Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is on Tuesday’s Florida primary ballot in a district that is not hers. Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map earlier this year, clustering southeast Florida Democrats together and cutting five Democratic seats down to three. Her own South Florida seat was broken apart in the process, so she left her Fort Lauderdale-area base and crossed into Florida’s 20th congressional district in Broward County, where she is running against four other Democrats.

That crossing is what made the race a fight. The 20th covers an area that has sent Black Democrats to Congress since 1992, and Wasserman Schultz is the only white candidate in the field. Her rivals, including Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and activist Elijah Manley, argue the seat should stay with a candidate from the community that has held it, pointing to a Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the Voting Rights Act. Wasserman Schultz says she has represented wide portions of Broward for three decades as a state and federal legislator and is not parachuting in.

Underneath the representation argument sits a commercial one. Wasserman Schultz sits on the House Appropriations Committee, including its Energy and Water subcommittee, and in March she secured roughly $1.29 billion in federal funding through the House spending bills for 2026 — including $461 million for Everglades restoration and about $11 million in local project money, from a wastewater treatment plant in Sunrise to a neuroscience research center at Florida Atlantic University.

The largest piece is the port. Port Everglades won federal authorization for more than $335 million under the 2016 water infrastructure law to deepen and widen its navigation channels, work meant to let it take the larger cargo ships that came with the expanded Panama Canal. Construction money started flowing in 2020 with a $29 million allocation, after years of pressure from Wasserman Schultz on the Appropriations Committee and a bipartisan South Florida letter to the Army Corps of Engineers. The project has been projected to generate roughly 2,200 construction jobs and close to 1,500 permanent positions tied to the added cargo capacity. She has also pushed money toward shore power at the port and a ramp expansion feeding Interstate 595, citing the port and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport as the county’s two largest economic engines.

She is the best funded candidate in the new district, and Florida does not require a majority to win a primary — with five names on the ballot, roughly a quarter of the vote could carry it.

For shippers, cruise operators, contractors and the freight businesses working the docks, the practical stake is separate from the representation debate. Appropriations influence is built on seniority and committee position, and it does not transfer with a district line. Two southeast Florida seats are disappearing from the delegation. Whoever ends up representing Port Everglades will be arguing for its dredging money, its shore power and its road access against every other port in the country — and that leverage gets decided Tuesday, Aug. 18.

JBizNews Desk | Fort Lauderdale

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