senator who helped craft the settlement insisted Bush had not backed away from the deal.

David Paul Horan of Key West, the plaintiffs' attorney, said no one was misled about who agreed to the proposal. He suggested it would be naive to believe Meek, Hastings or organizations such as the NAACP would accept the settlement without complaint.

"Anybody that's got a lick of sense would never believe that people who were running in racially gerrymandered districts would be totally happy with not running in illegally racially gerrymandered districts," Horan said.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Latvala of Palm Harbor said Butterworth's lawyers were always opposed to the settlement. He described the letter to Dunbar as "very harsh and very political":

"Bob Butterworth is a very political guy, and he uses that office in a very political way."

He said the changes proposed for the districts represented by Meek and Hastings are similar to those made in 1996 to the North Florida district represented by another African-American, Rep. Corrine Brown in Jacksonville.

All three districts were drawn by a panel of three federal judges in 1992. Since then the U.S. Supreme Court has changed the rules, concluding that race cannot be the predominant factor in redrawing political boundaries.

Meek's district in Miami-Dade County and Hastings' district, which links black neighborhoods in seven South Florida counties, would lose a significant number of black voting-age residents under the settlement.

In Meek's case, the black voting age population would decrease from the current 51.3 percent to 45.5 percent. Hastings' district, contained to Broward and Palm Beach counties, would have a black voting age population of 36.9 percent, down from 44.4 percent.