The conventional wisdom in statewide redistricting is that having the fewer ways you split a community into, the better. I’m not so sure, and don’t know that it to have more votes in a 120-member or 40-member chamber of the Legislature who feel beholden to a few voters in your county.

I’ve always felt a larger delegation benefited regions. Frankly, I’ve also thought a bipartisan delegation helped regardless of who was in the majority party in the Legislature. But that’s not to say the argument “keeping communities whole” lacks merits. That said, let’s look at how Sarasota and Manatee fared based on each perspective on redistricting.

On the one hand, Manatee makes out well on the whole counties front. Plus, the county will have two senators and three representatives in the Legislature, one more senator than it has now. But that doesn’t tell the full story. Two of the three House districts have boundaries contained entirely within the county. Today, only one of the three representatives for Manatee County in the House actually lives there, Rep. Will Robinson. Thanks to the new lines, another of the three, Rep. Tommy Gregory, will move to the county to run in the district where most of his constituents live. The third district, an open seat, has half its geography in Manatee and the rest in Hillsborough.

But for Rep. Mike Beltran in Hillsborough announcing his candidacy this week, it would be likely the entire Manatee House delegation next year would be made up exclusively with Manatee residents for the first time in decades.

Meanwhile, the Senate seat remains dominated by Manatee, as it is now, and it seems virtually impossible anyone who doesn’t live in the county could win the seat. Sen. Jim Boyd of Bradenton represents the district now. 

Similarly, Sarasota County has a Senate seat, held now by Sen. Joe Gruters, that seems bound to remain Sarasotan in perpetuity, even as lines creep north into Manatee. The county will have three House seats, including a Charlotte seat that now pops north into the Englewood area. It’s represented now by Rep. Mike Grant of Port Charlotte, and it would be hard for a Sarasota resident to unseat him. Like in Manatee, two House districts lie wholly in the county, held now by Reps. Fiona McFarland and James Buchanan. But the county has lost Gregory is every sense, from its delegation and soon its voter rolls. It loses Robinson too, who sheds parts of downtown Sarasota as his district becomes more compact. If either of them still stands with Sarasota on local issues, it will be purely out of sentimentality. And whenever their successors come into office, it will be by folks who most likely will never campaign for a Sarasota vote. 

On top of that, neither county is part of a St. Petersburg-centric district now represented by Rep. Michele Rayner-Goolsby. The region’s only Democrat is running for Congress in Tampa Bay, so she’d be gone regardless. The seat, though, feels like a loss. It’s not just that Rayner-Goolsby felt particularly compelled to embrace local issues from Siesta Key incorporation to Piney Point cleanup. Some of her predecessors couldn’t find their way to Sarasota without Google Maps.

I think of the Piney Point situation. Arguably, Robinson and Boyd worked far more behind the scenes with a Republican administration to quickly marshal state resources and secure state dollars for clean-up. But watching hearings in Tallahassee, Rayner-Goolsby as a member of the minority party could ask harsh and pointed questions that helped keep public pressure up.

It’s nice when Republicans have full control of state government to have mostly Republicans in the delegation, but even in times like this, having at least one Democrat has uses. And who knows if at any point in the coming decade partisan power will shift, in administrations or the Legislature.

Bottom line, the new maps more firmly assure residents of the counties will be represented by their closest neighbors. But it’s losing a few friends outside the county who may no longer feel beholden to local voters.

Jacob Ogles is contributing senior editor for SRQ MEDIA.