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The City of Miami is odd for several reasons. Let’s put aside the ones that instantly come to mind and focus on politics in the Magic City and more specifically on how the lines for the city commission districts were drawn for use in the elections later this year.
Traditionally, the City of Miami elected its commissioners at-large, meaning that every voter in the city would a cast a vote for a candidate for each of five seats. Back then, the office of the mayor was a designated post for one of the city commissioners.
Steve Clark, the chain-smoker whose name is on the County administration building, served as the mayor of the City of Miami from 1967 to 1970, before being elected as Dade County Mayor from 1970 to 1972 and from 1974 to April 1993, when a federal judge abolished the post as the result of a Voting Rights Act lawsuit brought by current Village of Palmetto Bay Councilmember Steve Cody. Clark got elected as Miami Mayor again in 1993 and served until his death from stomach cancer in 1996.
After that, the city moved to a system of electing commissioners from single-member districts with a separately elected mayor.
For the past three census cycles, the City of Miami has hired powerhouse attorney Miguel A. DeGrandy to be their legal advisor and Steve Cody as an expert to draw and test the districts. Cody was the legislative aide to then State Rep. Bill Sadowski and played a big role in the 1982 redistricting of the state House, Senate, and Congressional seats. Cody also represented Black and Hispanic voters when they challenged the at-large voting schemes used for the county commission and the school board.
DeGrandy was a plaintiff in a challenge to the 1992 Florida Legislative redistricting that was eventually affirmed by the U.S, Supreme Court.
DeGrandy and Cody first teamed up after the 2000 Census, advising the House of Representatives on the Florida House, Florida Senate, and Florida Congressional maps, as well as taking the lead in defending the plans when they were challenged in federal court. They also drew the first City of Miami single-member district plan in 2002 and returned to redraw the city maps in 2012 and 2022.
For the 2022 map, the city commission charged DeGrandy and Cody with coming up with a new plan that met the requirements of the United States Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act. They also were directed with keeping the core of the existing five districts intact to avoid voter confusion and to use natural and man-made features as district boundaries, among other criteria.
After many months of meeting with commissioners individually, participating in numerous public hearings, and drafting several plans, DeGrandy and Cody presented what was finally adopted by the Miami City Commission as the new district map to be used for all future elections beginning in 2023.
Redistricting plans are frequently attacked by way of litigation. The new Miami map proved to be no exception. And the city commissioners handed their opponents the perfect opportunity.
Throughout the redistricting process, the city commissioners repeatedly spoke of their desire to draw three Hispanic seats, a Black, and a Non-Hispanic White seat. The problem is that using language like that can open a municipality to a charge that the redistricting resulted in a racial and ethnic gerrymander — where the lines were drawn based solely upon race and ethnicity.
A government can be conscious of race and ethnicity in drawing districts, but that can’t be the sole driving factor. In this case, it doesn’t look like it was. That didn’t stop a group of local leaders from filing a federal lawsuit challenging the new plan.
The plaintiffs that are challenging the new districts will eventually have to prove that race infused the way that DeGrandy and Cody drew the plan, not just that the commissioners were inarticulate. So far, the challengers haven’t shown a “better plan.” But it doesn’t look good for them.
One thing to consider in evaluating a challenged plan was whether there is evidence of racially polarized voting. The plaintiffs claimed there wasn’t. DeGrandy and Cody reported that they found consistent evidence of voting split on racial and ethnic lines, allowing them to be conscious of race and ethnicity.
At the recent hearing on a motion to keep the city from using the plan that DeGrandy and Cody drafted for the 2023 election, the plaintiffs’ expert conceded that his analysis showed consistent racially polarized voting — which is what DeGrandy and Cody found.
Several local lawyers who were approached by the plaintiffs backed away from handling the case because it looked like a loser. The only think going for it was that the city commissioners spoke like uneducated dolts. That’s why most of the lawyers are from out of town.
Ultimately, the federal judge may find that the commissioners were inarticulate in describing what they thought the new plan should look like. That, however, is not going to be enough to force the city to toss out the map and start all over again.
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