TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — While his obedience to President Donald Trump by delivering new seats to help Republicans hold the House angers Florida voters and could well be blocked in court, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ creation of a new congressional map could help him with a different group of voters: those picking the next GOP presidential nominee.
Democratic leaders in California and Virginia went to the trouble of winning voter approval to permit aggressive gerrymanders in response to Trump. DeSantis, in contrast, took a much simpler route to dealing with Florida’s ban against the practice. He simply ignored it.
“We released the map on Monday, the Legislature passed it on Wednesday, and that is that,” he told Fox News on Friday.
DeSantis never addressed the Florida Fair Districts Amendments as he began offering up a potpourri of justifications for redrawing Florida’s existing map, which was already a partisan 20-8 gerrymander that he pushed through four years ago. This week, when his staffer who drew the new 24-4 map and the outside lawyer defending it finally appeared briefly before lawmakers, they explained that, yes, partisan voting performance had been used in creating the map but the constitutional prohibition was, in DeSantis’ view, null and void.
While Democrats, independents and perhaps some Florida Republicans oppose what DeSantis did — a recent poll showed that 56% of Floridians oppose it, with 44% in support — willingness to openly flout the law to win today appears to be a desirable feature in a Republican Party led by Trump, a convicted felon who attempted a coup at the end of his first term in office.
“I would very much look at this as DeSantis trying to posture for 2028,” said Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP consultant in Florida who abandoned the party after it fell under Trump’s sway in 2016.
“DeSantis is so desperate to please Trump that he is willing to sell his soul and violate the Florida Constitution,” said Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried.
DeSantis fans praised him as willing to do whatever it took to beat back Democrats, while DeSantis himself crowed that he had gone ahead in the face of criticism, including from U.S. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“As soon as he came out and started doing that last week, Florida Legislature turned around and they passed a new map,” DeSantis said Thursday at a construction project ground-breaking ceremony, even mocking Jeffries’ accent.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to HuffPost queries.
Both Democratic and Republican observers said that while DeSantis wants to take credit for how quickly and meekly GOP state legislators passed the new map, the true cause is a fear of Trump, who went out of his way to recruit opponents for Indiana Republicans who rejected his demand to redistrict in that state.
“He’s a lame duck. They’re not afraid of [DeSantis],” said Lori Berman, the Democratic leader in the state Senate. In contrast, she said, her Republican colleagues are absolutely afraid to cross Trump. “What can he do to them? He can primary them. He can, you know, get an opponent. And Trump is, in the state of Florida, I think, Trump is pretty popular.”
In any event, whether state lawmakers rammed through a new map out of respect for DeSantis or fear of Trump, DeSantis is clearly happy to take credit now and is likely to do so in a potential presidential campaign.
While no major candidate in either party has declared a 2028 candidacy, the start of that campaign in recent cycles has been in the spring of the previous year — meaning, in DeSantis’ case, not long after he leaves the governor’s office in January because of term limits.
“It can help you in Iowa and South Carolina and get you ahead in a multi-candidate field in New Hampshire,” said one top Florida Republican about DeSantis’ redistricting push on condition of anonymity.
DeSantis, who is 47, is widely expected among Florida Republicans to make his second run for the White House in 2028. When asked about that possibility on Monday at a conference in Los Angeles, he said: “You never know,” and then added that he has “a good story to tell” about his years as governor.
Although he has not publicly committed to the race, he has continued to raise money for both his federal RON PAC and his state Florida Freedom Fund committees, with about $6 million in the bank for each. Proceeds from both could flow to super PACs supporting his candidacy.
That is the strategy he used in 2023, when his allies transferred $83 million from his political committee to his Never Back Down super PAC. DeSantis, in fact, had more money available to him early in the primary season than any other GOP candidate running, including Trump, who in November 2022 announced he would run again after leaving the White House in disgrace less than two years earlier.
When DeSantis ran in 2024, his top talking points were his purported achievements in Florida, and both Republican and Democratic consultants and officials believe that pushing through a nakedly partisan map will likely be a new accomplishment for him to boast about.
Whether it will register with Republicans in early voting states next year and in early 2028, particularly given DeSantis’ well-known difficulties connecting with voters, cannot be known. After investing much of his time, energy and money in Iowa, he finished a distant second to Trump in the 2024 caucuses and dropped out.
Mac Stipanovich, for decades a Republican consultant, said DeSantis would also likely have to contend with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an arena where his willingness to defy the Florida Constitution might not mean much.
“The exceptions might be well-informed, full-on, MAGA Myrmidons who might know who picked up how many seats where, but I suspect those people will be in a twist about Vance and Rubio,” he said. “I just don’t think redistricting is going to ring the bell in 2028 with everything that will be going on.”
Fried, who served alongside DeSantis on the Florida Cabinet as the elected agriculture commissioner during his first term, said the redistricting fight, in any case, will not make up for his other challenges.
“He is still awkward, still uncomfortable around people and generally unlikable,” she said, and then pointed out that DeSantis’ map could, in the end, wind up biting him by weakening too many Republican districts in a year in which Trump’s poll numbers continue to sink. “When not only all eight Florida Democrats get re-elected but we pick up seats because of his maps and Floridians overwhelmingly disagree with partisan maps, it will be the final nail in DeSantis’ political coffin.”