A number of African American state lawmakers and residents met in Miami’s Litle Haiti neighborhood on Monday to protest a special legislative session this week on redrawing electoral boundaries, The Miami Herald reported. Speakers dubbed the process racist and directed at further reducing African American voting strength. They were right.

The state constitution mandates that the Legislature redraw voting districts after each 10-year national census. For this round, lawmakers prepared not one but two maps – one they hoped would satisfy concerns which Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed, the other as a backup in case the courts voided the first. They also rejected two maps which the governor submitted. But, even before the Legislature completed its work, DeSantis declared on Twitter that their maps would be dead on arrival, the Associated Press reported. He took the unprecedented step of submitting his own map again.

DeSantis has focused on a north Florida congressional district which an African American Democrat, Al Lawson, represents that stretches from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee, drawn to ensure an African Americans could be elected to Congress. “We are not going to have a 200-mile gerrymander that divvies up people based on the color of their skin. That is wrong. That is not the way we’ve governed in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. The Republican legislative majority surrendered. Ray Rodrigues of Lee County, who chairs the Senate Reapportionment Committee, told members in a memo, “I have determined that the Governor’s map reflects standards the Senate can support.”

Lawson responded in an AP phone interview that what DeSantis wants is for “all of north Florida to be Republican,” which was “really a major concern for minorities.” The DeSantis map also dilutes African American voting strength in the Orlando district which is currently represented by U.S. Senate candidate Val Demings. It “reduces the number of seats drawn to give an advantage to Black candidates from four to two, with some heavily Black areas split into multiple districts to dilute their voting power,” according to data analyst Matthew Isbell.

That would violate the Fair Districts amendments to the state constitution which 63 percent of voters approved in November 2010 prohibiting drawing boundaries favoring a political party or incumbent or creating districts “with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process” or “to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice.”

In fact, the DeSantis map would increase the number of Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation from the current 16 to 20, while reducing the number of Democrats from 11 to eight.

As Yogi Berra would say, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Florida was among states which the Department of Justice placed on probation, under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, for their history of discrimination against non-European American voters. Those states were required to obtain prior approval from a federal court or the justice department for any proposed election law changes. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, voided that requirement in 2013, clearing the way for the voter suppression which has been taking place in Florida and the other states.

Several political commentators have said DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential candidate, is deliberately flouting the Fair Districts amendments in hopes that critics will sue him, giving him a chance to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. That would give the six conservative justices an opportunity to invalidate the entire Voting Rights Act. The Little Haiti gathering called it part of a litany of laws which DeSantis and this legislative cohorts have enacted that are “racist.”

Dwight Bullard, a former south Miami-Dade state senator and now political director for New Florida Majority, cited a 2021 “anti-riot” law, which a federal district judge blocked as “vague and overbroad,” an attack on free speech, and the “Stop WOKE Act” which bans teaching of slavery. “I don’t know how many acts of racism one has to do to become a racist,” Bullard said, according to The Herald’s Monday report.

State Sen. Shevrin Jones objected to framing the last legislative session, when such laws were enacted, as one of “culture wars,” adding, “We’re using culture wars as a nice way to call out what’s actually happening. Let’s be clear and call it what it is: It’s racist.”

It is also about politics. Starting in 2020, Republicans have been edging ahead of Democrats in the number of registered voters but they would not have their sustained legislative majority without strong support from Independents. But Floridians, as a whole, have been willing to unite across party lines, as they did when they approved the Fair Districts amendments and, again, in 2018 to restore the right to vote to 1.5 million ex-felons. It is noteworthy also that DeSantis was elected governor in 2018 by less than a half percentage point and Donald Trump won the state in 2016 by less than four points.

Also worth mentioning is the source of $102 million donated to the DeSantis 2022 re-election campaign as of this month. The Orlando Sentinel reported that donors included Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, WeatherTech founder David MacNeil, shipping supply magnates Dick and Liz Uihlein, Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of the Chicago-based investment firm Citadel LLC, billionaire John W. Childs and Hungarian-born business owner Thomas Peterffy, whom Forbes described as the richest person in Florida. In total, about 38 percent of DeSantis donors listed an address outside Florida, the Sentinel said. Florida donors included Disney, Publix, and Associated Industries of Florida. The top donor was the Republican Governors Association, with more than $12 million. The leading Democratic challenger, Congressman and former governor Charlie Crist has raised $8 million, as they head to the Aug. 23 primary.

A Mason-Dixon Poll released in February put DeSantis’ approval at 53 percent. Voters, especially Independents, will have to decide whether the flood of out-of-state money and the motivation behind it, as well as the governor’s running the state like his personal fiefdom, is enough reason to deny him a second term in November.