Our View

The smell test here is peculiar. Could it be some influential Democrats are tired of Florida’s legislative and congressional delegations being Republican controlled?

Those were among the comments on this page last week when we examined the contents of Amendments 5 and 6 on the November statewide ballots.

As it turns out, the smell was pretty strong. When we reviewed the contributors behind the $3.8 million in campaign funds given to FairDistrictsFlorida.org, the sponsors of these two amendments, it turns out the list of contributors is a Who’s Who of national and state labor unions, trial lawyers and Democratic Party supporters.

That should tell you everything you need to know about how to vote on Amendments 5 and 6. If you support the Democratic Party agenda, vote yes. If you don’t, vote no.

Oh yes, the amendments. Their wording proposes to prohibit congressional and legislative districts in Florida from being drawn to favor any political parties or incumbents and to prohibit minorities from being denied an “equal opportunity to participate in the political process.” In addition, the amendments would require geographic standards, that, as we noted last week, are a recipe for endless, costly litigation challenging the drawing of districts.

In truth, these proposals are a Democratic Party plot to throw the next redistricting process into the liberal federal courts prior to the 2012 presidential elections.

By state law, the next redistricting is to occur in the spring legislative session of 2012. If these amendments pass, there surely will be a slew of legal challenges to the new district boundaries. This is just what the Democrats want. The drawing of new boundaries will then fall into the hands of the courts, not the Legislature.

The courts will hear pleadings from every whining, so-called oppressed, special-interest group, ultimately being persuaded to accept boundaries that, inevitably, will tip the districts more in favor with the Democrats.

This is the Democrat modus operandi. If you can’t win at the polls, do it in the courts. As we said last week:

Vote no on Amendments 5 and 6.

ABOUT THE TABLE
You may need a magnifying glass, but take our word: The vast majority of the big donors — from 5,679 total contributions — are associated with the Democratic Party. We limited our list to those who gave $3,000 or more. Among the illustrious names and noteworthy items:

• Of the unions that contributed more than $3,000, their contributions totaled $967,229, 25% of the total.

• National Democratic connections: Miami lawyer Kendall Coffey and the law firm of Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLP. They, respectively, represented the Democratic Party and Al Gore in the 2000 election lawsuits.

• Well-known Florida plaintiffs lawyers: Wayne Hogan, Grossman Roth, Robert Spohrer, Robert Kerrigan, Fred Levin, Larry Beltz and on and on.

• Steve Pajcic’s law firm; he was a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate … Also contributing but not on our list: former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Betty Castor and her husband, former Florida House Majority Leader Sam Bell (when the Democrats ruled) … And Christopher Findlater, who, according to Muckety.com, contributed $50,000 to Barack Obama’s inauguration. Voters beware.

To view the table of the top contributors to fairdistrictflorida.org in PDF format, click here.