In 2022, De Luca founded his own national political party, South calls North (ScN), and was able to elect a deputy and senator to the Italian Parliament.

[3] As a teenager, De Luca raised rabbits and collected oregano, walnuts, and chestnuts and then sold them to the farmers of his hometown under the control of his mother.

[4] Within first the DC and then the Christian Democratic Centre (CCD) of Pier Ferdinando Casini, he was politically trained under the wing of Salvatore D'Alia, a leading exponent of the DC/CCD in Sicily.

De Luca said: "True Sicily will present by the end of June [2012] the political and economic program based on clear autonomist and separatist choices.

[4] As part of a split from the MpA, of which he was the vice-secretary, De Luca founded True Sicily (VS), a political-cultural association that later became a regional political party, in March 2007.

[9] During his time at the ARS, De Luca stood out due to his lashes at the majority deputies, painting them with catchphrases and insults; he told Francesco Cascio of Forza Italia (FI) that he was "a baronet, a regime politician who squanders public money", called Salvino Caputo of The People of Freedom (PdL) "a street charlatan", and told to Micchichè, the then ARS president, that he had "legalized the absences of deputies" and to the then Sicily president Salvatore Cuffaro: "I have no respect for you.

[19][20][21] He had called for the elimination of political discontent, the reduction of 50% of the costs of politics and bureaucracy, and the streamlining of the regional bureaucratic structure;[22] despite his 2011 arrest, De Luca's 2012 electoral campaign had opened with a Silvio Berlusconi-style convention at the Politeama Theatre in Palermo, and the walls of Sicilian cities were plastered with his 3x6s electoral manifestoes with slogans referencing his Scateno nickname like "I Revolutionize Sicily.

[4] To his supporters, De Luca spoke of a conspiracy against him, stating: "They are afraid that I will become mayor of Messina, as I publicly announced I wanted to be last January [2017], and so they found a way to stop me.

Although none of the lists that supported him received any seats,[13] he won the election runoff on 24 June 2018 with 65.28% of the votes, beating the centre-right coalition candidate Dino Bramanti.

[43] His seat was assigned on the same day to Danilo Lo Giudice, mayor of Santa Teresa di Riva and second of those elected on the UdC list in the Messina constituency, who had joined the Mixed Group in the ARS and De Luca's True Sicily.

In addition to guaranteeing a candidate for De Luca's True Sicily, the pact was based on a shared program for the city of Messina to be brought to the European Parliament.

In the subsequent consultations, he took the role of coordinator, while Dino Giarrusso, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) and former Five Star Movement (M5S) who was working on a Meridionalist political project,[58] with whom he had developed an agreement a few days earlier but that ended in August 2022,[59] became ScN's secretary.

Despite this, De Luca's party elected two members of the Italian Parliament in the single-member districts (Francesco Gallo in the Chamber of Deputies and Dafne Musolino in the Senate of the Republic.

[76][77] In August 2023, De Luca he announced his candidacy for the single-member constituency of Lombardy 6 (Monza) for the Senate of the Republic in the by-elections following the death of Silvio Berlusconi.

[81] Despite an optimistic prediction at the start of his campaign of a double digit result,[82] De Luca garnered 2,313 preferences, which were equal to 1.76% of the votes, placing him third.

[84] In December 2023, De Luca said that he was working on the campo largo, the journalistic definition for the opposition that had obtained a plurality of votes but was divided, with the PD and the M5S.

[69] Ahead of the 2024 European Parliament election in Italy, where he was exempt from the collection of signatures due to having elected to members of the Italian Parliament in 2022, De Luca attempted to form an electoral list starting in March 2023, as part of a project to bring together various exponents of the former Third Pole and the centrist, reformist, and liberal area to create a new political entity with the likes of Letizia Moratti,[85][86] Clemente Mastella,[85] and Roberto Castelli,[85] then in August 2023 with Matteo Renzi,[87][88] and in December 2023 with Carlo Calenda.

[90] His populist list attracted attention due to the record number of minor and heterogeneous parties (from agrarianists and farmers to environmentalists and supporters of animal rights, from pro-Europeanists to Eurosceptics, from pro-vaccines to vaccine sceptics, from supporters of greater autonomy for the regions of Italy, particularly in the North, to opponents like De Luca himself), as well as members of civic lists and former members of the M5S and Lega,[91] which would be exempt from having to collect signatures at Italy's national elections if De Luca's list elects at least one MEP; De Luca described the collection of signatures for new parties as unjust and offered to help them.

[115] The main points of De Luca's list, which was called by its supporters the Freedom Front,[125] are represented by the slogan "Less Europe, More Sovereignty, More Autonomy, More Italy".

"[103] After being elected mayor of Messina in 2018, De Luca said: "I will be the bearer of that revolution that you wanted and this council will help me to make concrete actions that we have proposed within the programme.

[136] At the March 2023 national assembly of South calls North (ScN), De Luca said: "Anything but fear of differentiated autonomy, we want the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

"[137] About the Strait of Messina Bridge, De Luca said: "Years ago, when I held pro-bridge demonstrations, Minister [Matteo] Salvini hoped that Vesuvius and Etna would erupt to kill us all.

"[138] When asked in 2024 if he is left-wing or right-wing, De Luca replied: "Neither one nor the other, I'm about my own business, I'm Sturziano, I'm an administrator and not a politician, I was mayor by beating those who held seances to get votes.

[68] As a result, he is often compared to and confused with the incumbent Campania president Vincenzo De Luca, with whom he is not related, although he shares his histrionic manner and incendiary tones.

[151][152] He addressed with offensive words Luciana Lamorgese, the then Minister of the Interior, who denounced him for contempt of the Italian Republic, the constitutional institutions, and the Armed Forces.