U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick automatically won a new term in Congress on Friday when Luther Campbell — who’d been hyping a potential candidacy for weeks — failed to qualify as a candidate.
With no other candidate coming forward to challenge the Broward-Palm Beach county Democrat by the deadline, Cherfilus-McCormick is headed back to the House. She’s the only Florida member of Congress who didn’t draw an opponent.
Campbell, the rap artist-turned-coach and civic activist, widely known as “Uncle Luke,” had been talking about running for weeks, mainly through posts on social media and in podcast interviews.
He’d been harshly critical of Cherfilus-McCormick. And he continued in that vein on a video he posted Friday afternoon on social media. “I hope that Miss McCormick can hear these issues of this community that she’s neglected for so long,” he said.
Earlier this year, Campbell registered a political action committee called Don’t Stop Get It Get It with the Federal Election Commission. Earlier this month a super PAC with the same name registered with the FEC.
On Tuesday he filed paperwork with the FEC establishing a congressional campaign committee. He recently proposed a decision would come on Wednesday. Then on a social media post Thursday, he promised an 11 a.m. Friday announcement.
It never came. He did not qualify by the noon Friday deadline for Florida congressional candidates to qualify for the 2024 ballot.
Cherfilus-McCormick, 45, is the only Haitian American member of Congress, and has been outspoken about trying to find solutions to turmoil in the Caribbean nation.
“I think that fact that she’s been at the forefront of the Haitian issue, being Haitian herself has especially resonated in the district,” said Mitch Ceasar, a former Broward Democratic Party chair who has served as a legal counsel to the Cherfilus-McCormick campaign in the past but isn’t currently working for her.
The 20th District takes in most of the African American and Caribbean American communities in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Previously CEO of a home health care agency, she was first elected in a January 2022 special election to succeed the late U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings. Elected to a full term in 2022, she is serving in her third year in Congress.
Cherfilus-McCormick qualified for the primary ballot earlier this week.
Campbell, 63, is known as Luke Skyywalker and later Uncle Luke from his career as a rap artist. As the leader of 2 Live Crew, he was acquitted by a Broward County jury of obscenity charges for an appearance in Hollywood decades ago. A federal judge in South Florida declared the lyrics of its platinum-selling album “As Nasty As They Wanna Be” were obscene, a ruling eventually overturned by an appeals court.
He has since become a youth and school coach, and a political activist. In 2011, he unsuccessfully ran for Miami-Dade mayor.
“I think he did some due diligence and determined that Congresswoman McCormick is a very hard worker and this would not provide any real political opportunity for him. She’s well liked in her district,” Ceasar said.
Sean Foreman, a political scientist at Barry University, said Campbell could have been a serious, credible candidate.
But, he said, the notion of Campbell running in the 20th District was somewhat perplexing given that his philanthropic and political activities are concentrated in Miami-Dade County, making him much better known there.
“Campbell is an activist, and he’s involved in issues on the neighborhood level in Miami,” Foreman said.
In his Friday afternoon video Campbell said, “It’s needed for me to run. These people are desperate need of leadership. No question about it.”
He chastised Republicans, who he said are “trying to take us and put us back into slavery days.”
Campbell said he decided not to run because he didn’t want to take time away from his son, age 14, and young people he coaches and works with through his youth program. And, he said, “the economics of it all” were a factor. He said it would be difficult to live on the $141,000 congressional salary and said having to put his business interests into some sort of trust was too great of a burden. “That becomes difficult. That becomes a large task.”
Republicans didn’t field a candidate in the district, but even if they had, the 20th Congressional District is one of the most heavily Democratic in the nation.
The partisan voting index from the independent Cook Political Report rates the district as D plus 25, which means it performed 25 points more Democratic than the nation during the past two presidential contests.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Post.news.
