Republican thanks Trump after victory over Gillum
TALLAHASSEE — Republican Ron DeSantis defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum to take the Florida Governor’s mansion in a narrow victory Tuesday night, thwarting Democratic hopes of a “blue wave” in the Sunshine State and maintaining the GOP’s hold on power in the Capitol.
With nearly every precinct counted statewide, DeSantis had 49.9 percent of the vote to Gillum’s 48.8 percent.
An elated DeSantis celebrated the victory at a party in Orlando.
“I’d like to thank the president for standing by me when it wasn’t necessarily the smart thing to do...” he said as he vowed to keep taxes low and lure more businesses to the state. “As governor, I will fight the good fight; I will keep the faith.”
Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, was at an election party of his own in the capital city, where supporters had been clinging to hope he would emerge with a victory after all the votes were counted.
“We could not be prouder of the way we ran this race,” Gillum said. “We recognize that we didn’t win this tonight.”
At the DeSantis party in Orlando, Charles Rahn of Orlando said he voted a
straight GOP ticket this year. A lifelong Republican, Rahn described DeSantis as a “family man.”
“He’s conservative; He’s Republican,” said Rahn, who is 73. “I like his plans for the state. I like that he’s not planning any tax increases like his opponent says he’s going to do.”
Gillum, seeking to become Florida’s first African American governor, posted big wins in urban counties such as Orange, Hillsborough, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, but it wasn’t enough to overcome DeSantis’ strong performance in smaller GOP strongholds in southwest Florida and north Florida.
The result is a major blow to Democratic hopes, which centered on Gillum’s aggressive progressive platform of “Medicare for all,” marijuana legalization and a business tax increase for schools. It also continues the GOP dominance in state-level races in the Sunshine State, where it has lost just one Cabinet-level race since 1998.
It caps a bitter election centered on race, charges of radicalism and Trump, one which garnered national media attention.
Trump’s Twitter bursts kept DeSantis in the spotlight, and Gillum gathered a coalition of high-profile progressive supporters, including Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, to his side and energized a Democratic base in Florida accustomed to centrist candidates for governor.
The campaign also featured racist robocalls and a lingering FBI investigation.
In his first interview of the general election, DeSantis told Fox News Florida voters shouldn’t reverse the state’s economic progress and “monkey this up” by voting for Gillum. Gillum’s supporters blasted the phrase as a racist dog whistle.
Gillum was targeted by robocalls from an Idahobased white supremacist group mimicking an African American dialect, backed by jungle noises. DeSantis repudiated the calls.
DeSantis’ campaign highlighted Gillum’s connection to Sanders, a selfavowed Democratic socialist, in South Florida, home to Cuban-Americans who fled Castro’s communist regime. He claimed Gillum’s push for a business tax increase would doom Florida to the fate of Venezuela, where a socialist dictator’s price controls have led to widespread starvation.
Gillum’s connection to an ongoing FBI investigation into corruption in Tallahassee marked the campaign as well. Though Gillum has said he cooperated with FBI officials and was told he isn’t the focus of the probe, text messages and emails released last month as part of an ethics inquiry show he met with an undercover FBI agent posing as a developer and received tickets to “Hamilton” from that agent during a trip to New York in 2016. No indictments have been issued in the probe, however.
The DeSantis campaign used the issue as a cudgel throughout the race, labeling Gillum as corrupt.
The two even clashed over why DeSantis referred to Gillum by his first name during two contentious debates. Gillum saw that as disrespectful. DeSantis fired back, saying Gillum “called me a dog” when Gillum invoked his grandmother’s proverb that a “hit dog will holler” to suggest that DeSantis had responded defensively to a question about his ties to people who have made racist comments.
Throughout it all, Trump was an ever-present force. His hardline immigration policies, including separating children from parents who illegally crossed into the country, helped galvanize liberal groups but also energized his GOP base. Trump doubled down as the election drew near, calling for an end to birthright citizenship for those born to illegal immigrants, something guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
DeSantis mostly stayed by Trump, backing his call to end birthright citizenship and only splitting from him when he falsely claimed the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria was inflated by Democrats.
Beverly Burgess, who also attended the DeSantis party, said she was a lifelong Democrat until three years ago, when she switched to the GOP. She voted a straight Republican ticket this election. Now Burgess’s Facebook profile photo is a shot of her and Rick Scott.
Burgess, 55, has lived in Pine Hills for five years and she said she’s grown tired of elected Democrats failing to meet promises and address problems in the struggling neighborhood.
“We don’t see any growth and change in our community,” she said.
Burgess said there are more black Republicans than most people realize.
“Just because you’re black doesn’t mean you’re going to vote Democrat and I’m living proof of that,” she said.