In Florida, Wasserman Schultz sparks a debate over what representation means in diverse districts

(AP) — Greeting voters ahead of Tuesday’s Florida primaries in red-white-and-blue sneakers, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz smiles and tells them she is “running for reelection to Congress.” That’s true — with a caveat. Wasserman Schultz is seeking her 12th term by running in a new district after Republicans scrambled the state’s congressional map earlier this year.

The fallout pushed Wasserman Schultz, a former national party chair with powerful ties in Washington, to cross district lines from her Fort Lauderdale exurb and be the only white candidate in an area of Broward County that has helped send Black Democrats to Congress since 1992. That’s yielded an uncomfortable fight following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act provisions undergirding minority voting strength and effectively cleared Old Confederacy states, including Florida, to reshape House districts.

“For her to come in like this is just another Broward seat, it’s a complete erasure of our history, our fight for Black access,” said former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, 47, who resigned from the seat in April while facing an ethics investigation but now wants it back. Another candidate, 27-year-old progressive organizer and substitute teacher Elijah Manley, said Republicans’ redistricting ploy is not Wasserman Schultz’s fault.

But she “had other options,” Manley added, including running in her new home district, which was gerrymandered to include the more conservative Gulf coast. “Instead, she stabbed us in the back, trying to take away Black representation,” Manley said, pointing to Congressional Black Caucus warnings that it could lose more than a quarter of its 60-plus members this fall. Wasserman Schultz, 59, is by far the best funded out of five Democratic candidates and benefits from Florida rules that do not require a majority to win primaries.

She argued that she can ably advocate for the whole region after representing wide swaths of Broward as a state and federal legislator across three decades. “I’m not air dropping myself into this district,” she told The Associated Press. “I have represented diverse communities.

I know how to tailor my service to them and represent a district more broadly.” A win by Wasserman Schultz would be a rarity President Donald Trump started pushing Republican-run states to redraw House boundaries last year to help …