text: Don't split Leon in congressional maps, leaders plead
  Leon County political leaders urged House and Senate redistricting committees not to split their county into two congressional districts Tuesday, but there appears to be little chance of keeping the region whole.
  Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, said he would try to draw an amendment to alter the east-west district drawn in a "base map" that legislators are using as a starting point in the special legislative session. That map shifts the North Florida minority-access district of U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, from its current Jacksonville-Orlando configuration to a new alignment running from Jacksonville to Chattahoochee.
  "I'm less optimistic today than I was yesterday," Montford said after the day-long meeting. "The Supreme Court is adamant that this District 5 goes east and west. If that's the ground rules, then what we have to do is to continue to find a district east and west that will keep Leon County whole. That's going to be a challenge."
  After legal briefings by lawyers who defended the state in prolonged redistricting litigation, and staff analysis of the pending base map, the House and Senate redistricting committees took public testimony. They intend to vote separately after considering amendments later this week.
  The special session, which started Monday, runs through next week.
  Leon, Jefferson and some other counties would be split between two new districts – one running along the Georgia border from Brown's home area and the other curving around the Big Bend from Panama City to western Marion County. That could result in Brown and U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, D-Tallahassee, being pitted against each other in a Democratic primary next year, while the other new district would be a Republican-leaning area.
  Democratic National Committeeman Jon Ausman presented an east-west map that keeps Leon County whole. Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho also said it can be done without diluting black voting strength so low that a minority candidate would not have a chance.
  Ausman said the current "base map" proposal, splitting Leon, would have about 45 percent black voting age population from Gadsden to Duval Counties. His proposal would lower that to 42.2 percent, he said, but that would still be within acceptable limits for court review under the Voting Rights Act.
  "The United States Supreme Court this year … stated black voting age population cannot be viewed in a vacuum," Ausman said. He said the controlling factor is minority "ability to elect a preferred candidate of choice" rather than any percentage of voter registration.
  He and Sancho said Leon County has a good record of electing blacks to office, even in districts that are mostly white. Ausman noted that a black county commissioner, tax collector and two county judges won although only about 28 percent of the county's voters are black, and that the city elected a mayor and city commissioner, with about one-third black population.
  But getting majorities of the joint committees, then the full House and Senate, to override staff recommendations in the "base map" will be a political long shot for local lawmakers.
  The state Supreme Court last month ordered realignment of eight of Florida's 27 congressional districts, including Brown's Jacksonville-Orlando tract, under a 2010 state constitutional edict that forbids gerrymandering to protect incumbents or favor either party. Although Democrats hold a majority in voter registration statewide, Florida's congressional delegation is 17-10 Republican — with districts drawn by two-thirds GOP majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.
  Earlier in the day, U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Orlando, also objected to the "base map," which would remove about 66,000 Democratic voters from Brown's district in Central Florida and move them into his realigned District 10. Webster, a former speaker of the state House, said the constitutional mandate not to "favor" any incumbent also means lawmakers can't "disfavor" any of them, either.
  Webster said the current map seems designed to "eliminate" him from Congress.
  "The new configuration for District 10 makes the seat uncompetitive for anyone in my party, including me," said Webster, who has been in Congress since 2010. "This new plan not only disfavors the incumbent but appears to be an attempt to eliminate the incumbent."