![\"Broward](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/TFL-L-Hunter-Davis-01.jpg\")
Broward Circuit Judge N. Hunter Davis (Courtesy Broward Circuit Court)<\/p>\nIt did not take long for a judge to see the obvious: Delvin King had no business running for the Pompano Beach City Commission.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s name as a candidate in District 5, on the city\u2019s west side.<\/p>\n
Broward Circuit Judge N. Hunter Davis (Courtesy Broward Circuit Court)<\/p>\n
The judge\u2019s decision had two immediate impacts.<\/p>\n
With no opposition, Commissioner Darlene Smith was automatically re-elected to a second two-year term.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Why King wasn\u2019t qualified<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
For most candidates, this is no problem. For Delvin King, it was a huge, glaring problem \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
A change in state law, effective last April, now requires that a challenge to a candidate\u2019s eligibility must be filed by \u201ca qualified candidate \u2026 in the same race \u2026 by filing an action in the circuit court\u201d \u2014 which Smith did on Aug. 25.<\/p>\n
Fast action was necessary because the ballots for the November election must be printed in the coming days.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel relieved. The truth is he wasn\u2019t qualified,\u201d Smith said after the ruling. \u201cI don\u2019t ever want to do this again.\u201d<\/p>\n
A case built on records<\/p>\n
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\u2019s voting history, including every change.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But records presented in painstaking detail by Smith\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Every time King changed his address, the judge noted, a form carried his signature and his sworn attestation, \u201cexpressing an explicit desire\u201d to change his voting address.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also entirely inconsistent with his eligibility,\u201d the judge said, \u201cand it\u2019s fatal under the charter.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u2018saying whatever seems to be convenient\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d the judge said, ruling from the bench after 10 p.m. on Friday night. \u201cThe manifest weight of the evidence supports the plaintiffs\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Told by the mayor to give his address for the record, like all speakers, King refused. \u201cPompano Beach,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It did not take long for a judge to see the obvious: Delvin King had no business running…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2853,249,251,250,114,482],"class_list":["post-394019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-editorials","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}