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U.S. Senate candidate and ex-Navy flyer aims to emerge from shadow of his famous brother

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U.S. Senate candidate and ex-Navy flyer aims to emerge from shadow of his famous brother

Stanley Campbell might be in the running for World’s Most Interesting Man Who’s Not As Famous as His Brother, a famous Miami hip hop artist.

But if his uphill campaign to be Florida’s next U.S. senator is triumphant, that will likely change.

Campbell, one of five Democrats who have qualified for the Aug. 23 primary, recently made his case for why he is best suited to challenge incumbent Sen. Rick Scott − who is three-for-three in statewide elections, despite each victory coming by 1% or less.

In an interview with The News-Journal recently, at a New Smyrna Beach restaurant along the campaign trail, Campbell shared his story, a unique journey from Liberty City, one of Miami’s poorest communities, to flying jets for the Navy and running a tech company that has consulted on crime prevention, national defense, healthcare and artificial intelligence.

Campbell: Race ‘wide open’ despite party’s preference

Powerful Democrats from Joe Biden on down might not have overtly endorsed Debbie Mucarsel-Powell as the person they want to challenge Scott, a Republican, this year, but Campbell says their actions have been clear.

Biden had Mucarsel-Powell introduce him at a Tampa rally on April 23, when the president gave a speech about abortion access − which will be on the ballot and an issue many Democrats believe gives them a chance to knock off Scott, a one-term senator.

“When you have the entire weight of the press corps of the United States president, the most powerful man in the world, and she is the first speaker … she just got about $5 million of advertising right there on the spot,” Campbell said.

Meanwhile, Campbell added he had to ask to get an invite.  

Mucarsel-Powell “appears to have the backing of both the national and state Democratic parties,” despite having name-recognition or unfavorability problems, Campbell said, calling the race wide open.

The Mucarsel-Powell and Biden campaigns did not respond to requests seeking a response to Campbell’s criticisms, but state party Chair Nikki Fried said during a press call that her responsibility is to elect Democrats.

“The party does not endorse and so we’ve made that very clear,” Fried said. “But we have a lot on the line. We have democracy. We have freedoms. We are in a super minority in the (state) House and the Senate. The Florida congressional delegation shrunk in size over the last few cycles, and we’re going to take that back. But that means that the adults in the room have to come together and figure out our best path forward.”

Campbell, Brian Rush, Alan Grayson, and Rod Joseph are seeking that path forward and The News-Journal is interviewing each of them to give readers a sense of who they are, why they’re running, and how they view key issues.

From Liberty City to Miami Beach

Stanley Campbell, Jr., was born nearly 69 years ago to Stanley and Yvonne Campbell. His father was born in New York but raised in Jamaica, while his mother had Bahamian roots and brought two sons to the marriage prior to the birth of Stanley Jr. 

Stanley, Sr., was a union worker and school custodian; Yvonne was a hairdresser who became a community organizer.

“Neither one of them had an education, but they worked hard. And they were together,” Campbell said.

He was raised in Liberty City. But his parents decided to take the opportunity to bus him to Miami Beach for middle and high school as part of school integration in Florida, requiring commutes of more than an hour each way. It was also a clash of classes, with kids from some of the poorest neighborhoods in Florida going to school with kids from some of the richest. 

Campbell said he performed well in elementary school,” but by 8th grade, he said he became “a little bit disruptive.” 

The school administrators called Campbell’s father to discuss his behavior. First, Stanley Campbell, Sr., sat in the back of the class and observed his son. Then he spoke to the teacher. 

Stanley Campbell, Jr., thought his no-nonsense father was going to come down hard on him. Instead, his dad had his back.

“He’s bored,” Stanley Campbell, Sr., told the teacher.  

Stanley, Jr., was moved to more challenging classes. 

“That was transformational,” he said. “From that point, I could see this guy is more than a custodian at the school because he could see what they couldn’t see.” 

And once when he complained to his mother about the long commute, she responded: “Who gets to see dolphins every day going to school?”  

That changed his perspective. He started looking for dolphins. 

“She was the biggest psychologist. Every day she would ask the question: ‘How many dolphins did you see today?’ And I would say six or nine or whatever the number was.” 

He said his mother was also reaffirming she made the right decision by putting him on the bus. 

From FAMU to the Navy to NASA

After graduating in 1973, Campbell went to Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, where he graduated as a physics major in just over three years. While there, he wrote a data reduction aero analysis for NASA, which was used on the Voyager 2, the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune before heading into interstellar space, where it still sends signals more than 46 years after launch.

The analysis demonstrated Campbell’s ability to solve geophysics problems. So Amoco Production Co. hired Campbell, who devised a concept, one-way wave travel, that helped improve precision in offshore drilling. 

Campbell had his sights set on becoming an astronaut, so he joined the Navy and learned to fly jets. He also commanded TACAMO, the Navy’s primary airborne communications platform.

President George H.W. Bush’s administration later appointed Campbell to an executive advisory board at NASA. 

Campbell ultimately established his own advanced technology development and consulting firm, EagleForce Associates, Inc., which designs and deploys “intelligent systems” for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Transportation Safety Administration and the FBI among others.

His company devised a database to assist in the capture of the “BTK” serial killer Dennis Rader.

Also, predictive data software his company devised is used by all pharmacies in the United States to detect and prevent Medicare fraud, a subject all too familiar to Scott, who in 1997 resigned as chairman and CEO of Columbia/HCA before the healthcare company paid a $1.7 billion fine after 14 felony convictions for defrauding Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs. 

“You can’t make it up. They built this race for me,” Campbell said.  

Less famous than ‘Uncle Luke’

Despite his accomplishments, Stanley Campbell rarely gets mentioned without being identified as the older brother of Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell, a rap artist whose work with 2 Live Crew in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to legal battles over censorship and copyright infringement.

Luther Campbell, who has continued his career in music, has also branched out into being a sports commentator and briefly flirted with running for U.S. House, ultimately deciding he would not challenge Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick in Florida’s 20th District.

Stanley Campbell has another living brother, Bernard, a Miami chef, and two who have died: H. Stevens Newbold, a psychologist, and Harry Newbold, a physicist.

His wife Cheryl Campbell is assistant secretary for administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The couple has three grown sons, Christopher, Alan and Stanley III.

In 2021, the Campbells purchased Martin Downs Golf Club in Palm City, where they also bought a home. Campbell became one of just eight Black golf course owners in the United States, Golf Business Weekly reported. Two of the others are within 10 miles of Campbell’s club: Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.

Pandemic pulled him toward politics

Campbell said his interests veered toward politics during the pandemic when he was working with healthcare providers to use a product he developed, myVax, that helped keep track of vaccination schedules.

His oldest brother, who had serious lung problems, contracted covid 19 and died. His youngest brother, Luther, pointed to a disparity in vaccination rates in two South Florida cities.

“We’ve got a 4.5% vaccination rate in Opa-Locka and they’ve got 84% in Aventura,” Luther told his brother.

“I didn’t believe that,” Campbell said. The two cities are just four miles apart, but where Opa-Locka has a majority Black population and about a 28% poverty rate, Aventura is wealthy and largely white.

But he looked into it and found it compelling. He said he started trying to work with the Florida state government to implement his system and improve vaccination coverage but was disappointed with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ response, which he believed was motivated by politics rather than concern for residents’ health and safety.

He then became concerned when he saw efforts to exclude books from schools and libraries, and the State Board of Education’s policy to teach that slavery was evil, but it also benefited slaves by providing them with skills.

“I’m seeing all of these things that the Florida that I left doesn’t look like the Florida that I moved back to, and I just started looking for somebody to support, and the party pushed … Debbie Powell. I looked at her background. She looks like a nice person,” he said.

But his analysis of the one-term congresswoman’s 2020 campaign loss to Carlos Gimenez led him to believe she was unlikely to succeed in a statewide race.

“And we cannot allow Rick Scott to win and Donald Trump to win,” Campbell said. “We’ve got a dynamic that we could lose our democracy, so now the soldier shows up, and I have to put myself in the race. And I have to win.”

Making homes affordable in Florida

Campbell says the Senate can − and must − act to make homes more affordable, and in Florida in particular, easier to insure.

The key, he says: Establish a national catastrophic insurance program to ease the burden on states like Florida, Louisiana and Texas, which are most likely to be hit by hurricanes, and California, where wildfires cause billions in damage annually.

“It will normalize insurance rates,” he said, adding Florida would see a nearly 30% drop. “What it will do is it will give us the opportunity to nationalize the pain because we’re already spending the money. But we nationalize the pain.” 

Worldview: Support needed for Ukraine, Israel 

Campbell’s views on world events are shaped by his experiences in the military and consulting work with intelligence agencies.

He called U.S. support of Israel in its war with Hamas “sacrosanct,” and said he understands that its army had to respond to the Oct. 7 surprise attack killing hundreds of Israeli civilians.

“I think that there is legitimacy in that we should not be killing children indiscriminately, but I also know that we cannot fight the war through a TV screen,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not the right person to be leading Israel, Campbell said, and concern for thousands of civilians in Gaza who have been killed in the war is legitimate.

“I am telling you we and they have tactics and procedures that can actually do a much better job of not killing children and women and people who are just not involved in that,” Campbell said.

On Ukraine, Campbell said it is worthy of U.S. assistance.

“We have the absolute best opportunity to − I wouldn’t say destroy the Russian attack mechanism − but we definitely have a way of beating them back to have them focusing on the economy, instead of land grabbing,” Campbell said.

And he said Americans need to understand how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might have been worse.

If Russia had attacked during President Donald Trump’s tenure, it would have been “a total disaster,” he said.

“You look at how much of the world is fed, how much wheat comes from Ukraine, how much of that gets to Africa to feed people,” he said.

Campbell predicted the Ukrainians would “come to a resolve with Russia” that they can win.

“Because they care. These are patriots fighting for their country,” Campbell said, predicting Ukraine will be part of NATO within three to five years.

“The one thing Putin understands,” Campbell said, “from a war he’s losing against an ill-fitted, and not well-trained military in Ukraine, is he knows full well he cannot even think about attacking others..” 

On beating Rick Scott

Scott won his seat in 2018 by defeating Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson by just over 10,000 votes. Campbell believes Scott has lost points with a significant portion of the Florida electorate: Veterans.

“Here’s how I’m going to beat Rick Scott. There are one-and-a-half million veterans he disappointed. He disappointed us significantly,” Campbell said, pointing to Scott’s vote against the budget and not speaking out against fellow Sen. Tommy Tuberville.

Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, held up hundreds of military promotions for 10 months in an effort to force the Pentagon to change a policy it had put in place allowing service members to travel to other states if necessary for reproductive health care, including abortions.

Scott’s campaign did not respond to a request seeking comment.

“We only ask for two things from our civilian government: Our pay and our promotions,” Campbell said. “And when you vote against the budget, you vote against our pay. When you allow one person to hold up all of the promotions of the United States military, those are families who put 20 to 30 years into service.”

In addition to Navy service, Campbell and Scott both come from lower middle-class families,

Campbell said they may wear the same Navy cap, but he served seven years longer and at a higher rank, lieutenant, compared to Scott, who discharged after 29 months as a petty officer third class.

Campbell referenced Scott’s departure from Columbia/HCA during the healthcare fraud case, with a severance payout and company shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“(Scott) represents the worst of the very strong-willed, educated person who has come from the bottom up,” Campbell said. “He just doesn’t have the heart that I have to actually use those skills that I have to help other people beyond helping himself.”  

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