Florida Democrat targeted by DeSantis struggles to stay in Congress

[In It to Win It]

This article upsets me. Partisan gerrymandering, like the DeSantis map, is illegal under the state constitution. It's just another example of the current composition of our state supreme court doing nothing to enforce the words that are literally written into our state constitution.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-democrat-targeted-desantis-struggles-020000221.html?a20_comeback_from_auth=1

BLOUNTSTOWN, Fla. — A woman wearing a pink “Trump 2024” cap was fervently telling Rep. Al Lawson on Saturday why she won’t be voting for him — or any other Democrat.

“Our country is going down the tubes and the Democrats are not doing anything to help,” Margaret Belgard told the three-term Democratic congressman from nearby Tallahassee.

Lawson, a 6-foot-7 former athlete trying to save his job after Gov. Ron DeSantis drew him out of his district, had been making the rounds among the food vendors and tents at the annual Goat Day festival in this small town near the Apalachicola River when he encountered Belgard.

“I’m Al Lawson. I need your help,” he’d been repeating all day. But Belgard wasn’t offering any as she criticized Democrats and President Joe Biden. Lawson countered that he steered millions of federal dollars to the area and made a vow: “I won’t give up on you for nothing.”

“If you became a Republican, I’d vote for you all day long,” retorted Belgard.

Several voting and civil rights groups have filed legal challenges against DeSantis’ redistricting efforts in state and federal court but neither are expected to be resolved any time soon.

Instead of retreating, or ending his political career, the 74-year-old Lawson blasted DeSantis’ involvement in redistricting and announced he would challenge Dunn even though the revamped district went for former President Donald Trump over Biden by 11 points in 2020.

“I still had it in my blood,” explains Lawson, who noted that he represented many of the rural counties in the newly-formed congressional district during his 10-year career in the state Senate.