Rapper, reality TV star and most-recently newspaper columnist Luke “Uncle Luke” Campbell has announced his next venture will be running for Mayor of Miami Dade.
The former 2 Live Crew rapper wrote about his decision to enter politics in his Miami New Times column recently, stating “I’ve thought about running for public office before, but someone would always end up talking me out of it, saying, ‘We have this good person here, he will do good for the community,’ so I always backed out. But I’d end up frustrated because they didn’t do anything. I’d give them ideas and they would just tell me what they wanted to hear.
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“I get in my car, ride around Liberty City, and everything looks the same as when I was in the neighborhood growing up,” he continued. “I see the same crimes in the same areas. Officers and residents are still getting killed in the community I grew up in. I go to a city like Atlanta that has sensible affordable housing, and no one is being murdered. I go to Miami International Airport and see the same construction that has been going on for like a hundred years. All of that frustrates the hell out of me. Why aren’t we getting it right in Miami-Dade? Why is our government only serving one set of people? That’s what is pushing me to run.”
While his political background is limited, Luke says he’d run his office much like he ran his music label. “When I ran my record company, every year we would first go over what was making revenue for us and beef that side up,” he said. “Then we would cut the areas where we were not generating revenue. The first place we looked was payroll. I’ll do the same with the county budget.” Luke says he also plans on taxing strippers.
Luke isn’t the first rapper to attempt to go into politics recently. Rapper Rhymefest is vying for a spot as one of Chicago’s fifty aldermen, and of course, Wyclef’s failed bid for President of Haiti.