Democratic Rep. Al Lawson’s November playbook is a campaign version of a half-court buzzer-beating shot he might have tried as a standout basketball player for Florida A&M University in the early 1970s and then briefly in the pros with the Indiana Pacers and Atlanta Hawks.
The 6-foot-7-inch lawmaker is seeking reelection in Florida’s new Republican-leaning 2nd Congressional District based in the conservative central Panhandle. It’s a starkly different constituency than Lawson’s current minority-majority 5th District, which straddles the Georgia state line. Lawson, who is black, first won the district in 2016 after a court-ordered redrawing of Florida’s 27 House seats. (It’s about to become 28 due to population growth over the past decade.)
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