Billionaire backer boosts Gillum’s bid for governor
LAUDERHILL – Andrew Gillum is a charismatic champion of progressive ideas, offers a compelling personal story as a child of working class parents and delivers rousing speeches offering his vision for a better future for Florida.
So far, that’s not enough in the competition to win the Democratic nomination for Florida governor.
Gillum is way behind in money and way, way behind in the polls — which may mean any hope of winning the party’s nomination may come down to people like Alisha Erves, Hannah Klein, Catherine Theriault and Patricia Ramirez.
They’re among the 50 paid organizers and hundreds of volunteers on the ground in Florida as part of California billionaire and Democratic activist Tom Steyer’s attempt to boost Gillum’s candidacy in the five-person primary.
The four young political workers, ages 18
to 26, are part of field teams going door-to-door on steamy summer afternoons leading up to the Aug. 28 primary, trying to build support for Gillum, one vote at a time.
Steyer’s NextGen America is active in 11 states, registering people to vote and mobilizing existing voters. His involvement in a Democratic primary is unusual. This year, he endorsed Gillum in Florida and one of the U.S. Senate candidates in California.
Steyer backed up his June endorsement of Gillum with money: $500,000 for Forward Florida, a political committee supporting Gillum, and $500,000 to several pro-Gillum organizing efforts run by his NextGen organization.
Last week, NextGen started a digital advertising campaign pitching the candidate to younger voters on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. What NextGen described as a “sixfigure” ad buy is targeting 500,000 likely or potential primary voters younger than 40.
Still to come is a directmail advertising campaign. It will target 350,000 likely or sporadic Democratic primary voters, mostly women and African-Americans.
Several days a week, in cities around the state, organizers fan out in communities, equipped with iPads containing lists of voters they’re attempting to target. Typically outside from 5 to 8 p.m., they wear comfortable shoes, and they make sure they have sun block and bug
spray, as they search primarily for young and minority voters.
Last week, walking in a Lauderhill neighborhood that’s home to many African-Americans, they found several people willing to listen, many of whom were unaware that Gillum was running for governor and would be the state’s first black chief executive if he wins.
“He’s currently the mayor of Tallahassee. He’s young, progressive and diverse. He’s all about affordable health care, climate change, equality,” Erves told one woman. “Do you think that’s a candidate you’d be interested in supporting?”
Some said “yes,” but the canvassers had mixed results.
Cheryl Chaires, 62, said she always votes — and might vote for Gillum. “I still have to listen and check out all the issues and the candidates.”
Patricia Martin-Ford, 78, was polite to Erves and Klein and told them she might vote for Gillum. Just two minutes later, she told a reporter she would vote for Jeff Greene or Philip Levine. “It’s going to be one of the two,” she said.
Her husband Dan Ford, 75, said he would vote for Greene. He’d learned from TV ads that Greene “came up from a poor family.”
And he offered some advice for the Gillum campaign: “Tell him to get on TV. He needs to get on TV. Nobody knows who he is.”
Gillum didn’t begin television advertising until last week, with a small $60,000 ad buy on cable networks, and a “six-figure” ad buy starting this week in the
Tampa, Orlando and West Palm Beach media markets this week. The focus: his status as an underdog in the race.
Gillum’s campaign hasn’t announced any advertising buys in the expensive Miami-Fort Lauderdale market.
On July 26, the same day the Steyer-funded NextGen canvassers were in Lauderhill, Greene — a billionaire who is self-funding his campaign — started running two new campaign ads, with a $2.3 million ad buy statewide.
Levine, the wealthy former Miami Beach mayor is also spending part of his own fortune on TV ads. Gwen Graham, a former congresswoman, and Chris King, a Winter Park businessman, have both raised and spent more than Gillum.
Maya Humes, NextGen’s media manager in Florida, said television advertising isn’t the only way to win an election. “We think that by seeing the young people, at their door, the organizers on our team who are really passionate about Gillum, that’s more impactful than seeing a name on television. We think that he’s going to be able to connect with these voters because he’s talking about the things that he has done.”
But TV advertising can hurt, especially for a candidate without a well-known name. Polls last week showed Gillum in fourth or fifth place, with the support of 10 percent of registered voters in a Mason-Dixon poll and 7 percent in a Florida Atlantic University poll.
Undecided voters — 25 percent in the Mason-Dixon poll and 31 percent in the
FAU survey — make it possible, though difficult, for Gillum to win.
“It’s too early to say that anybody’s out. But it’s not early in the race anymore. And the time to make up some of the distance in this race is declining quickly,” said Kevin Wagner, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University.
Humes rejected the notion that it’s too late for Gillum.
“We’re not paying attention to that narrative. We don’t think it’s accurate. We think he’s the candidate that will mobilize people. He’s really compelling and engaging, and we think he will really energize people in a way to show up,” she said.
Other progressives aren’t giving up either. On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the unsuccessful candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, endorsed Gillum.
NextGen depicts the primary as a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party.
And, there are some practical political implications. The organization’s theory is that if Gillum wins the nomination he’ll be able to get young and minority voters to turn out in the November general election, giving a boost not only to Democrats’ chances of electing a governor but of re-electing U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson.
Steyer, too, could benefit from his organization’s experience on the ground in Florida. He’s known for a series of ads calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump and is widely seen as a potential presidential candidate.