Morning Digest: 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell challenges Democratic congresswoman in South Florida
Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick faces a host of legal issues—and primary opponents
Leading Off
FL-20
Famed rapper Luther Campbell announced Sunday that he would wage a primary challenge against Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who was indicted last year for allegedly using stolen federal funds to finance her victorious 2021 primary campaign.
Campbell, a founder of the Miami-based hip-hop group 2 Live Crew, did not mention Cherfilus-McCormick’s legal problems in an interview with WPLG. He instead argued that the congresswoman was doing a poor job serving Florida’s 20th Congressional District, a safely blue constituency that includes inland areas around Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach.
“What I heard, and what I already know, is it is a very underserved community,” he said. “The district, the representation of the district, is not there. People want to be able to engage with their congressperson.”
Campbell, though, is not the only South Florida Democrat who just joined the field to take on Cherfilus-McCormick in the Aug. 18 primary. Physician Rudy Moise, who unsuccessfully ran for the House in both 2010 and 2012, said Monday that he would also oppose the incumbent.
Moise had hoped to be the first Haitian American to serve in Congress, and he even had the endorsement of Haiti’s then-president, Michel Martelly, for his second primary campaign against Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson. Instead, though, it was Utah Republican Mia Love who first achieved that milestone with her 2014 win, while Cherfilus-McCormick later became the second such member. (Wilson continues to represent the 24th District.)
Former Broward County Commissioner Dale Holness, likewise, said last fall that he was taking a third go at Cherfilus-McCormick, who defeated him by all of five votes in a packed 2021 special election primary. In a rematch the following year, though, Cherfilus-McCormick easily prevailed.
Perennial candidate Elijah Manley is also running, though he finished last year with almost no money in the bank.
Campbell believes that his decades in the public spotlight give him the connections to wage a stronger challenge than any of the congresswoman’s past opponents.
“I’m going to have a lot of money,” Campbell predicted to WPLG. “Every artist, every artist that I produce, and every artist by creating Southern hip-hop will be donating to this campaign.”
Campbell, rapping under the stage name “Luke Skyywalker,” became famous far outside hip-hop circles in 1989 with the release of 2 Live Crew’s “As Nasty As They Wanna Be.”
A judge in South Florida soon made it the first album in U.S. history to be declared obscene in federal court, a decision that also made it a misdemeanor to sell the record in three populous South Florida counties. Campbell and fellow members of the group were soon arrested following a concert for the “prohibition on certain acts in connection with an obscene, lewd performance.”
New York Times critic Jon Pareles attempted to convey the themes of an album full of “graphic, largely unprintable” lyrics by writing that it was “often misogynistic, treating all women (known interchangeably as ‘bitch’) as more or less willing orifices.”
Pareles, though, argued that the group’s critics were wrong to treat the lyrics as “straightforward storytelling” instead of as “hyperbole that both the band and a good part of its audience recognize as wildly exaggerated and sometimes grossly funny.”
Campbell and his groupmates, however, wound up on top. A jury acquitted them in their criminal case, while a federal appeals court soon overturned the obscenity ruling against their album. 2 Live Crew would later prevail in a landmark Supreme Court case holding that parodies could be protected from copyright infringement claims even if they were made for commercial purposes.
Campbell, who would go on to adopt the moniker “Uncle Luke”—he gave up “Luke Skyywalker” in 1990 and paid restitution to Star Wars creator George Lucas to settle a trademark lawsuit—would go on to seek elected office in 2011.
That year, he campaigned in the busy special election for mayor of Miami-Dade County, which took place after voters recalled the incumbent.
“Most people think it’s some kind of a joke,” Campbell said of skeptics at the time, “but I don’t take my community as a joke.” Campbell, though, ended up finishing in fourth place with 11% of the vote; the eventual winner, Republican Carlos Gimenez, currently represents the 28th District in Congress.
Campbell considered another campaign in 2024 when he mulled challenging Cherfilus-McCormick. But while his brother, businessman Stanley Campbell, waged an unsuccessful bid that year for the Democratic nod for the U.S. Senate, the far better-known rapper passed on running.
Cherfilus-McCormick went on to win renomination unopposed in 2024 before easily securing a second full term that fall, but federal prosecutors indicted her the next year on charges that she stole $5 million in federal COVID funds and used the money to finance her 2021 campaign. The congresswoman has maintained her innocence, and she pleaded not guilty earlier this month.
Cherfilus-McCormick, though, faces scrutiny over a different matter.
Axios reported the day after the congresswoman entered her plea that the House Ethics Committee is considering holding a televised public hearing concerning allegations that Cherfilus-McCormick’s husband and advisors illegally solicited over $800,000 from an oil company in Haiti to aid her 2022 reelection effort.
The publication explained that such hearings have only ever been held “in a handful of major cases,” with the last such occasion coming in 2012.
Cherfilus-McCormick responded by once again proclaiming her innocence. She told the Miami Herald, “This is not about accountability, it’s a numbers game and a fight for the seat. Republicans are weaponizing the ethics process to steal the seat.”
Oh hell yeah: The Downballot just hit 3,000 paid subscribers!
We’re so touched and humbled by your massive outpouring of support, and we’re amazed that we managed to reach this milestone just shy of 18 months since our launch.
But as satisfying as it is to see all those zeroes, we still have a ways to go before we’re financially sustainable at our current staffing levels—there are just two of us.
So if you’d like to join the team and help us hit our next goal—can we reach 4,000 this year?—then please, hop on board!
Election Night
Special Elections
Georgia will host a special election on Tuesday for a deep-red state Senate seat outside of Macon, pitting Republican attorney Steven McNeel against Democrat LeMario Brown, a farmer and former member of the City Council in Fort Valley.
During the first round of voting in the 18th District last month, Brown took the top spot with 37% while McNeel finished second with 21%. However, the other four candidates were all Republicans, who combined for a collective 63% of the vote. That split is similar to how the presidential election played out in 2024: According to calculations from The Downballot, Donald Trump carried the district 61-39.
Redistricting Roundup
NY Redistricting
Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis has asked the Supreme Court to block a ruling by a trial court in New York ordering that the 11th Congressional District be redrawn, arguing that the judge’s directive would require the creation of an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Malliotakis previously appealed to both the intermediate Appellate Division and New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. However, the Court of Appeals rejected her request to escalate the case last week, saying that the Appellate Division was the proper venue.
The lower court’s order directing the state’s redistricting commission to draw a new map was automatically stayed once Malliotakis filed her initial appeal with the Appellate Division. However, that ruling also forbade the state from conducting elections under the current map. That directive was not paused as a result of Malliotakis’ appeal, but she has asked that that portion of the ruling be stayed as well.
UT Redistricting
Utah Republicans said on Sunday that they’d submitted “well over 200,000 signatures” to qualify a ballot initiative that would repeal a voter-backed measure banning gerrymandering, but many questions remain about whether they’ll actually succeed in putting their proposal before voters this year.
That figure exceeds the 140,748 signatures required by law, but as Bryan Schott of Utah Politics Watch explains, hitting that threshold would not be enough. That’s because organizers must also submit signatures equivalent to 8% of all registered voters in at least 26 of Utah’s 29 state Senate districts.
Based on data from the state collated by Schott, though, Republicans had hit that target in just four districts as of Friday—before the GOP’s big final drop of signatures right at Sunday’s deadline. It’s not clear exactly how many were in that final batch, though only 88,948 had been verified by Friday. (The overall acceptance rate has been around 75% to date.)
County clerks will now have until March 7 to verify the signatures. However, opponents of the repeal effort are conducting a parallel campaign encouraging voters to withdraw their names and have, according to Schott, racked up around 1,200 removals so far. The removal effort may continue for some time, as signatories have 45 days to change their minds after their names are posted publicly.
Thanks to the measure that Republicans are trying to undo, known as Proposition 4, a court imposed a new congressional map last year to replace the previous GOP gerrymander. That map created a compact district in the Salt Lake City area that is all but assured of flipping to Democrats and prompted months of outrage from Republicans.
Senate
IA-Sen
Veteran Nathan Sage, who served in both the Army and Marines, dropped his bid for Iowa’s open Senate seat on Sunday, citing an inability to raise sufficient funds. The following day, he endorsed state Rep. Josh Turek, one of two notable Democrats still in the race.
Turek will face off in the June 2 primary against state Sen. Zach Wahls, while Republicans are likely to nominate Rep. Ashley Hinson, who does not have any major opposition for the GOP nod.
House
GA-11, GA Public Service Commission
Public Service Commissioner Tricia Pridemore and Rob Adkerson, who serves as chief of staff to GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk, are both interested in running for the House seat that Loudermilk is leaving behind, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Neither Pridemore nor Adkerson appears to have said anything publicly about running for Georgia’s safely red 11th District. The state’s candidate filing deadline is March 6.
Pridemore and Loudermilk faced off in 2014 when the 11th was last open, but Pridemore’s campaign came to an end when she took third place in the primary. Then-Gov. Nathan Deal, though, appointed her in 2018 to an open seat on the Public Service Commission, the powerful five-member body that regulates utilities.
Until last year, Democrats had not won a race for the PSC since 2000. But that changed in November when Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson won landslide victories for abbreviated terms. Democrats would win control of the body this year if they flip Pridemore’s seat—whether or not she sticks around to defend it—and reelect Hubbard.
NY-04
Former Assemblymember Taylor Darling told City & State on Saturday she plans to launch a primary challenge against Rep. Laura Gillen, who last month was one of seven Democrats to support a bill that gave billions more to ICE.
Darling, who disclosed she intended to enter the race “soon,” argued that Gillen’s “vote was absolutely what triggered a series of meetings, calls from leadership all over New York state and beyond.”
Darling also sought to counter arguments that Democrats need the incumbent to hold the 4th Congressional District, a competitive constituency on Long Island that Kamala Harris narrowly carried. Darling instead said that “based on what the community has come to me with, she will not win in November.”
Gillen defended her January vote by saying it provided essential funding to FEMA and law enforcement while placing “commonsense guardrails” around ICE. She added, “I’m shocked my colleagues would vote to cut off national and community security funding while leaving ICE to operate under the status quo.” Gillen, though, has also called for Kristi Noem to be impeached as head of the Department of Homeland Security.
Darling won a spot in the state legislature in 2018 after she pulled off what Newsday characterized as a “stunning upset” by defeating a 30-year incumbent in the Democratic primary. Darling, though, went on to lose a primary for an open seat in the state Senate in 2024.
Gillen won her seat in Congress later that same year by narrowly ousting Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, who had beaten her two years before. D’Esposito, who now serves as inspector general for the Department of Labor, is keeping just about everyone guessing about whether he plans to square off against Gillen a third time.
PA-03
State Rep. Chris Rabb said Friday that his now-former treasurer, Yolanda Brown, had made “unauthorized withdrawals” from his campaign account. Rabb, though, told the Philadelphia Inquirer he “remain[ed] committed to this campaign toward a collective victory” in the packed May 19 Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s open 3rd District.
Rabb spoke with the paper a month after Brown was accused of stealing over $200,000 from a committee to support Ken Welch’s reelection as mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida. Rabb declined to say how much money he’d lost.
TX-08, TX-09, TX-35, TX-38
Donald Trump on Monday evening endorsed four candidates running in the March 3 GOP primaries for open U.S. House seats in Texas, giving his backing to:
Attorney Jessica Hart Steinmann, running to replace retiring Rep. Morgan Luttrell in the 8th District
Army veteran Alex Mealer, campaigning for the redrawn 9th District
Air Force veteran Carlos De La Cruz, running for the redrawn 35th District; and
Mortgage broker Jon Bonck, seeking the 38th District that Rep. Wesley Hunt is giving up to run for the Senate.
Trump’s picks are going up against Gov. Greg Abbott’s choices in two of these four contests. The governor’s pick in the 9th is Briscoe Cain, a state representative who traveled to Pennsylvania days after the 2020 election as a volunteer attorney for the Trump campaign. Abbott, meanwhile, is pulling for state Rep. John Lujan in the 35th.
But Abbott, as the Texas Tribune’s Gabby Birenbaum visualizes with her “endorsement bingo” sheet, previously backed Steinmann before Trump also sided with her. The Lone Star State’s chief executive has not yet made an endorsement for the 38th.
Steinmann got more welcome news later on Monday evening when wealthy businessman Brett Jensen announced he was suspending his campaign because “President Trump has now made his wishes clear.”
Jensen, who was self-funding almost his entire effort, was the only one of Steinmann’s five primary opponents who finished 2025 with a serious amount of money in his campaign account. Mortgage banker Deddrick Wilmer had barely more than $15,000 on hand, while the other three had even less or did not report anything to the FEC.
Steinmann is now the heavy favorite to succeed Luttrell in a constituency Trump would have carried by a 63-36 margin.
Mealer, finally, on Friday picked up the support of Republican Rep. Brian Babin, whose old 36th District contains over 40% of the residents of the new 9th District that Mealer is seeking.
Judges
NC Supreme Court
New campaign finance reports show that North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls, who is up for reelection this fall, swamped her Republican opponent in fundraising during the second half of 2025.
During those six months, Earls, one of just two Democrats on the court, raised more than $1.3 million and finished the year with $1.5 million banked. State Rep. Sarah Stevens, by contrast, took in just over $80,000 and had less than $200,000 in her campaign coffers.
If Democrats successfully defend Earls’ seat in November, they could retake a majority on the bench in 2028 by flipping two of the three Republican-held seats that will be up that year.
WI Supreme Court
Conservative Judge Maria Lazar has launched her first TV ads ahead of Wisconsin’s April 7 election for the state Supreme Court, but she continues to get badly outraised by her progressive rival, Judge Chris Taylor.
Lazar’s opening spot, which is backed by what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says is a “six-figure statewide ad buy,” accuses Taylor of “pushing for non-citizen voting.” But as the paper explains, Taylor advocated that non-citizens be allowed to obtain driver’s licenses, not voting rights, when she was a member of the state Assembly.
New fundraising disclosures, though, show that Lazar has far fewer resources at her disposal to get her message out.
From Jan. 1 through Feb. 2, Lazar brought in under $200,000 and had a little over $300,000 left for the final two months of the race. Taylor, by contrast, raised more than $800,000 during that same timeframe and finished with more than $2 million in the bank.
Last week, Taylor also began her initial TV push, featuring an ad attacking “[e]xtremists” for wanting “to bring back an 1849 abortion ban.” (Last year, the state Supreme Court ruled that the law in question was no longer in effect.) Taylor’s campaign likewise said it was spending six figures to air the spot statewide.
If Taylor prevails in April, she’d expand the liberal majority on the court to 5-2.
Ballot Measures
AR Ballot
A state judge in Arkansas struck down a GOP-backed law making it more difficult for citizens to place initiatives on the ballot late last week, finding the legislation unconstitutional and forbidding the state from enforcing it.
In 2023, the state’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a new law requiring that organizers collect signatures from at least 50 of Arkansas’ 75 counties, a rule known as a “distribution requirement.” However, the state Constitution specifies that signatures need only be obtained “from at least fifteen” counties.
Republicans had argued that the Constitution set a floor that they could increase by statute, but in a 15-page ruling, Pulaski County Judge Shawn Johnson disagreed.
“[T]he decision to require petition signatures from a minimum of fifty counties rather than fifteen serves to burden the procurement of petitions further than [the state Constitution] requires or even allows,” he wrote, explaining that the law “impermissibly restricts the right of the people to petition for initiated acts.”
In a separate ruling in November, a federal judge blocked several other GOP-authored laws that also sought to place additional burdens on the initiative process. Republicans have appealed that decision, and according to the Arkansas Advocate, they plan to appeal Johnson’s new ruling as well.
Poll Pile
NY-Gov: MAD Global Strategy for Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future: Kathy Hochul (D-inc): 47, Bruce Blakeman (R): 34. MAD Global Strategy was founded by Republican operative Mike DuHaime in 2021 and describes itself as a “bipartisan public affairs firm.”
TX-09 (R): University of Houston: Alex Mealer: 34, Briscoe Cain: 26, David Mims: 10, Steve Stockman: 4, Dwayne Stovall: 4.
TX-38 (R): UH: Jon Bonck: 22, Shelly deZevallos: 10, Michael Pratt: 8, Larry Rubin: 3, Carmen Maria Montiel: 3, undecided: 50.
NV-02: Update, she’s going to run.
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/former-dem-assembly-leader-teresa-benitez-thompson-to-run-for-congress
Benitez-Thompson is well-known after representing a Reno-area Assembly district for more than a decade. She named a few specific issues animating her campaign — including the ways she said last year’s Republican megabill shredded social safety nets, disrupted green energy programs and raised concerns for tribal communities, as well as the persistently high cost of living.
Looks like the GOP controlled NC State Board of Elections will no longer be doing their Registration Repair/Griffin List BS, after the state and federal GOP and Democratic parties agreed to a settlement where more than 70,000 voters will stay on the voter rolls.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/north-carolina-voter-id-dnc-rnc-settlement-registration-rcna258986
A federal judge still has to sign off on it, but I noticed the NCSBE site immediately removed their red REGISTRATION REPAIR banner on the home page following the settlement.