It did not take long for a judge to see the obvious: Delvin King had no business running for the Pompano Beach City Commission.
At the end of a seven-and-a-half hour court hearing on Friday, Sept. 4, Broward Circuit Judge N. Hunter Davis ordered the removal of King’s name as a candidate in District 5, on the city’s west side.
Broward Circuit Judge N. Hunter Davis (Courtesy Broward Circuit Court)
The judge’s decision had two immediate impacts.
With no opposition, Commissioner Darlene Smith was automatically re-elected to a second two-year term.
At the same time, a drive by King and other dissidents in Pompano to take control of City Hall suffered a big political setback. The six-member commission is deadlocked into two factions.
Why King wasn’t qualified
The Pompano Beach city charter requires candidates to have been a registered voter in the district where they are running continuously for a year preceding the election.
For most candidates, this is no problem. For Delvin King, it was a huge, glaring problem — so glaring that Smith had no choice but to file a lawsuit against King. It was an open-and-shut case, decided in one day.
A change in state law, effective last April, now requires that a challenge to a candidate’s eligibility must be filed by “a qualified candidate … in the same race … by filing an action in the circuit court” — which Smith did on Aug. 25.
Fast action was necessary because the ballots for the November election must be printed in the coming days.
“I feel relieved. The truth is he wasn’t qualified,” Smith said after the ruling. “I don’t ever want to do this again.”
A case built on records
The crux of the case against King were public records, available to anyone, in the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office, which contains an electronic repository of every voter’s voting history, including every change.
In sworn testimony, King, a principal of a private alternative school, insisted over and over that his only permanent residence was a family home at 2601 N.W. 12th St. in Pompano Beach. Prompted by his lawyer, Johnny McCray Jr., the 33-year-old King said it has been his home since age 3.
But records presented in painstaking detail by Smith’s lawyer, Nicole Martell of Di Pietro Partners in Fort Lauderdale, show that King switched his voting address three times in less than three months, from the childhood home in District 5 to an address in another district, then back to the original home again.
Every time King changed his address, the judge noted, a form carried his signature and his sworn attestation, “expressing an explicit desire” to change his voting address.
“It’s also entirely inconsistent with his eligibility,” the judge said, “and it’s fatal under the charter.”
Soon after the last address change, he filed papers to run for office. Even after all that, King signed a lease for an apartment at yet another address. The landlord filed suit against him Aug. 20 for not paying his rent.
‘saying whatever seems to be convenient’
“The evidence reveals a pattern of Mr. King simply saying whatever seems to be convenient in the moment, regardless of whether it happens to comport with the facts or not,” the judge said, ruling from the bench after 10 p.m. on Friday night. “The manifest weight of the evidence supports the plaintiffs’ allegation that Mr. King does not qualify as a candidate for District 5, based on his not residing in that district for the required preceding year.”
Though he’s no longer a candidate, King still has a voice in city affairs. At City Hall Tuesday, he pointedly criticized Mayor Rex Hardin during a long discussion of a downtown redevelopment project.
Told by the mayor to give his address for the record, like all speakers, King refused. “Pompano Beach,” he said.
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