Politicians have been gerrymandering for almost as long as there have been public elections, and some would say it’s served a purpose. It all depends on which side of the boundary lines you land or if the result fulfills your interest.
The ongoing lawsuit against the city of Miami over its voting boundaries has District 2 in its crosshairs, pitting politics and race against growth and what some believe is the necessity to preserve a “coastal district” above all else.
In the latest move in this game of chess, the city commission approved a map June 14 that keeps the entirety of Miami’s coastal area – from Morningside to Coconut Grove – within District 2. Commissioner Sabina Covo, however, who represents that district, voted against it. She was the only commissioner to do so.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
District 2 Commissioner Sabina Covo was the lone vote against a new voting map otherwise approved by the Miami City Commission.
Covo’s opposition represents a long-winded battle to keep the Grove community intact. A map approved in March 2022 has been legally challenged since last December, when a group of residents filed a complaint with the U.S. district court alleging that the city was using racial gerrymandering to draw its voting boundaries, resulting in the separation of long-standing communities with united interests.
The plaintiffs – including Grove Rights and Community Equity Inc (GRACE), Engage Miami, and the South Dade and Miami-Dade branches of the NAACP, as well as four individual residents – have been successful thus far through the courts. They secured an injunction by Judge Kevin Michael Moore in May that blocks the 2022 map from being used in the upcoming November election. The alternative map approved by the city last month is meant to serve as a remedy to that order, but the battle is far from over.
(ACLU)
This map represents the city of Miami’s proposed redistricting remedy as of June 14.
The Trouble With Growth
Discussion leading up to both the June vote as well as the 2022 approval that triggered this string of legal challenges all point to an underlying problem: District 2 is growing and it’s growing fast. The trend of New Yorkers and Californians moving to Miami – specifically to the coast, sprawling with high-rises and a booming business metropolis – is making it increasingly difficult to preserve District 2 as the far-reaching waterfront district that it is.
“In both the plaintiffs’ alternatives and our proposed plan, [District] 2 remains a coastal district,” said the city’s redistricting consultant, Miguel DeGrandy, at the June 14 special meeting. “Indeed, the residential uses in the central and northeastern coastal areas … are markedly different than the suburban residential uses and infrastructure challenges to the west.”
(ACLU)
Plaintiffs in a racial gerrymandering lawsuit against the city of Miami have proposed three maps. In this one, the entire coast is split into three districts, with everything from Edgewater north represented by District 5, the area from Omni to downtown landing in District 1, and District 2’s jurisdiction starting at Brickell and moving southwest from there.
Redistricting occurs every 10 years for the very purpose of reapportioning registered voters amid growing populations. At the time that the 2022 redistricting process began, District 2 was overpopulated by more than 28,000 residents. Population growth may naturally be more concentrated in one area of a city than another, and in Miami, District 2 wears that crown.
The district, therefore, is faced with the task of shedding some of its voters. Where exactly to do that has been met with contention, especially as the city’s agenda doesn’t necessarily coincide with residents’ wishes to remain united with their neighbors.
Plaintiffs have drawn three alternative maps for consideration by the city and the courts. In each of those, at least the very northern edge of District 2, which includes Morningside, is moved into District 5. In the first of those alternatives, the entire coast is split into three districts, with everything from Edgewater north represented by District 5, the area from Omni to downtown landing in District 1, and District 2’s jurisdiction starting at Brickell and moving southwest from there.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Miami City Commission Chair Christine King is the commissioner for Miami’s “Black district,” District 5, which could also be Morningside’s new home if a court sides with the plaintiffs.
In each subsequent alternative proposed by plaintiffs, District 2 extends further north and preserves more of its vertical, coastal identity to fulfill that wish of the commission. Covo herself has stated that the area’s consistently high-density zoning laws provide for cohesive representation by one district.
The city still needs to submit its newly proposed map to the court following Mayor Francis Suarez’s pending approval. The plaintiffs then have one week to file their response to the suggested remedy. By Aug. 1, the judge will have to decide which map will be used in the upcoming election, which could be either the city’s, one of the plaintiffs’, an entirely new map drawn by a court-appointed third party or, in the off chance, the 2022 map that was struck down.
The latter is only a possibility if the city’s appeal to a higher court finds any success, although there has been no progression in that case thus far. Only one thing is for certain: Nothing is certain yet.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
ACLU attorney Nicholas Warren speaking at a news conference, with plaintiffs in a gerrymandering lawsuit against the city of Miami standing behind him.
November Elections
Candidates running next November are following these proceedings closely, especially those eyeing seats currently held by Covo, District 1 Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla and District 4 Commissioner Manolo Reyes, which are all up for grabs.
Five candidates are in the pool against Covo, who won the seat in a February special election after former Commissioner Ken Russell resigned due to his run for Congress. One of those candidates is activist Damian Pardo, who is most known for his work in the LGBTQ+ community as founding chair of SAVE Dade, an original leader of the Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and the co-founder of 4Ward Miami,
which operates the annual Gay8 Festival. He’s also a resident of Morningside.
He’s not worried, however, about the real possibility that his neighborhood moves into District 5 in the event that a plaintiffs’ map is chosen by the court. Nicholas Warren, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the plaintiffs, has said that existing candidates should be afforded a remedy to run in their districts regardless of the judicial outcome.
(First Horizon Bank)
Damian Pardo, a candidate for District 2, could have his home in Morningside moved into another district before the November election.
According to the city charter, candidates must reside in their district for at least one year prior to qualifying for an election. Pardo, however, says he’ll likely be able to dodge that rule, opting to rent an apartment in Coconut Grove for the time being. That does little to sway his political platform either.
“It kind of doesn’t matter where you go,” Pardo said. “I’ve had relationships in downtown, Brickell, Grove, South Grove, Black Grove for a very long time.”
On the other hand, candidate Miguel Angel Gabela, Diaz de la Portilla’s only opponent, is worried. His house has been carved out of District 1 in the city’s new map in a move that he believes is politically motivated.
Alternatively, DeGrandy pointed to how the plaintiffs’ maps result in more liberal voting patterns, particularly in District 1. He drew an analysis on party divisions within previous partisan elections, such as those that put Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Joe Biden into office.
Covo, for one, said she did not understand how that analysis is even relevant to the nonpartisan district races.
Racial Gerrymandering
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
Miguel DeGrandy, Miami’s redistricting consultant, speaks to the commission during a June 14 special meeting.
Partisan voting trends and the preservation of a coastal district are only byproducts of the lawsuit against the 2022 map, however. The primary issue is that the city explicitly divided districts by race. In fact, where some see District 2 as “the coastal district,” commissioners tend to see it as “the Anglo district,” although it’s now being represented by a Latina.
The city has historically defended its racial gerrymandering tactic as a way to ensure diversity on the commission by creating one majority-Black district, one white non-Hispanic district and three Hispanic districts. Miami’s maps have theoretically been designed to represent the city’s racial/ethnic demographic, which is roughly 72% Hispanic, 14% Black and 11% white.
That’s why there’s such controversy surrounding where to alleviate District 2 of some of its overpopulation. In 2022, the commission made it clear that it had to do so sparingly to maintain the ethnic makeup of surrounding districts.
Whether or not the commission’s efforts are in good faith – which many doubt – the strategy nevertheless begs the questions: What of the voters who don’t make it into the district designated for their particular ethnicity, and are interests necessarily bound more strictly by race than community?
“Part of your power comes with the amount of influence you can have in deciding elections in as many districts as possible,” said attorney H.T. Smith, a local civil rights legend and trailblazer. “So, they packed all of the Black people in one district – not all, but a significant number – and said, ‘Well, we don’t have to worry about them. They’ve got the one vote they have, and none of the rest of us have to worry about them.’”
DeGrandy insists that the new map is constitutionally sound, but plaintiffs are not convinced. Warren has made clear that they will continue to challenge it in court.
“It’s pretty clear if you look at the map that the city commission passed, it looks eerily similar to the one that they passed last year that was illegal,” Warren said at a June community meeting in Overtown. “It is our belief that it does nothing to cure really any of the constitutional violations that the court identified. It still divides multiple neighborhoods along racial lines, has very irregular boundaries and is really not compact.”
The city had not yet filed its remedy at the time that this issue went to press. In the meantime, the plaintiffs encourage city residents to share their thoughts and wishes on redistricting to info@engage.miami.