Democrat Gillum concedes in Florida governor’s race

TALLAHASSEE, Fla – Andrew Gillum conceded his race for Florida governor a second and final time Saturday night.

In a four-minute video posted to his Facebook page, Mayor Gillum stood with his wife R. Jai, a lake in the background, and thanked his supporters. He also officially acknowledged Republican Ron DeSantis as the winner.

“R. Jai and I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Mr. DeSantis on becoming the next governor of the great state of Florida,” Gillum said.

Shortly after Gillum tweeted about his concession, DeSantis responded.

“This was a hard-fought campaign,” DeSantis responded in a tweet to Gillum. “Now it’s time to bring Florida together.”

Originially, Gillum had conceded to DeSantis on election night but retracted it after the margin between the two candidates narrowed.

The race went to a legally required recount, but after an initial machine recount DeSantis still led Gillum by more than 30,000 votes.

More than 8 million ballots went to a machine recount that ended Thursday afternoon. The final tally was 4,075,445 for DeSantis and 4,041,762 for Gillum.

Gillum said he and his wife wanted to ensure every one of those votes was counted.

“We wanted to make sure that every vote, including those that were undervotes and overvotes – as long as it was a legally cast vote – we wanted those votes to be counted,” he said.

Gillum said he would fight to update the state election system and advocate for the issues that matter to him and the more than 4 million people who voted for him.