Top Republican admits Florida districts drawn to help GOP

A top Florida Republican running for Congress asserted this week that the GOP has been drawing congressional districts to benefit Republicans, a move that brought criticism from one of his primary rivals.

At a campaign event in North Florida on Monday night, Florida Chief Financial Officer and District 1 congressional candidate Jimmy Patronis acknowledged that the district was gerrymandered by state Republicans in the 1990s, and that the party has continued to maintain that practice ever since.

The remark came at a candidate forum hosted by the Niceville Republican Women Federated.

Patronis is one of ten Republicans running to win the GOP nomination for the seat in the special primary election slated for Jan. 28. The seat is considered one of the most conservative congressional districts in the state, with the winner of the primary slated to face Democrat Gay Valimont and other write-in and non-party affiliated candidates on April 1.

“Let me give you a little civics lesson,” Patronis says to the audience in a video clip obtained by the Phoenix. “Do you know why District 1 is where it is? It’s because a Republican Legislature is in charge right now – and this is what we’ve done since Daniel Webster was speaker of the House as a Republican – we try to create as many Republican congressional seats as possible. Okay? So what happened? You get gerrymandered lines.”

Daniel Webster served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives in 1996-1998. He’s served in Congress representing districts in Central Florida since 2010.

Gerrymandering is the practice of a political party dividing or arranging election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage. As a way of stopping that from happening, Florida voters in 2010 overwhelmingly approved what were called the Fair Districts Amendments to the state constitution to stop elected officials from manipulating voting maps to keep themselves and their party in power.

In the case of Florida, Republicans have controlled both chambers of the Florida Legislature since 1996.

Patronis is from PC

In a statement, Joel Rudman, a physician and former legislator who resigned from the House of Representatives to run in the GOP primary in District 1, blasted Patronis’ comments.

“I resent the accusation that Republican leadership would embark on anything unethical or unconstitutional when creating district lines, when in fact, the most gerrymandered district in history (CD-5) that stretched across the Georgia state line from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, was actually Democrat. The fact remains that, for his entire political career, Mr. Patronis has been synonymous with Panama City, which is squarely in Congressional District 2.

“I am disappointed that the candidate would blame others for his lack of residency in our district. I vehemently denounce those comments accusing Republicans of gerrymandering and respectfully ask the candidate to apologize for that statement casting aspersions on our Republican leadership.”

As Rudman noted, Patronis’ voting address is in Panama City, which isn’t in District 1. However, under the U.S. Constitution, candidates aren’t required to live in the U.S. House district in which they run so long as they are a resident of the state. He has been endorsed in the race by President-elect Donald Trump.

The seat had been held by Matt Gaetz from 2016 until this past November. That’s when Gaetz resigned from congress after he was nominated by Trump to serve as his attorney general. But a week later Gaetz announced that because of growing doubts that he could be confirmed because of a House Ethics panel investigation about alleged payments for sex, he would withdraw his name for consideration to head the U.S. Justice Department.

Patronis’ campaign did not respond to the Phoenix’s request for comment.