That's why House Minority Leader Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, is ramping up his calls to cut down on "contorted lengths" that are "purely to get a political majority in place and not to preserve communities."

"The maps drawn in 2001 by the Democrat majority in the House split small towns, split communities of interest and were drawn almost purely for political perpetuation," Bosma said. "They were really unconscionable."

He said if Republicans come into power in 2010, he will still support a proposal to create an independent commission that passed the then-GOP-led House in 2005 but failed in the Republican-ruled Senate that year.

 

 

State campaign finance records show that SEIU has contributed $225,000 to FairDistrictsFlorida.org, which describes itself as a bipartisan effort to get a pair of constitutional amendments on next year’s ballot to guide the upcoming round of redistricting.

The union’s contributions amount to more than $1 out of every $10 FairDistricts has collected as it works to gather the 676,811 signatures needed for each ballot measure.

SEIU, a powerful, Democratic-leaning union with 2.1 million members nationwide and 40,000 in Florida, was an early backer of Barack Obama and spent $85 million supporting his 2008 campaign, federal records show.