Florida Republicans’ last-minute redistricting push has “backfired” on President Donald Trump and his party as Democrats grow “outwardly optimistic” about the state.
Speaking in a Thursday episode of his show, “Scott MacFarlane Reports,” MeidasTouch Capitol Hill correspondent Scott MacFarlane pointed to “a series of new race forecasts” that have shifted congressional, governor’s, and Senate races “in the direction of Democrats,” including several in Florida. The state “has not seen Democratic growth, not much of it at least, in Trump’s two terms,” MacFarlane pointed out.
“What is happening in Florida? Why and how are Democrats so outwardly optimistic about Florida of all places in the Trump era?” MacFarlane asked at the top of the episode.
“There’s a word we need to get used to hearing,” MacFarlane said. “Dummymandering. When gerrymandering goes wrong. When gerrymandering goes south, you can call it dummymandering.”
MacFarlane noted that Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) “gerrymandered in the 11th hour.” District lines were redrawn “to make them more favorable for Republican incumbents and Republican challengers,” MacFarlane said.
“Now, if they’re not done right, they can make some Republicans more vulnerable by diluting Republican votes,” he said. “And it leaves Republicans vulnerable if there’s going to be a wave election.”
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried told MacFarlane the state’s “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center has hurt Republicans, citing its $1.6 billion price tag and “the damning report that came out last week that there were small cages that they actually put human beings in for punishment purposes.”
Fried said, “It has backfired tremendously, and I think that you’re going to continue hearing reports of the amount of money that was used to build this facility out of our taxpayer dollars.”
According to MacFarlane, Fried counts more than 40 local races that have flipped “from red to blue in recent months,” including seats on the Orlando City Commission, state legislative contests, and school board races. He said Fried argues Democrats are “convincing some voters, some independents, that it’s worth turning away from Trump’s party, even in proximity to Mar-a-Lago.”
MacFarlane singled out Florida’s 7th Congressional District, a Central Florida seat being vacated by Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), who has been “dogged almost from the jump with ethics questions” that he “has denied unequivocally.” Trump won the district “by about a half dozen points,” MacFarlane said.
Democrat Bale Dalton, a Navy veteran, told MacFarlane that analyses show the open-seat race is “50-50 at this point.”
MacFarlane added that he is watching Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who was “pushed out of his district through the redistricting” into more Trump-friendly territory. Forecasts show Moskowitz as “distinctively competitive, if not the favorite to win that terrain,” MacFarlane said.
The post ‘What is happening?’ Trump-backed Florida map ‘backfires’ as GOP incumbents left exposed appeared first on Raw Story.
