How Florida designed a US House map aiming to give Republicans four more seats

By Fredreka Schouten, Ethan Cohen, Renée Rigdon, CNN

(CNN) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed into law a map he designed to give Republicans an edge in as many as four seats now held by Democrats.

State lawmakers approved the new boundaries just hours after the US Supreme Court issued a decision limiting the reach of the Voting Rights Act in redistricting cases. DeSantis had used the pending decision as one justification for pursuing a mid-decade redistricting in his state.

The court’s move has set off a fresh round of attempts to draw new lines in several southern states controlled by Republicans.

Voting rights groups have vowed to fight the Florida map in court, arguing that it still violates a provision in the state constitution that restricts partisan gerrymandering. But the US Supreme Court’s ruling Wednesday could make challenging the new map much harder.

The map targets Democratic seats near Orlando, in the Tampa Bay area and in South Florida.

Here’s a look at the communities affected and the map’s impact on incumbents in those areas.

Targeting a majority Latino district in Orlando

The map dramatically reconfigures Rep. Darren Soto’s 9th District, removing parts of the Orlando area and stretching it some 150 miles south into deeply red rural counties. One section projects to the east, extending to Vero Beach on the Atlantic Coast.

The map also alters the demographic makeup of a majority Hispanic district, taking it from nearly 52% Hispanic to 39%, a CNN analysis shows. Soto, the first Floridian of Puerto Rican descent to serve in Congress, has represented the district for nearly a decade.

Under DeSantis’ map, the seat in the 10th District held by Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost – the first member of Gen Z elected to Congress – would become a sole blue spot in a sea of Republican districts surrounding the Orlando area.

The plan largely leaves undisturbed the 7th District in Orlando’s northeastern suburbs held by embattled Republican Rep. Cory Mills. The third-term Mills – a top campaign target for Democrats this year – is under a House ethics committee investigation related to allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations.

He has repeatedly denied the allegations against him. Mills recently drew a Republican primary challenger, former Orlando-area news anchor Ryan Elijah.

Splitting a district in Tampa-St. Pete

Rep. Kathy Castor, a 10-term incumbent, currently represents both Tampa and St. Petersburg, cities on either side of Tampa Bay.

The DeSantis plan breaks up Castor’s 14th District. It removes St. Petersburg and shifts much of it into the 16th District now held by GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan, who is retiring from Congress at the end of this term.

And it splits Tampa into three, sending northern parts of the city into two districts now held by Republican incumbents, Reps. Laurel Lee and Gus Bilirakis. That could pose some risk to those GOP lawmakers as they take in more Democratic voters into their revamped districts. Lee’s 15th District was already among those targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Districts in Play” project.

Another Democratic target, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, saw her 13th District, which includes Clearwater, grow a shade redder in the proposed redraw. It likely would remain in Republican control if the map survives the expected legal challenges, according to Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political newsletter produced by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

Pitting Democrats against each other in South Florida

The map that was in place for the 2024 election gives Democrats the advantage in five southeast Florida districts; the new map reduces that number to three.

Under the new map, two South Florida Democrats, Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, would be left without obvious districts to run in.

Moskowitz’s 23rd District remains Democratic, but moves farther north, to cover much of the territory now represented by Rep. Lois Frankel. Moskowitz’s current district would cease to exist in its current form, meaning he’ll likely have to decide between challenging Frankel and running in one of the new, more Republican-leaning districts.

He recently told CNN’s Manu Raju that there are “three seats I could potentially run in. And so we’re analyzing it.”

Wasserman Schultz’s 25th District currently is Democratic and includes a swath of Broward County from the Atlantic coast into slightly inland cities, such as Pembroke Pines and Miramar. The DeSantis map blows it apart, distributing its pieces among four other districts.

A newly configured 25th District created by DeSantis’ team hugs the coastline and becomes more Republican-friendly. The new lines transform the district from one that supported Democrat Kamala Harris by more than 5 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election to one that would have backed President Donald Trump by more than 9 points, according to Sabato’s analysis.

Wasserman Schultz might have even fewer options than Moskowitz.

She could choose to run in one of the more Republican seats, perhaps against Moskowitz, or in the reconfigured 20th District. That’s a majority-minority district, much of which was represented by Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who recently resigned from Congress.

Another potentially vulnerable Republican incumbent on Democrats’ target list, Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, saw the lines of her 27th District covering parts of Miami virtually unchanged.

The heavily Hispanic district went for Trump by more than 14 points in 2024, but the president’s popularity has declined since his return to the White House, including among Latino voters. The race could be one of the state’s most closely watched contests this November.

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