A redistricting effort in Florida hit a snag Tuesday when Gov. Ron DeSantis said a special legislative session scheduled for next week may be postponed.
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Republicans control every lever of power in Florida’s state government, but significant infighting between legislative leaders and DeSantis has bogged down major parts of DeSantis’ legislative agenda, including his effort to redraw the state’s congressional map ahead of the midterm elections.
DeSantis told reporters Tuesday that there are likely to be “tweaks” to any proposed maps, none of which have yet been filed. DeSantis did not confirm that next week’s special session, which he first called for in January, would be moved, but he said it would be held in the “coming weeks.”
“I haven’t made any decisions on that, but the answer is it’s possible you could do a little tweak, but you can’t really push it very far,” DeSantis told reporters in Tallahassee at an unrelated bill-signing event.
DeSantis’ office did not reply to a request seeking additional comment.
Since DeSantis’ failed bid for president in 2024, Florida Republicans have taken a more hostile approach to his overall agenda.
“No one is getting along. How can we pass a map when we can’t get anyone to talk about a map?” said a longtime Florida Republican operative involved in the process, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Another Florida Republican operative said “it’s clear” that DeSantis is trying to force a redistricting process on Republican state lawmakers who are either opposed to or ambivalent about a redrawn congressional map that wouldn’t directly affect them.
“It’s pretty clear the only one who wants to do this is DeSantis, and he seems less and less prepared to do it,” the person said.
A driving factor in the potential delay is that Florida Republicans had yet to finalize any map proposals less than a week before the special session was set to begin, according to three sources familiar with the situation.
“There just isn’t a map that exists right now,” a person familiar with the process said. “I don’t think they have really been working on one until very recently. I don’t know how this was going to work out.”
A longtime Republican adviser who works with state legislative Republicans said that if push came to shove, lawmakers would most likely deliver DeSantis a new map but that very few support or are invested in the idea.
“These guys at the state level generally don’t really care about congressional redistricting,” the adviser said. “It’s not something they care about, but also a hill they probably won’t die on unless that map is ridiculous.”
Florida has been poised to become the latest state to join the mid-decade redistricting fight President Donald Trump kick-started last year, hoping to help his party maintain its slim House majority. Republicans in Texas, North Carolina and Missouri enacted new maps last month, but Democratic-led states have responded more aggressively than expected.
Voters in California approved a redrawn map last year that heavily favors Democrats. And in Virginia, Democrats are asking voters to do the same in a special election Tuesday.
It’s why Florida has emerged as the last bastion for Republicans to pick up additional House seats through the redistricting process before the November elections. DeSantis, however, told reporters Tuesday that any delays in Florida would have little to do with the outcome of the Virginia referendum, which, if it is passed, would result in four additional Democratic-leaning districts in the state.
“I saw some reports that somehow Virginia’s doing something — I have no idea where that came from,” he said.
While Republicans represent 20 of Florida’s 28 congressional districts, DeSantis has pushed plans to pass a new map that would give them two to five additional seats.
But in an election cycle that’s shaping up to be tough for the GOP, some Florida Republicans warn a new map could backfire and dilute seats that currently favor the party. That concern has been elevated by the success Democrats have had in special elections across the country during Trump’s second term, including two state legislative races in Florida last month.
“Aggressive redistricting strategies aimed at maximizing Republican seat count may paradoxically increase Republican vulnerability to adverse electoral conditions,” Alex Alvarado, a consultant who has long worked for Republican-leaning causes in the state, wrote in a memo published this week.
He said his modeling suggests that “aggressive redistricting” could boost competitive congressional seats in the state from four to seven and produce “zero net gain in Republican seats.”
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said he remains supportive of Florida Republicans’ redrawing the state’s congressional map “if they can figure out a way to do it and do it fair.”
But he stopped short of encouraging them to do it or saying how aggressive they should be.
“They got to follow the Constitution and make fair districts,” Scott said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. White House officials have been watching the Florida redistricting process play out, even if they haven’t been as directly engaged there as in other Republican-led states, according to two sources familiar with their thinking.
A national Republican operative who supports the White House’s efforts remained optimistic that Florida would still pass new congressional lines.
“They are going to get the job done,” the person said.
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