The Republigator, a Florida salute to Elkanah Tisdale and his original Gerrymander, showing the attempted devouring of Democratic congressional districts prior to the redistricting of 2020. (Illustration by the author © 2019.)
April 27, 2026 by David Silverberg, candidate for Florida Senate, District 28
This week sees the beginning of a special session of the state legislature. Theoretically, lawmakers are going to discuss artificial intelligence, vaccine mandates and maybe, just possibly, redistricting.
Redistricting is actually the big one. This is a mid-decade effort to redraw the state’s congressional district boundaries to benefit Donald Trump and his MAGA faction of the Republican Party.
The original cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale published in 1812 that gave rise to the term “Gerrymander.”
Make no mistake: this mid-decade gerrymandering is unconstitutional at both the state and federal levels. It is a blatant effort to rig the midterm congressional elections in Trump’s favor. In fact, it is so overt and so obvious that I’ve dubbed it “The Big Rig.”
I’m David Silverberg and I’m running for the Florida state Senate in District 28. The district covers Collier and Hendry counties and Lee County east of Rt. 75, including the community of Gateway.
Since I’m not in the legislature now, I can only watch Tallahassee’s doings along with all other Floridians.
But one of the reasons I am running is to prevent these kinds of power grabs and despotic overreaches.
The Big Rig violates two constitutions.
The first is the United States Constitution, the law that governs the entire country.
Under that Constitution, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, calls for an “Enumeration” of the American population “within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct”—i.e., as Congress determines. Over time, this became more widely known as the Census and its collection has been steadily honed, refined, and improved.
Having a regular, dependable, predictable census was a tremendous benefit to the United States. It not only apportioned seats in Congress—and every other office—it was used for tax purposes, resource allocation and informed governance. All parties could agree to it and abide by its findings.
But most important of all, the decennial census is enshrined in the founding document of the nation and no one questioned that—until now.
In the absence of a law prohibiting it (and even if there was a law, he’d probably ignore it), Trump is trying to engineer an end-run around the Constitution in order to force a preordained electoral outcome in the midterms. As part of this he’s also trying to discredit the last Census.
So far his efforts have sparked an intense backlash. Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina have rigged their maps to please Trump but California, Virginia and Utah are redistricting to counter it. Indiana rejected The Big Rig altogether.
Besides the partisan advantage that Trump is trying to gain to stay in power, The Big Rig unnecessarily divides the country, shakes its institutions and exacerbates existing partisan tensions. It’s an act of bad faith, bad intentions and bad thinking.
Now, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his legislative pawns are going to try to rig Florida’s districts.
That brings us to the other Constitution, that of Florida.
In 2010 the people of Florida passed the Florida Fair Districts amendments to the state Constitution. They were intended to prevent partisan gerrymandering in Florida’s electoral districts. Article 3, Section 20 states, plainly and simply: “No apportionment plan or individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent; and districts shall not be drawn 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; and districts shall consist of contiguous territory.”
It is exactly this that Gov. Ron DeSantis and his enablers and accomplices in the legislature (what I call “Big Tallahassee”) are going to try to violate and overthrow in this special session.
This effort is unconstitutional on a state level. It is also unnecessarily harmful, hurtful and divisive. It will not benefit Florida. It will create ill will and distrust over the long term. It will also tie up Florida governance in litigation for years because anti-gerrymandering groups will instantly sue the minute new maps are presented. It will create uncertainty throughout Florida government, upend local governments and simply cause chaos when there’s already too much chaos anyway.
As a state Senate candidate I want to uphold both the national and state constitutions. They need to be respected and honored. The kind of rampant unconstitutionality we’re seeing on the national and state levels is unacceptable. I will fight that kind of desecration every way I can if elected to office in Tallahassee.
But I also believe in offering solutions, not just criticisms.
If elected to the state Senate, I intend to introduce the Digital Districting Act, ensuring that when redistricting next occurs (2030, according to the Constitution), the legislature must consider a map drawn by computer based purely on Census data, without regard to party, incumbency, race or language.
It won’t require that the map necessarily be adopted, only that it must be considered. I would hope that it will provide a model and baseline for fair, unbiased redistricting.
Will it pass? Who knows? But I believe the effort needs to be made.
In the meantime, I’ll be watching the tangle in Tallahassee just like all my friends and neighbors.
We may have to endure this now but if elected to the Florida Senate from District 28, you can be assured that I intend to do something about it so that it never happens again.
See Silverberg4Florida.com for more positions and opportunities to volunteer.
