Adviser says Brown won’t run for reelection in District 5 if federal courts uphold new map

Late last week, Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell wrote that an adviser to U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown said Brown won’t seek reelection in the Fifth Congressional District if the federal courts reject her challenge to the new map.

District 5, which Brown has represented since 1992, ran north-south from Duval County to Orange County until the Florida Supreme Court voted 5-2 on December 2 to approve a new set of Congressional district maps in compliance with the Fair Districts Amendment. The new maps included a redrawn District 5 that runs from Duval to Gadsden Counties. The new District 5 remains a minority-access seat with about 45 percent black voters. 

Brown has filed a federal lawsuit to fight against the new District 5 map. But Florida Times-Union reporter Tia Mitchell previously reported that there were rumors that Brown, a FAMU alumna, was thinking about throwing her hat in the ring for the redrawn District 10, a new minority-access seat that would include parts of Orange County that she currently represents.

The column by Maxwell stated that “if Fair Districts prevail, Brown adviser Lavern Kelly said Brown plans on moving to Orlando and running ‘where she already has broad support.’”

FAMU alumnus and former state Sen. Alfred “Al” Lawson, who won the Democratic nomination for District 2 in 2012 but lost in the general election, has expressed interest in running for the new District 5 seat. Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, another FAMU alumnus, is also weighing a run in the District 5 primary and told the Tallahassee Democrat that he’ll “have a clear answer about the future following the holidays.”