City charter review: Leon Democratic Party opposes districts, added seats on commission
The Leon County Democratic Party announced Wednesday it opposes any proposed charter amendment that would create single-member districts or increase the number of seats on the Tallahassee City Commission.
The Democratic Executive Committee's general body voted 36-6 to take a stance against the proposals during its monthly meeting on Monday, the party said in a news release. The vote comes a day before the city's Charter Review Committee is set to discussing expanding the commission's five-person membership. The DEC Executive Committee has around 100-110 members.
“Expanding the commission and districting Tallahassee voters would be an expensive, divisive waste of time,” said John Hedrick, a state committeeman and former DEC chair. “Proud to join the vast majority of my Democratic colleagues in taking a strong position against commission-packing and undemocratically dividing our community against itself through a needless districts scheme.”
Counterpoint: Charter review needs to focus on expanding commission, reviewing election structure
DEC Chair Ryan Ray, who serves as aide to City Commissioner Jeremy Matlow, noted in the news release that he debated Evan Power, the recently minted chairman of the Florida Republican Party, last year about the issue.
"It was clear then and it’s clear now: dividing our community into districts would represent a right wing power grab,” Ray said. “Diluting Tallahassee’s city representation and diminishing Black voting power is exactly parallel to threats we see against Democratic voters from the DeSantis administration.”
Power, in an interview, said the Leon County GOP has been "pretty adamant" for a while that it supports moving to single-member districts, which could open the door for a Republican to get elected to the commission for the first time in more than two decades. Right now, all five city commissioners are elected city-wide.
"We've had at several points in time in our history city commissioners who have lived within a mile of each other," Power said. "And large parts of our city are not represented. Beyond that, we need single member districts because the size of the city is so large that it discourages people from being able to get into a race and be competitive without raising large amounts of money."
He added that such a move would create an opportunity for Republicans and "varied opinions that our city desperately, desperately needs." He said the party has not taken a vocal stance on expanding the commission's ranks, though he said that could also boost representation.
Will Crowley, DEC treasurer, said in the release that creating City Commission districts would "actually strengthen the voices of big money special interests" and allow "developers to cut $1,000 checks from multiple LLCs to even more campaigns."
Mayor John Dailey, who won re-election in 2022 with help from Republican voters, said during that campaign that he supported expanding the number of city commissioners.
City commissioners voted last year to proceed with a charter review amid vocal reservations from Commissioners Curtis Richardson, Jeremy Matlow and Jack Porter. Richardson in particular expressed concern about single-member districts, a move that could reduce minority voting power on the commission.
Jon Ausman, who served as DEC chair from 1980 to 2000, sent a memo Wednesday to Charter Review Committee members and the City Commission pointing out that the local Democratic Party supported both the County Commission and the School Board when it moved to single member districts.
The County Commission, which once had five members, all elected at-large, moved to a seven-member board, with five districts and two at-large seats, after the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit in the 1980s alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act. The county’s current districting scheme includes a majority-minority district (District 1) and a minority-access district (District 2) as a result of a judgment still in place today.
Ausman said such districts “could be duplicated with ease” in the city. He also said the cost of recent local campaigns were considerably less expensive in district races than citywide or countywide contests.
“It is my hope the members of the City Charter Review Committee use verifiable facts and data in its evaluation of how many commissioners there should be and the method by which they are elected,” Ausman wrote.
The Charter Review Committee meets 6 p.m. Thursday in the Tallahassee Room at City Hall, 300 S. Adams St.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Leon Democratic Party opposes districts, added seats on City Commission
