After a bruising primary campaign in which three candidates differentiated themselves largely on style, personality and negative attacks, Barbara Sharief emerged Tuesday as the Democratic nominee for Florida Senate in southern and western Broward.
Sharief is now the odds-on favorite to become Broward’s next state senator.
At 8:40 p.m., with early votes, most mail ballots and 96 out of 97 precincts counted, Sharief had 46.5% of the vote. Chad Klitzman had 35.1% and Rodney Jacobs Jr. had 18.3%.
The District 35 seat is open because term limits prevent the incumbent from running again.
Republican Vincent Parlatore, who had no primary opposition, will face the Democratic nominee in November. But the district is so heavily Democratic that there’s little doubt about the outcome of the general election.
That means Sharief is in line to take over the territory currently represented by state Sen. Lauren Book — who Sharief challenged in 2022 in an even more heated, negative and expensive campaign.
In picking Sharief, Democratic voters were headed toward nominating a Gen Z, Black woman who is Muslim.
The district
Senate District 35 is a melting pot that reflects the diversity of Broward County. The Democratic primary electorate is 32.4% Black, 29.2% Hispanic and 26.8% white, and 59.5% of the Democrats are women. It is home to many Jewish residents.
The 35th Senate District is the southwest quarter of the county, mostly south of Interstate 595 and west of Florida’s Turnpike.
It also includes territory around the hockey arena in Sunrise now known as the Amerant Bank Arena (formerly the BB&T Center) and the Sawgrass Mills shopping mall, along with vast unpopulated territory in the Everglades.
The district includes all or parts of Cooper City, Davie, Hollywood, Miramar, Pembroke Pines, Sunrise and Southwest Ranches and Weston.
The candidates
Sharief, 52, of Miramar, has by far the most experience of the three, and touted herself as the one with the knowledge and temperament to get things done as a Democrat in Tallahassee, where all aspects of state government are controlled by Republicans.
She’s a former Broward County commissioner, and was twice elected by other commissioners to serve terms as county mayor. Previously she was a Miramar city commissioner.
She lost her two most recent campaigns: a 2021 special congressional primary and the 2022 Senate campaign against Book in 2022. She has run in, and represented, parts of District 35 in the past.
She has a doctorate in nursing practice, and is founder and CEO of South Florida Pediatric Homecare.
Klitzman, 30, of Sunrise, has some government and political experience.
In 2020, he came exceedingly close to winning a countywide Democratic primary for Broward Supervisor of Elections, performing far better than several political veterans who also ran. Joe Scott won the primary and is now elections supervisor.
As a high school student, Klitzman was president of Kids Voting Broward, a countywide voting initiative for young people, and served as the student ambassador to the Broward League of Cities.
Klitzman is a lawyer who had jobs in federal agencies during college and law school and interned at the White House during President Barack Obama’s administration.
He touted his grassroots activism, and for months has been knocking on doors of voters in the 35th District.
Jacobs, 34, of Miramar, was a first-time candidate, and his government experience is different from the other two.
He has a law degree but doesn’t practice. Jacobs is executive director of the Miami Civilian Investigative Panel, a government agency that investigates complaints about alleged police misconduct in the city’s police department. He is also a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. He was organized by the liberal group Florida Rising.
Klitzman and Jacobs contrasted themselves with Sharif during the campaign as younger change agents compared to Sharief.
The campaign
The candidates were largely in agreement on major issues, such as a desire to do something about the high cost of property insurance.
And they embraced Democratic Party orthodoxy on contentious social issues such as abortion rights (which they all support) and proposals to allow people to openly carry firearms (which they all oppose).
The campaign was contentious. The Sharief and Klitzman camps, for example, squabbled over who was the legitimately endorsed candidate by the Democratic Party; both sides used different versions of a county party endorsement notice.
And Jacobs and his allies, with financial backing from the trial lawyers’ lobby, tried to convince voters that Klitzman and Sharief had ties to Republicans.
Appearing Sunday on the WPLG-Ch. 10 “This Week in South Florida” program, Jacobs defended the campaign advertising.
“I know people categorize it as negative campaigning. I like to call it just communication. … I have associations. Chad and Barbara also have associations that should be communicated to voters because it can change the way we vote,” Jacobs said.
Also appearing on “This Week,” Klitzman objected to the characterization of him, which stems from contributions made by other lawyers at a firm where he worked.
“I don’t think it’s fair at all. It’s not factual at all. I think there’s a difference between a negative mailer and pure misinformation. If you’re putting information out there, that’s factually accurate, I think that’s fair game. It’s important for voters to know that. To make up lies, that’s a totally different ball game.”
Klitzman then immediately said it was fair to remind voters that Sharief was once a Republican who contributed to the Republican Party. “So that is fair game. That is 100% accurate.”
Sharief was a Republican, but became a Democrat almost two decades ago, in 2005, and has repeatedly run for office, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, as a Democrat.
Another undercurrent is the political hangover from an even more bruising contest in the same district in 2022 when Sharief challenged Book.
Sharief’s 2022 candidacy angered some Democrats, who thought she should have waited until 2024 when term limits meant Book couldn’t run and the seat was open. Some party activists consider that ancient history; other Book supporters, still nursing wounds from that campaign, wanted to stop Sharief.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.
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