Efforts by Black congressional candidates and political leaders to coalesce around one challenger to U.S. Debbie Wasserman Schultz apparently have failed.

Elijah Manley, one of four Black candidates in the Broward County 20th Congressional District, officially qualified as a candidate on Wednesday, dealing a blow to the unity effort.

A second blow to the effort came later in the day when another of the four candidates, former U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, said she, too, would qualify as a candidate in the Aug. 18 Democratic primary. “I will be qualifying,” she said via text, but didn’t say when.

Finally, candidate Dale Holness said he would officially qualify to get on the ballot. “It seems as if everybody’s going to qualify,” he said. “We’ll see where it goes.”

The state Division of Elections shows Manley’s candidacy is official. He described himself in a telephone interview as “the best candidate to take on Debbie Wasserman Schultz in this race.”

The campaign manager for the fourth candidate, Luther Campbell, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

All four have participated in meetings — including a marathon, four-hour session Monday in Pompano Beach — aimed at coming up with one Black candidate in the primary against Wasserman Schultz, who is white.

The political calculus and candidates’ decisions could still change.

Candidates have until Friday to translate their stated intentions of running into official candidates on the primary ballot, so there is still some time for the candidates to come to an agreement or all get on the ballot. A candidate who qualifies by the deadline could still drop out, but a later decision would preclude running for another office in 2026.

“At this point, I am in the fight through August,” Manley said, a comment that does not completely preclude his changing course. “I definitely want consolidation. But we are running out of time. And we can’t wait until the last minute.”

Manley said Campbell, Cherfilus-McCormick and Holness should cede to him.

“We can’t have four of us running against Debbie,” Manley said.

Holness said a one-on-one contest would be easier to win, but he still thinks he can win the primary. “It’s an uphill challenge, but I believe we still have a shot,” he said.

The internal Democratic Party struggle in the 20th Congressional District is one result of a nationwide wave of unusual mid-decade changes to congressional maps that came after President Donald Trump pushed Republican-controlled states to find ways to get more Republicans and fewer Democrats elected in November.

An aide to Gov. Ron DeSantis drafted a new map that the Florida Legislature ratified in April and he signed into law in May. The new map carved up Wasserman Schultz’s current district and spread it among five newly configured districts.

It crammed as many Democrats as possible into the 20th District, making the adjacent districts more Republican friendly.

The 20th District is also home to most of the African American and Caribbean American communities in Broward County. Its Broward-Palm Beach County predecessor district had been designed to increase the chances voters would elect a Black representative to Congress, an objective the Supreme Court ruled this spring is unconstitutional.

An estimated 42% of the district’s voting age population is Black. Democratic data analyst Matthew Isbell has estimated that in 2024, Democratic primary voters in the district were 51% Black, 35% white and 7% Hispanic.

The four Black candidates, along with many Black political and civic leaders, said the 20th District should still have a Black lawmaker and objected to Wasserman Schultz running for reelection there.

A leader of the effort to coalesce around one Black candidate to go up against Wasserman Schultz is Broward State Attorney Harold Pryor, one of the highest-ranking Black elected officials in the county. State Sen. Rosalind Osgood of Fort Lauderdale has also supported the effort.

Separately, state Sen. Barbara Sharief, a Democrat who represents southern and western Broward, said in an interview Wednesday that she “absolutely” would have preferred that the four Black candidates consolidate around one candidate.

With multiple challengers to an incumbent “the less likely that it is that one of those new candidates is going to get in,” Sharief said. “And so yes, I think that they should eliminate and do head to head in that district.”

Sharief said she doesn’t think Wasserman Schultz should be running in the 20th District.

“I think you should live in the district that you represent,” she said. “I think that people who live in that district should be running in that race.”

The DeSantis redistricting plan put Wasserman Schultz’s Weston home, along with U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz’s Parkland home, in a sprawling new 22nd District that extends to Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County and west to the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. Constitution requires that members of Congress live in their states, but not their districts. South Florida has a long history of Democratic and Republican members of Congress living outside the boundaries of the districts they represent.

Sharief, a former Broward County commissioner and Miramar city commissioner, is intimately familiar with the 20th District. In a 2021 special Democratic congressional primary to choose a candidate to succeed the late U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, Sharief finished in third place, behind Cherfilus-McCormick, who won, and Holness who came in second.

Cherfilus-McCormick was elected to Congress in early 2022 and subsequently reelected. She resigned in April after an ethics subcommittee found she had committed 25 violations of rules and laws and minutes before the full Ethics Committee was scheduled to convene to decide what sanction to recommend.

Manley is a civic activist who has unsuccessfully run for Broward School Board and the state Legislature. Holness is a former Broward County commissioner and Lauderhill commissioner. Campbell, known as Uncle Luke, was leader of the rap group 2 Live Crew, before becoming a free speech and civic activist, and youth football coach.

With the race in flux, the candidates have been continuing to roll out endorsements.

Manley said Wednesday he has been endorsed by Armando Grundy-Gomes, president of the Democratic Black Caucus of Florida. On Saturday, at a large concert in Tamarac, reggae artist Buju Banton endorsed Cherfilus-McCormick. And in recent days the high-profile civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump endorsed Campbell.

Wasserman Schultz, the senior Democrat in the Florida congressional delegation, has reported endorsements from Black civic and political leaders, and touted her experience.

In an email Wednesday, she told supporters that she was “running to represent FL-20 because this community deserves a representative who will take on this failed Republican government, stand up to Donald Trump, and fight every day for the people who are being hurt by their extremism, corruption, and chaos. There are people in FL-20 who may be hearing from me for the first time, and I take the responsibility to earn their trust and support seriously.”

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