Jacksonville redistricting committee moves forward with 2 maps, removes race as a factor

The Jacksonville City Council redistricting committee chose to move forward with two maps presented to them Tuesday – disregarding one other consultant-generated map and also turning down the “unity map” presented last week by the civil rights organizations suing the city over racial gerrymandering.

Neither map uses race as a factor, but both focus instead on registered party affiliation among voters in each district.

“Race cannot be a predominant factor, but anything like a minority access district community, communities of interest or anything that is a pretext or even could be considered a pretext for race cannot be part of the equation,” city General Counsel Jason Teal told the council members during the meeting.

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The city must redraw its map after U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales ruled Oct. 12 the map approved earlier this year used racial gerrymandering to pack Black voters into four districts so they would have less impact on electing candidates in neighboring districts.

Howard granted the injunction stopping use of the city’s map in a win for the Jacksonville branch of the NAACP, the Northside Coalition, ACLU of Florida Northeast Florida Chapter, Florida Rising Together and 10 residents who sued the city and said Black voters would be harmed if the boundaries aren't changed before the spring 2023 election for City Council.

The committee heard from the city’s hired expert, Douglas Johnson, for the first time during Tuesday’s meeting as he presented them with three map options. Johnson worked with city Planning and Development Director Bill Killingsworth, who worked with council to produce the tossed map. City Council plans to vote on a final map Friday to present to Howard before her imposed Nov. 8 deadline.

The decisions surrounding which maps to keep and work with occurred before the public in the audience had a chance to comment.

Teal said the factors used to decide on the districts in the three proposed maps – not mentioning the unity map – included honoring physical boundaries, protecting incumbents from being redrawn out of a district, and considering the political makeup of each district, all on top of being logical and geographically compact.

The proposed maps and party registration by district

Of the three maps Johnson proposed, the map called the “maroon map” picked up the most support from the redistricting committee. Council Members Rory Diamond, Nick Howland, Sam Newby and Randy White all selected it as their No. 1 choice. Aaron Bowman preferred the “lime map,” and it got some No. 2 nods from several other council members, keeping it in contention.

City Council President Terrance Freeman, serving as chairman of the committee, did not weigh in with his preferences. Ju'Coby Pittman said she wanted more time to review the options.

There was concern among committee members regarding the splitting of neighborhoods into different districts. District 14 Council Member Randy DeFoor and District 9 Council Member Tyrona Clark-Murray both told Johnson they hoped to preserve neighborhoods as to limit voter confusion moving forward.

The proposed maroon map comes closest to keeping the existing party balance in the six districts that are most impacted by Howard’s ruling.

Districts 7, 8, 9 and 10, which are all based in Northwest Jacksonville, would remain in the Democratic column. In southwest Jacksonville, District 12 would keep a tilt toward the Republican Party and District 14 would remain evenly split among Republicans and Democrats based on party registration.

All the maps would be drawn in a way to keep incumbent council members in their current districts.

Here’s the breakdown of current party registration for each of those districts and how that would compare to the maroon and lime maps:

District 7: Currently represented by Reggie Gaffney, it is 60% Democrat and 18% Republican. In both the maroon and lime maps, voter affiliation would be 60% Democrat and 21% Republican, roughly the same as it is now.

District 8: Represented now by Pittman, it is about 63% Democrat and 19% Republican in its current shape. Both the maroon and lime maps would strengthen that Democratic advantage with 71% Democrat and 10% Republican for party affiliation.

District 9: The district represented by Clark-Murray is about 60% Democrat and 17% Republican now. The maroon plan would drop the share of Democrats to 50% with Republicans at 20%. The lime plan would put the Democratic share at 48% and the Republican registration at 28%. Democrats would still outnumber Republicans but the district would be more competitive.

District 10: Represented by Brenda Priestly Jackson, the district is 60% Democrat and 19% Republican. The maroon plan would bolster that Democratic advantage with 63% of voters registered as Democrats and 17% as Republicans. The lime map would be 62% Democrat and 18% Republican.

District 12: The district represented by White now has a Republican edge with 39.5% registered as Republicans and 37.2% as Democrats. The maroon map would be 43% Republican and 37% Democrat. The lime map would be 42% Republican and 37% Democrat, so both the maroon and lime maps would widen the GOP advantage in party registration for this district.

District 14: Represented by DeFoor, this district would have the most at stake in party affiliation as City Council draws a new map. Currently, the district is 37.6% Republican and 37.5% Democrat. In the maroon map, the split would be 38% Republican and 38% Democratic. In the lime map, the Democratic share rises to 41% and the Republican portion would be 34%, tilting the district more toward Democrats.

Neither of the maps moving forward will consider racial demographics

While drawing the maps, Johnson said he did not consider race – only after they were drawn did he look at the racial demographics of each district and discover the city will go from four Black-majority districts to three.

When Gaffney, who is not on the redistricting committee, asked which district would be affected, Teal told him that they would not even be discussing the racial demographics of the districts because of the judge's order.

“Because of the fact the council can no longer base its district boundary lines with race as a predominant factor, allegedly, we’re still in litigation…what you can’t do is that you can’t establish any district based upon African-American or any other demographic group or ethnic group,” Teal said.

Howard's ruling said the city used "bizarrely shaped and non-compact" lines to draw boundaries for districts 7, 8, 9 and 10. She concluded that the city had used race as a predominant factor in deciding those districts without conducting the proper background analysis to do so.

For that reason, she said the city “must not” use race as a predominant factor unless it is narrowly tailored to comply with a “constitutionally compelling government interest.”

Michael McDonald, a political science professor at University of Florida, told the Times-Union prior to the release of the maps that by ignoring race, City Council ran the risk of “a different aspect of racial gerrymandering.”

“Jacksonville is a diverse city with segregated populations,” McDonald said. “It seems to me that you'd want to take race into account, and otherwise you can find yourself in violation of Section 2 (of the Voting Rights Act) because you didn't draw the districts that you're going to need to under Section 2.”

By not doing a racial voting bloc analysis – which Teal said the city simply did not have time to do before Nov. 8 – and instead choosing to take race out of the equation, however, the city runs the risk of violating Section 2.

In contrast to how the 14th Amendment of the Constitution prohibits the unconstitutional packing of Black voters into districts, VRA Section 2 protects against diluting votes by spreading voters into an unusually large district or multiple districts.

The plaintiffs conducted a VRA analysis earlier this year, but the city made no mention of them at the meeting.

Jacksonville's rejected maps

The redistricting committee eliminated two maps that would have gone further than the maroon or lime maps in shaking up the political landscape.

The committee dropped from further consideration the “orange map” proposed by the city’s consultant. It would have narrowed the Democratic advantage in District 10 to 45% Democrat and 30% Republican while giving District 14 a mix of 42% Democrat and 33% Republican.

The council members also rejected the unity map put forward by the civil rights organizations who successfully sued the city. In the unity map, District 12 would be 51% Democrat and 31% Republican while District 14 would be 41% Democrat and 34% Republican, according to the consultant’s presentation.

Advocates of the unity map said the council members discarded two of the potential maps without any meaningful discussion without waiting to hear from members of the public who were seeing the consultant's maps for the first time.

Ben Frazier, president of the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville, said the council is going down the same path it did earlier this year when it approved a map that residents warned repeatedly would not withstand a court challenge.

“You’re making the same mistake,” Frazier told council during the public comment period at the end of the meeting.

Public comment becomes heated as residents say they feel unheard

One of Howard’s primary criticisms of City Council was its lack of response to public feedback during the last redistricting process. Freeman has therefore placed particular emphasis in the need for public comment during this round – leading to audience frustration when the public comment period was limited to 15 minutes at the end of the meeting, leaving only one minute per speaker.

Frazier went over his allotted time and told the committee he thought the process was a “scam and a sham.”

“You’re not listening to the voice of the people,” Frazier said.

Other residents, including Kim Pryor, commented they felt unheard because the committee decided which maps to use going forward before hearing from the public. Pryor is a candidate for what is currently the District 7 seat but would be put in a different district under any map other than the unity map.

Pryor told the Times-Union after the meeting she approved most of the unity and orange maps, but also did not agree with the idea of protecting any politician – candidates or incumbents – when drawing the maps.

“I think if they were to truly do this the right and fair way, they would not consider where the current council members live at all,” Pryor said after the meeting. “It shouldn’t matter. If the person currently sitting in the seat really wants to serve, they should want to serve the people of whatever district they represent.”

Freeman said the council has not made any final determinations and will continue to seek feedback from residents. In addition to public comments during each redistricting committee meeting Wednesday and Thursday, the city will accept written comments submitted by email to 2022redistricting@coj.net and will have a “map chat” session at City Hall from 5 to 7 Thursday evening.

As for what public suggestions he would consider going forward, Freeman said he wanted to learn more about how recently elected School Board members would be affected by the proposed maps.

“We heard the energy and we heard the passion of the citizens coming out, and we appreciate them coming out,” Freeman said after the meeting, saying he understood people were frustrated but hoped they continued to attend meetings.

At the start of the committee meeting Tuesday, council members received copies of emails that had been submitted by members of the public. However, those emails were sent before the three maps by the consultant were unveiled publicly at the committee meeting.

Freeman, who told reporters he had read all the emails but did not see the maps attached to them, said maps submitted needed to have data explaining those maps attached.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville redistricting committee moves forward with two maps