“I can count,” said Rep. Chip LaMarca of Lighthouse Point.
Surveying a half-empty dais at a meeting of Broward legislators, he could see the obvious. He didn’t have the votes to advance his proposal to change Broward’s name to Lauderdale County, subject to approval by county voters.
So, just like that, this half-baked idea appears to be dead.
As a local bill, the name change proposal needed support from a majority of both senators and representatives in the 15-member Broward delegation. LaMarca had neither, and he had yet another problem.
A half-dozen lawmakers didn’t even attend Thursday’s hearing, so there were too few people to persuade. For those who did show up, the timing was all wrong.
Lawmakers had to decide hours before a majority of county commissioners publicly criticized the idea. They cited many problems, from the costs of rebranding signs and cars and websites to the inevitable public confusion. They said it seemed hastily conceived with scant analysis of the pros and cons and financial implications.
Some residents said a name change seems frivolous at a time when people can’t afford to buy a home or property taxes might be disappearing.
Crucial county resistance
“This is way too soon,” said Commissioner Lamar Fisher, a persuasive voice of opposition. “I need a lot more due diligence. I need a lot more factual costs of a rebrand. How is this going to happen?”
Fisher said he “quickly” polled leaders of all nine cities in his northeast Broward district, where he previously served as mayor of Pompano Beach, and in seven of the nine they said “Absolutely not.”
Commissioner Nan Rich was aghast at an argument by business leaders that the Broward name has stifled local progress and that “Lauderdale County” would be a boon to the local economy.
“Why did we expand our convention center?” Rich asked. “Why did we bring in this brand new hotel?”
Three other commissioners — Beam Furr, Steve Geller and Robert McKinzie — also expressed doubts, so county rejection seems inevitable.
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Rep. Chip LaMarca, lower right, pushed for renaming the county at a hearing in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday (Nov. 13, 2025).
County opposition was critical, because LaMarca assured his colleagues that he would not push for the name change in Tallahassee without the commission’s support.
“If the County Commission doesn’t pass a resolution supporting it, then we’ll take it off the table,” he said.
Blank stares (in 2011)
Changing the county name is an old, tired idea. It surfaces every decade or so, only to fall flat in a politically fragmented place where it’s exceedingly difficult to reach policy consensus on anything.
In 2011, Sun Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo promoted the change, writing: “Let’s hear it for Lauderdale County.”
“Say ‘Broward’ to out-of-town friends and relatives, you get blank stares,” Mayo wrote.
The latest push came from a civic group, the Broward Workshop (note the first word of its name), which formed a “Why Lauderdale Committee” to advance the idea.
It has been Broward for 110 years, since a place of little more than swampland and sand fleas broke off from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, now grown to a population of two million people.
Initially Broward was to be called Everglades County, as the seaport was.
But Tallahassee politicians named it in memory of a governor who had died a few years earlier. Napoleon Bonaparte Broward promised to drain the Everglades for future development.
Governor Broward
Governor Broward was controversial (and from Jacksonville, by the way) and his namesake county does not identify a place, the way neighboring Palm Beach and Miami-Dade do. The marketing experts said Broward suffers from a lack of “place branding.”
But to judge from tourism revenue, not to mention mid-December drawbridge traffic, visitors don’t seem to have any problem finding their way here.
Everyone knows where Fort Lauderdale is. Who cares what the name of the county is?
Quick, name the county where Boston is. Or Philadelphia. Or New Orleans. Most people can’t, for an obvious reason: It’s not important.
If the name Broward County has given us an identity crisis, then so be it. In a place with too little regard for its own history, the name is part of our collective identity. Let’s leave it alone.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board includes Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.