On Tuesday, Debbie Wasserman Schultz won the Democratic primary for Florida’s 20th Congressional District.

She finished with roughly 45% of the vote, while former Broward County Mayor Dale Holness came in second with about 23%. Elijah Manley, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell rounded out the five-person Democratic field. CBS News Miami projected Wasserman Schultz as the winner Tuesday night and reported that she will face Republican Brent Andersen and independent Kedner Maxime in November.

That is the straightforward election result.

District 20 has never been a straightforward political story.

The district has been represented by Black lawmakers for 34 years. After Florida redrew its congressional map this year, the new District 20 became entirely contained within Broward County and remained heavily Democratic and plurality-Black. WUSF reports that the new district includes cities such as Lauderhill, Lauderdale Lakes, Tamarac, and North Lauderdale, along with parts of Fort Lauderdale, Plantation, Pompano Beach, Sunrise, and other Broward communities.

And if the word plurality just made you pause, here is the easy version: Black residents are the largest racial group in the district, but they do not make up more than half of the voting-age population.

Florida Politics puts the new district at roughly 42% Black, 30% White and 23% Hispanic among voting-age residents.

So when Wasserman Schultz, who is white, decided to get in the race after redistricting basically gutted her old district, the reaction was swift.

Some Black political leaders did not see a longtime congresswoman simply looking for another place to run. They saw a congressional district that had provided Black representation for decades potentially losing that representation.

Wasserman Schultz saw it differently. Her argument was that representation is not only about race. She pointed to more than two decades in Congress, her seniority in Washington, her history representing parts of Broward County and the influence she says she can use to bring federal resources back home. The Miami Herald reported when she announced her campaign that Wasserman Schultz framed her seniority and experience as a reason Broward should keep her in Congress.

And that gets us to the more interesting question:

What does it actually mean to represent a community?

Quick Reality Check on District 20

If congressional districts confuse you, you are not alone.

Florida is divided into geographic areas called congressional districts. Each district elects one person to the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington.

Then the lines move.

That process is called redistricting.

In regular people language, redistricting is basically political Tetris with real neighborhoods and a whole lot of lawyers.

Florida approved a new congressional map this year that significantly rearranged South Florida. Wasserman Schultz’s old district was dismantled, and her Weston home landed in a newly drawn District 22 that stretches across the state and is considerably more Republican-friendly. Florida Politics reported that she instead chose District 20, where about 68% of voters backed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

In plain English: District 20 offered a much easier path for a Democrat in November.

That choice is where the controversy really started.

The Democratic Black Caucus of Florida and several Black elected officials publicly pushed back on her candidacy. The Miami Herald reported that Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried also said she was disappointed in Wasserman Schultz’s handling of the situation, particularly after concerns were raised about protecting Black political representation.

But political organizations do not cast the ballots.

Voters do.

And on Tuesday, Democratic voters chose Wasserman Schultz.

She Didn’t Beat Just One Opponent

This part matters.

Wasserman Schultz was the only white candidate in a five-way Democratic primary. The other four candidates—Dale Holness, Elijah Manley, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, and Luther Campbell—are all Black.

But treating them like four versions of the same candidate would miss what actually happened in this race.

They came from very different political backgrounds, represented different generations and offered different arguments for why District 20 should choose them.

Dale Holness

Dale Holness brought decades of Broward political experience into the race. He served in Lauderhill government, later spent years on the Broward County Commission and served as county mayor.

He also came into this race with some serious unfinished business.

When District 20 held a special Democratic primary in 2021 after the death of Congressman Alcee Hastings, Holness and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick finished almost as close as two candidates possibly can.

The Florida Division of Elections’ official results show Cherfilus-McCormick received 11,662 votes.

Holness received 11,657.

Five votes.

Not five thousand. Not five hundred.

Five.

If you have ever said, “My vote doesn’t matter,” Broward County would like a word.

Holness returned this year and again came closer than any of the other challengers, finishing second behind Wasserman Schultz.

Elijah Manley

Elijah Manley represented the clearest generational contrast in the race.

At 27, Manley ran as a younger progressive voice against a member of Congress who has served in Washington for more than two decades. The Miami Herald described him during the campaign as a teacher and community organizer who spoke openly about experiencing youth homelessness after the 2008 financial crisis.

His background was not just something thrown into a campaign biography either. Florida Politics, which published a candidate questionnaire with Manley shortly before the primary, reported that he grew up in Fort Lauderdale’s historic Sistrunk community and described his family’s experiences with homelessness, food insecurity and government assistance as major reasons he entered public service.

Manley had been running for office since he was young. He first ran for the Broward County School Board at 19, later ran for the Florida House and entered this congressional race arguing that District 20 needed a new generation of leadership.

He also picked up support from progressive figures outside South Florida. Congressman Ro Khanna endorsed him, calling Manley the progressive choice in the race.

Some polling released during the campaign suggested Manley could become competitive with Wasserman Schultz under certain head-to-head scenarios.

But there was one problem.

This was not a head-to-head race.

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick entered the primary with something none of the other challengers had.

She had already represented District 20 in Congress.

She won that five-vote primary against Holness in 2021 and served in the House beginning in 2022. But by the time this year’s election arrived, her political situation had changed dramatically.

A House Ethics adjudicatory subcommittee found in March that 25 of 27 alleged ethics violations had been proven by clear and convincing evidence. The full House Ethics Committee was preparing to consider what sanctions it should recommend when Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from Congress in April.

That ethics case is separate from the federal criminal case she is also facing.

The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that Cherfilus-McCormick and others conspired to steal a $5 million overpayment of FEMA-funded COVID relief money, move the money through multiple accounts and use part of it to support her 2021 congressional campaign. She has pleaded not guilty, and an indictment is an allegation — not a conviction.

That distinction matters.

Being charged with a crime is not the same as being found guilty of one.

Still, between the criminal case, the ethics findings and her resignation from Congress, Cherfilus-McCormick entered the primary carrying political baggage that none of the other candidates had.

More than 6,000 voters still backed her, but it was nowhere near enough to return her to the top of the field.

Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell

And then there was Luther Campbell.

Yes, Uncle Luke from 2 Live Crew.

And yes, before anyone does a double-take, he was actually running for Congress.

But reducing Campbell to music would ignore decades of involvement in South Florida communities.

Campbell has been involved in youth football, community activism and local politics for years. He also ran for Miami-Dade County mayor in 2011. In this congressional campaign, he argued that experience working directly with families and young people should count as leadership experience even if it did not come with a congressional voting record.

CBS News Miami reported that Campbell campaigned on issues including insurance reform, affordable housing, job creation and port expansion.

He was also one of the candidates warning that having several Black candidates on the same ballot could make Wasserman Schultz’s path much easier.

And that brings us to the math everybody wanted to talk about after Election Day.

Did the Black Candidates Split the Vote?

Mathematically, yes.

Wasserman Schultz won with about 45% of the Democratic vote, meaning more Democratic primary voters collectively voted for someone other than her than voted for her.

That is what winning a plurality means. You received more votes than any single opponent, but you did not necessarily receive more than 50%.

The possibility of a split was not something the candidates discovered when they woke up Wednesday morning either.

The Miami Herald reported in June that Holness, Manley, Cherfilus-McCormick and Campbell met privately for hours to discuss whether they should consolidate behind one candidate. The group broadly agreed that a smaller field would improve the chances of defeating Wasserman Schultz.

They did not agree on who should be the one candidate.

Classic politics:

Everyone always agrees that someone should drop out… until it’s time to decide who.

In the end, all four stayed in.

So yes, the opposition to Wasserman Schultz was split.

But this is where we need to stop doing lazy election math.

You can’t simply take Holness’s voters, add Manley’s, add Campbell’s, and add Cherfilus-McCormick’s, then hand that total to whichever candidate you think should have remained. Political support doesn’t transfer that easily.

A Holness supporter doesn’t automatically become a Manley voter. A Campbell supporter isn’t guaranteed to shift to Cherfilus-McCormick. Some of those voters might have chosen Wasserman Schultz in a two-person race. Others might have stayed home.

We simply don’t know.

Polls commissioned by some of the campaigns suggested different challengers could have been competitive with Wasserman Schultz in hypothetical one-on-one contests, but campaign polling deserves context and hypothetical elections are not real elections.

So the responsible conclusion is pretty simple:

The crowded field helped Wasserman Schultz.

That does not automatically prove she would have lost if only one Black candidate had remained.

Both things can be true.

She Doesn’t Even Live in District 20

Here is another part of this race that confused people.

Wasserman Schultz lives in Weston. Under the new map, that puts her home in District 22 — not District 20. Florida Politics reported on that issue throughout the campaign.

Naturally, that led to a lot of:

Hold on. How can you run to represent somewhere you don’t even live?

Legally, she can.

The U.S. House of Representatives’ own history office explains that the Constitution requires a House member to be at least 25 years old, to have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years and to live in the state they represent.

It does not require them to live in the particular congressional district they represent.

So Wasserman Schultz does not have a legal residency problem.

That answers the legal question. It does not necessarily answer the political one.

Voters are still allowed to care.

One voter may believe that somebody representing Lauderhill should actually live in the district. Another may care more about whether the representative knows the community, has seniority in Congress or can get federal dollars back to Broward.

Neither voter needs the Constitution to tell them which factor matters more.

That part is political judgment.

So Does Race Matter?

This is where easy answers start feeling a little too easy.

Saying race should not matter at all ignores American history.

Black representation in Congress did not appear because America woke up one morning and decided everybody should finally get a fair shot.

Black Americans spent generations fighting through slavery, disenfranchisement, intimidation, discriminatory election systems and laws designed to keep them away from political power.

District 20 itself has history tied directly to that struggle. The Miami Herald noted that the South Florida district was among districts drawn in 1992 under the Voting Rights Act to remedy racial discrimination and help Black voters elect candidates of their choice.

So when people say losing Black representation there means something, I understand why.

It does mean something.

Lived experience matters too. There are realities about being Black in America that a white representative can listen to, study, advocate around and fight against but will never personally experience.

That does not make a white politician incapable of representing Black constituents.

But pretending the distinction means absolutely nothing feels too easy.

The opposite argument can become too easy too.

If voters living in a district are given a democratic election and choose someone of a different race, are we supposed to tell them their choice is somehow less valid because the winner does not look like them?

I do not think so.

Black voters are not one political group chat.

They disagree.

They have different priorities.

They care about different issues.

They support different candidates.

Even the polling in this race showed how complicated those attitudes could be. A poll conducted by EMC Research for the Wasserman Schultz campaign found strong favorability for her among Black and Caribbean Democratic voters. Florida Politics reported that 84% of Black respondents and 85% of voters of Caribbean descent viewed her favorably.

Now let’s put the asterisk where the asterisk belongs.

Her campaign paid for that poll.

That does not automatically make the results false. It does mean you should know who paid for the research before treating the numbers like they came down from Mount Sinai on stone tablets.

That is part of understanding political polling too.

Another poll, this one conducted for Manley’s campaign, found overwhelming support among likely Democratic primary voters for continuing Black representation in District 20.

Two campaigns.

Two polls.

Two different messages they wanted voters and reporters to notice.

Welcome to campaign season.

The important point is not that one poll magically settles the issue.

It is that Black voters cannot automatically be treated as one political mind.

Representation Is More Than Looking Like Me

Identity matters.

Performance matters too.

A representative who shares your race but never answers the phone, never shows up and never delivers for the community is not automatically good representation.

And somebody of a different race does not become a good representative just because they learned the right things to say on the campaign trail.

Real representation has to show up in the work.

Does your office answer constituents?

Do you understand what people in the district are struggling with?

Are you fighting for federal resources?

Are you showing up at community meetings when there are no cameras?

Do you listen to people who disagree with you?

Are you still around when Election Day is six months away?

Everybody loves the neighborhood when there are votes to collect.

I want to know who is still there after the campaign signs come down.

That is especially important here because Wasserman Schultz has made experience the centerpiece of her argument.

She has basically told District 20: I know Broward. I have seniority. I know Washington. I can deliver.

Fair enough.

Then that is the standard.

Debbie Won the Primary. She Hasn’t Won the Seat.

This distinction matters.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is now the Democratic nominee for Florida’s 20th Congressional District.

She is not yet the district’s next member of Congress.

In November, she will face Republican Brent Andersen and independent Kedner Maxime. CBS News Miami reported that Andersen won the Republican primary after defeating three opponents, while Maxime advanced to the general election without a primary.

District 20 heavily favors Democrats, so Wasserman Schultz enters November with a significant advantage.

But voters still get an election.

And if she ultimately wins it, the conversation about representation should not disappear just because the yard signs come down.

In some ways, it should become the measuring stick.

She chose to run in a district where people openly questioned whether a white politician who does not live inside its boundaries should become the next representative of communities that have relied on Black representation for decades.

She won the Democratic primary anyway.

Now, if she wins in November, she gets the responsibility that comes with proving her argument.

Show up in Lauderhill, Lauderdale Lakes, Sunrise, Tamarac, North Lauderdale, Plantation, Pompano Beach and the neighborhoods of Fort Lauderdale that are trusting her with their voice in Washington. Listen to the people who supported her, and listen even harder to the people who did not.

The strongest answer Wasserman Schultz can give her critics will not come from another campaign statement or press release.

It will come from the work itself.

Where I Land

I understand why the possibility of losing Black representation in District 20 bothers people. It bothers me when we act like history somehow stopped mattering the moment the votes were counted.

I also believe respecting Black political power means respecting Black voters enough to let them make their own political decisions — even when those decisions do not produce the result some people expected.

Those two ideas do not have to cancel each other out.

We can care about the importance of Black representation and still respect the right of voters to choose someone of another race. We can question Wasserman Schultz’s decision to run in District 20 and still acknowledge that Democratic voters chose her. We can recognize that a divided field helped her without pretending we know exactly how every voter would have behaved in a smaller race.

Politics gets easier when we reduce everything to teams.

Real life is messier.

District 20 gave us a complicated result because representation itself is complicated. Race matters. Experience matters. Community matters. Performance matters.

And in the end, voters matter.

Maybe the real test isn’t whether a representative looks like the people they serve. Maybe it’s whether the people they serve can look at what that representative actually does and recognize themselves in it.

_{(Photo: Marek Studzinski / Unsplash)}

American politics does not have a problem with people disagreeing.

The problem is how people deal with disagreement.

We do not just argue about what the government should do anymore. We look at almost everything as a team thing.

When something happens, people do not always ask what happened first.

They ask who did it.

If someone from their side does something, they defend it.

If someone from the other side does the same thing, suddenly it is wrong.

It can be the same action, the same kind of decision, and sometimes even the same argument. The reaction changes because the person or party changed.

That is not how people should be involved in their country.

That is how sports fans act.

And government is too important to be treated like a game.

You Can Have a Party Without Losing Your Mind

There is nothing wrong with being a Democrat, Republican, independent, conservative, progressive, moderate, or anything else.

Political parties have a purpose.

They help people organize around ideas, candidates, and what they believe government should look like.

The problem starts when people care more about protecting their party than deciding what is actually right.

We should be able to say that someone on the other side had a good idea.

We should be able to admit when somebody from our own party was wrong.

It should not feel like a betrayal to say that someone we like made a bad decision.

And it should not feel wrong to admit that somebody we normally disagree with made a good point.

But in politics today, it often does.

That is part of the problem.

Supporting a politician should not mean defending everything they do.

Disliking a politician should not mean pretending everything they do is bad.

If we only believe something because of who said it, then we need to ask ourselves whether we actually believe the idea or just like the team behind it.

We should think for ourselves.

Being Moderate Does Not Mean Being in the Middle of Everything

I consider myself politically moderate.

But when I say that, I do not mean every issue has a perfect answer directly in the middle.

Sometimes Democrats are right.

Sometimes Republicans are right.

Sometimes both sides get something wrong.

Sometimes one side has a much stronger argument than the other.

And sometimes an issue is more complicated than either side wants to admit.

Being moderate, to me, means I do not want the party label to decide my opinion before I even understand the issue.

I want to know what happened.

What does the policy actually do?

What does the bill actually say?

What was the vote actually about?

What are the consequences?

What is the other side saying, and is there anything valid in their argument?

Those questions should come before deciding who won the political argument.

Moderation should not mean being afraid to take a position.

It should mean being willing to reach that position on your own.

Social Media Makes Politics Worse

Social media has made this even harder.

Everything has to be immediate.

Everything has to be dramatic.

Everybody wants the clip, the headline, the screenshot, or the quote that proves the other side is terrible.

Context takes longer.

A post saying, “Look what this politician voted for,” can spread across the internet before most people even know what the bill was.

Sometimes a committee vote gets treated like a final vote.

Sometimes a politician votes for a larger bill even though they disagree with one part of it.

Sometimes amendments change what a bill looks like before the final vote.

Sometimes a politician really is being inconsistent and deserves criticism.

The point is not that politicians should be excused.

The point is that if we are going to criticize them, we should at least understand what actually happened.

Politics already has enough spin.

Regular people should not help make it worse by repeating something just because it helps their side.

The Standard Has to Stay the Same

One of the easiest ways to know whether we are being fair is to ask one question:

Would I feel the same way if the other party did this?

If the answer is no, maybe the issue is not the action itself.

Maybe the issue is the team.

If we say something is wrong when Republicans do it, then it should still be wrong when Democrats do it.

If we say something is good when Democrats do it, we should be willing to admit it can still be good when Republicans do it.

That does not mean every situation is identical.

Details matter.

But our basic standards should not change depending on who benefits.

That is especially important for politicians we personally support.

Supporting somebody does not make them above criticism.

In fact, if we really care about good government, we should expect more from the people we support, not less.

Why I Started The Montell Brief

That is a big part of why I created The Montell Brief.

I wanted a place where I could write about politics without feeling like every opinion had to fit perfectly into one party’s message.

This publication will focus on Florida politics, government, elections, public policy, and major national political issues.

There will be times when I agree with Democrats.

There will be times when I agree with Republicans.

There will be times when I disagree with both.

And there will probably be times when readers disagree with me.

That is okay.

I am not creating The Montell Brief because I expect everybody to agree with everything I write.

I am creating it because I believe people should be able to talk about politics, make arguments, disagree, and still think for themselves.

I want to look at what politicians actually said.

What they actually voted for.

What a policy actually does.

And what those decisions mean for regular people.

Politics should be about more than finding out whether your side won the argument that day.

Government affects our money, our rights, our communities, our safety, our schools, and our future.

That deserves more thought than simply choosing red or blue.

Disagreement is not the problem.

We are supposed to disagree.

The problem is when loyalty becomes more important than honesty.

You can belong to a political party and still question it.

You can support a politician and still criticize them.

You can disagree with somebody and still admit when they are right.

You do not have to leave your political party to think for yourself.

But you should never let your political party do your thinking for you.