Here’s a look at who Andrew Gillum is
Interest in Andrew Gillum surged Tuesday night, when people realized there was a major political upset in the making, and the Tallahassee mayor would be Florida’s Democratic nominee for governor.
On Wednesday, he got the morning show treatment, with appearances on CNN’s “New Day” program and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
It stands to reason. He energizes Democratic audiences with his charismatic presence and soaring rhetoric.
But the Tallahassee mayor had much less money than the other candidates in the primary, which meant far fewer TV ads to introduce himself to voters. And winning the contest with 34.3 percent of the vote means 65.7 percent of his own party’s voters picked someone else.
Gillum, 39, also made history. He’s the first black major party nominee for governor in Florida history.
“People are really hungry for something different. I recognize out of the box that I am not the establishment candidate,” he in an interview in March 2017, shortly after he became the party’s first candidate for governor. “There’s nothing about me that would have anybody draw the conclusion that I am somehow preordained for anything.”
Progressive
Gillum is an unabashed champion of his party’s most progressive ideas — including things like Medicare-for-all-single payer health system, abolishing the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and impeaching President Donald Trump.
“We’ve got a crazy man in the White House. Not only is he a danger to the country and the world, he is a danger to himself,” he said during the camping Neither ICE nor impeachment are part of the governor’s job description.
Gillum has challenged the National Rifle Association, welcomed Syrian refugees to his city and supported same-sex marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of it.
Many Florida activists from the party’s most liberal, or progressive, wing supported Gillum.
He also enjoyed support from leading national progressives, who provided his effort with money and publicity. Among them, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the unsuccessful candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination; NextGen America and its main funder, California billionaire Tom Steyer; and People for the American Way founder and TV producer Norman Lear.
Steyer’s group invested heavily in a campaign infrastructure to boost Gillum, something he couldn’t do himself. NextGen deployed field organizers to targeted precincts for the painstaking work of door-to-door advertising and invested in digital and direct mail advertising targeting 350,000 likely or sporadic Democratic primary voters, mostly women and African-Americans.
During one of Wednesday morning’s cable TV interviews, Gillum said Sanders came in at exactly the right time — Aug. 17, 11 days before primary day — to catapult his campaign upward.
Compelling story
Along the campaign trail, Gillum delighted in telling audiences that he was the only one of the candidates who wasn’t a millionaire.
“I’ve got a mortgage, and we’ve got three kids we work hard to take care of. I believe that we deserve a seat at the table too to represent the voices of everyday people.”
But there’s much more to Gillum’s story.
He grew up in Richmond Heights in Miami-Dade County with working class parents who struggled to make ends meet. His mother was a school bus driver and worked pressing clothes at a dry cleaner. His father was a construction worker who, when there wasn’t work, sold fruits and vegetables or set up across from the cemetery on Saturday mornings to sell flowers.
His parents had seven children. He was the first to graduate from high school and go to college (Florida A&M University) , and he touts his success as a reason good schools are important.
Another reason, he cites, is the watchful eye of his grandmother as a child.
In 2003, he became the youngest person elected to the Tallahassee City Commission at age 23. He’s been mayor since 2014.
“It’s a very compelling and personal story,” said Bea Longchamp, 37, of Plantation, who voted for Gillum. “I love everything that he stands for.”
Investigation
One thing Gillum’s opponents haven’t made an issue during the primary, but is sure to come up in the general election, is an ongoing FBI investigation of corruption in Tallahassee.
Gillum hasn’t been implicated and said he isn’t a target.
It prompted questions from a national cable TV host on Wednesday morning.
He’s also been scrutinized for a trip to Costa Rica with longtime lobbyist buddies. He said he did nothing wrong and paid his share of the cost.
“I’ve been elected for 15 years without so much as a smidgen of a stain on my public record,” he said in a pre-primary interview. “I’m confident that I’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing unethical and nothing illegal.”
He acknowledged Republicans would attack him — and he countered that they stand alongside Trump, “who is devoid of any sense of morals.”
On CNN, he said his message to voters was that people should “measure me on my merit, my actions, my qualifications for the position.”
He said anyone who’s committed wrongdoing should be held accountable.
Republican take
Republicans have a far different picture they’d like to paint.
Trump tweeted about Gillum on Wednesday morning, calling Gillum the “biggest dream” for the Republicans and describing him as “a failed Socialist Mayor named Andrew Gillum who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his city. This is not what Florida wants or needs!”
The Florida Republican Party echoed the president in its own Twitter statement, calling him “a failed socialist mayor who remains under investigation by the FBI in a public corruption case. It’s clear Andrew Gillum is not who Florida needs as our next leader.”