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Two more maps filed for Senate redistricting

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Two more state Senate maps were submitted late Tuesday as part of the ongoing Special Session to redraw the districts, which the chamber previously admitted were gerrymandered to benefit Republicans. State Rep. Matt Caldwell, a North Fort Myers Republican, and state Sen. Jeff Clemens, a Lake Worth Democrat, each filed their own map. A cursory review shows that neither map contains districts that cross Tampa Bay. The six staff-drawn “base maps” now being considered by lawmakers all have districts that…

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Must-read op-ed from Stafford Jones: Who is really doing the gerrymandering?

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

With the complexities involved over the redistricting cases winding their way through Florida courts, I shouldn’t be surprised how easily the Democrats are getting away with their misinformation campaign, and I really shouldn’t be surprised how willing the press is to repeat the Democratic talking points. Let’s review, first, what the constitutional amendments governed. The Fair Districts Amendments governed the intent and actions of the Legislature. They did not govern the intent or actions of citizens. They did not govern…

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Martin Dyckman: Winner-take-all winner could be Donald Trump

in 2017/Top Headlines by

Our next president may well owe the office to arrogant billionaires or be one himself. Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that fewer than 400 families account for nearly half the $388 million already invested in that election still more than a year away. Did America shed blood to be rid of monarchy only to have it come to this? And yet the vast moral and political corruption unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s confusion of free spending with free…

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Email insights: Nothing speaks louder than success for the LWVF and redistricting

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Nothing speaks louder than success, and few things are more favorable to a group than a “total victory.” Celebrating its success is the League of Women Voters of Florida, which is reveling over Thursday’s ruling by the Florida Supreme Court that took a red pen to the state’s congressional maps. It was —  in the words of the LWVF — no less than a “Victory for Democracy.” It capped a long-running dispute going as far back as the Florida Fair Districts amendment battle in…

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Helen Gordon Davis, an early victim of racial gerrymandering in Florida

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

The obituaries for Helen Gordon Davis correctly recounted what one called her “trailblazing” career in the Florida Legislature, where in 1974 she became one of very few women – the first from Hillsborough County – in what a colleague famously called “the land of the Bubbas.” She weathered the sexism and condescension and compiled a luminous record in what some refer to wistfully as the “Golden Age” of Florida politics. What the tributes didn’t mention, after her death May 18,…

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On Martin Dyckman’s retirement

in Peter/Statewide/The Bay and the 'Burg by

All at once, it seems so many good people are leaving the Florida political arena. Take for instance the death of Senator Jack Gordon, who passed away before the holidays. Here was the noblest Roman of them all, so to speak. As it is, much of our state is only a few minutes removed from another place in the world and so it’s likey they know little about the enormous contribution Senator Gordon made to this state. Gordon’s death, and…

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