Sporting red-white-and-blue sneakers and a matching bedazzled manicure ahead of Florida’s primaries on Tuesday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz smiles and tells voters she is “running for reelection to Congress.”

That is true, with a caveat. Wasserman Schultz is seeking her 12th term by running in a new district after Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map earlier this year.

The change pushed Wasserman Schultz, a former national party chair with deep ties in Washington, to cross district lines from her Fort Lauderdale exurb and become the only white candidate in an area of Broward County that has helped elect Black Democrats to Congress since 1992. The result is a tense contest after the U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted key Voting Rights Act protections supporting minority voting strength and gave Florida and other Southern states broader latitude 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 is Black and resigned from the seat in April while facing an ethics investigation but now wants it back.

Another Black candidate, 27-year-old progressive organizer and substitute teacher Elijah Manley, said Republicans’ redistricting effort is not Wasserman Schultz’s fault. But he added that she “had other options,” including running in her new home district, which was drawn to include the more conservative Gulf Coast.

“Instead, she stabbed us in the back, trying to take away Black representation,” Manley said, citing 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 of five Democratic candidates and benefits from Florida rules that do not require a majority to win primaries.

She argues that she can represent the broader region effectively after serving large portions of Broward as a state and federal legislator for 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.”

President Donald Trump began pushing Republican-run states last year to redraw House maps to help preserve the party’s narrow majority. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded with a plan that clusters southeast Florida Democrats together, aiming to cut the number of Democratic seats from five to three. Broward, the state’s most Democratic county and located between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, now has only one presumed-Democratic district anchored in and around Fort Lauderdale.

The new map also helps explain why this race has become a test of competing ideas about representation. Nationally, white lawmakers typically hold some of the more than 115 House seats where the voting-age population is majority non-white. Wasserman Schultz does so in her current north Broward-Palm Beach district, which was drawn after the 2020 census to be 42% Hispanic, 18% Black and about 6% Asian American. White voters make up the remaining third.

But a white lawmaker is rare in majority or plurality Black districts such as the new Florida 20th. That district is 42% Black, 23% Hispanic and 4% Asian, with the rest white. The Black share includes a large Caribbean population, especially Haitian Americans.

Going into November, an Associated Press analysis found that Wasserman Schultz is the only white Democrat positioned to represent any of the remaining districts with a Black majority or plurality.

Cherfilus-McCormick said she can win, despite losing Black constituents she previously represented in Palm Beach County. She dismissed concerns about federal criminal charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds. She has pleaded not guilty and denied alleged violations of House rules.

She said the criminal case and redistricting fit together, and that “the people see what’s going on — them trying to silence the only Haitian member of Congress and take away our voice.”

Manley was more cautious about Wasserman Schultz’s status as the favorite. He mused about upsetting the veteran congresswoman on Tuesday, but also looked ahead to the 2028 elections and said he hopes Black Democrats rally around one candidate rather than four. The field also includes former 2 Live Crew rapper Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell and real estate broker and former local elected official Dale Holness, both Black.

Von Howard, a Black resident of Plantation, said the choice was difficult. He declined to say how he voted but said he wanted someone who “understands the totality of the district.”

“If you’re not of the people, and you just want this for the clout, in some instances, that could be a turnoff,” the 47-year-old said.

Broward NAACP President Marsha Ellison was even more direct, though she did not endorse a candidate.

“The whole mission was to take away Black power, so we don’t have representation to understand our lived experience,” she said. “That may not be important to Debbie, but it’s certainly important to us.”

Wasserman Schultz said she occasionally hears those concerns from voters. Her answer is that “lived experience matters, but experience broadly matters” as well.

She points to her seat on the Appropriations Committee, which could become more influential if Democrats win the House majority. She also points to programs affecting Black communities that she helped create and fund since her early years in the Florida Legislature.

“I fight every single day to help improve the lived experience of the people that I represent,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz said she has also worked to connect across race and culture in Broward. Because of her existing district’s makeup, she said, “I spent six years learning Spanish,” allowing her to speak with residents and appear in town halls, news conferences and interviews on Spanish-language stations.

“Out of respect,” she said, “anything I can do to inspire people’s confidence that the person representing them understands them.”

Several times outside early voting sites, Black, white and Hispanic voters waved to her or stopped to talk. Among them were Broward County sheriff’s deputies seeking photos and a group of three women who said they had been drawn into a new Republican-leaning district.

Yusdefs Delgado, a naturalized citizen from Colombia, told Wasserman Schultz that he likes her social media posts but wants to hear more about policy and less about the president.

“We know Trump sucks,” he said, smiling and confirming that he voted for her. “I don’t agree with her on everything, but she’s closest to where I am, and I trust her to try to do the right thing for us,” Delgado later explained.

Cherfilus-McCormick and Manley said that is not enough in the current environment, after the Supreme Court decision, Trump’s attacks on diversity initiatives and his effort to rewrite how the United States tells its history on race and racism.

“We’re not at a place in this country where we can be completely colorblind politically,” Manley said. “We’re just not.”

Wasserman Schultz said the new district “is drawn in a way that the plurality population has the ability to elect the person of their choice” — language that alludes to the now-diminished Voting Rights Act. Voters, she said, can “consider all of the qualities that matter to them.”

As for putting herself on the ballot again, she remained unapologetic.

“Trump and DeSantis did this to our community,” she said, adding, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them steal Broward’s political power, de-unify us and prevent us from standing up for our community’s values.”

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Associated Press journalist Matthew Klein contributed from Washington.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com