Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) told FOX News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday that Florida has grounds to redraw its congressional maps following a Florida Supreme Court ruling ordering the state to address “racial gerrymandering.”

SEAN HANNITY: Here with Reaction, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the new Lieutenant Governor of the great state of Florida, my free state of Florida, Jay Collins. Congratulations, Jay. You’re following the footsteps of many great people. GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): Thank you, Sean. I appreciate that very much. I’m excited to do this. SEAN HANNITY: All right, let me put up Governor DeSantis, if you don’t mind, and then I want to know where you’re headed with this. And I’ll scroll this, but if you look at the GOP vote in deep blue states, for example, you know, Republicans get 41.9% of the House vote. They have zero seats. Illinois, 43.5, 17.6 seats. California, 38.3, 17 seats. Massachusetts, 36% of the vote, zero seats. New Jersey, and I’ll keep scrolling. And, you know, the gerrymandering art, if you will, or scam, if Democrats want to use their terms, was mastered by them. And Republicans have taken it for far too long without fighting back. Now they’re just playing the game the Democrats have been playing. What would you do in Florida? GOV. RON DESANTIS: Well, Obama and Holder gerrymandered brutally across the country in this decade’s census. They actually even got into Florida. And I had to veto the legislature’s map, and I ended up proposing one which was a much fairer map and much better. California is gerrymandered. They have a commission, but that’s a ruse. They have Democrats on the commission, liberal independents, and liberal Republicans. And so their map now is gerrymandered, and Gavin wants to do it even more. Florida, we got shortchange in the census. We’re hoping that they’re going to be able to do that to give us that extra seat that we should have had. That would obviously force us to have to redistrict. And so we’re working with the Commerce Department to see how that’s going to shake out. If that doesn’t happen, we still have a basis to redistrict in Florida. There’s some racial gerrymandering that’s still lingering that we have to correct per a recent Florida Supreme Court decision. And Sean, you know, because you’re part of this, Florida in 2020 versus Florida in 2025, you’re talking about a big change. So our districts are not properly apportioned. And if we were to do new districts, it would be much fairer representation for the people of Florida. SEAN HANNITY: If you had to put a number on it, how many seats do you think Republicans might pick up if in fact there was fair redistricting? GOV. RON DESANTIS: I don’t know, because I think Florida, our Constitution limits, you know, you can’t draw snake districts in Florida. They got to be normal shape, compact districts, which I think is great. But I will tell you this, when I got elected governor in 2018, there were 300,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Today, there are 1.3 million more registered Republicans than Democrats. The state has grown by many millions of people. And so if you look at this, and I would say, you pointed out how there’s zero Republicans in those blue states. But I would say that that doesn’t even do justice. Because if you look at a state like Florida, we’re a red state with a few blue dots, right? And so if you do fair maps, Republicans are going to do much better. Democrats have to take the cities and break them up and put those districts into more red areas so that they’re able to be competitive. And that’s what they did in Illinois. They take all these voters in Chicago, and they draw districts stretching out all across the state. So Florida has gone very red during my tenure as governor. Our population has grown, and we have every right to be able to do new districts. Now, we don’t have, our primaries aren’t even till, they’re more than a year away. So this will probably be something that we’ll work with the legislature on in the spring and be able to deliver, I think, you know, really strong maps.

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