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.
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.
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 “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.
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 20th District takes in most of the African American and Caribbean American communities in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
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.
This is a developing story. Check back for more information.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Post.news.