Gillum concedes governor race
Ron DeSantis is state’s new chief executive
Democrat Andrew Gillum conceded his hard-fought race for Florida governor Saturday and congratulated Republican Ron DeSantis on becoming the state’s new chief executive.
Gillum, who is Tallahassee’s outgoing mayor, didn’t say in a Facebook Live video Saturday what he planned to do next.
“Stay tuned,” he said, adding that he would remain politically active and fight for reforms in how Florida handles its elections.
“We know that this fight continues. More than 4 million of your decided that you wanted a different direction for the state of Florida,” he said, with his wife, R. Jai Gillum, at his side in the video. “We want you to know that we see you; that we hear you.”
DeSantis responded to Gillum in a post on Twitter, writing, “This was a hard-fought campaign. Now it’s time to bring Florida together.”
His campaign said his tweet would stand as his statement.
Gillum 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.
In the video, Gillum said he decided to stay in the race because he wanted “to make sure every vote was counted.”
Gillum had a dramatic rise and fall during 2018, coming from well back in the polls during the Democratic primary race to stun frontrunner Gwen Graham in August. He then led DeSantis in almost every poll until ultimately coming up just short in the general election. DeSantis’ victory cements 20 years of Republican control of the governor’s office.
The slim margin this time — just 0.41 percentage points — triggered an automatic machine recount that gained Gillum just one vote of the nearly 8.2 million cast when it was completed Thursday, though several counties including Broward and Palm Beach did not report their numbers on time.
Gillum’s announcement came as most Florida counties were winding down their hand recount in the state’s contentious U.S. Senate race.
The smattering of results publicly posted on Saturday showed that Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson was only gaining a few hundred votes in his bitter contest with outgoing Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican.
The even closer races for Nelson and Scott and for agriculture commissioner between Democrat
Nikki Fried and Republican Matt Caldwell, with margins of less than 0.25 points, moved to a manual recount.
On Saturday, the top elections official in Broward County acknowledged publicly that her office had misplaced more than 2,000 ballots.
Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said that 2,040 ballots had been “misfiled.”
“The ballots are in the building,” Snipes tells members of the canvassing board responsible for doing the hand recount.
Gillum’s announcement came hours after President Donald Trump said on Twitter that Gillum will be a “strong Democrat warrior” and a “force to reckon with.’’
It also came within minutes of the 5 p.m. Saturday deadline for voters whose mail-in ballots had been rejected for signature issues to fix them with county elections offices.
Orange County Democratic chair Wes Hodge claimed the state was violating a judge’s order by adding a last-minute obstacle for those voters.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled Wednesday that voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected due to mismatched signatures now had until 5 p.m. Saturday to “cure” their ballots by sending in a signed affidavit and a copy of their IDs to their county supervisors of elections.
Copies of cure affidavits are available at every county elections office and website.
But after reaching out to more than 300 people who had a chance to cure their ballots and hand-delivering 76 affidavit forms, Hodge said Saturday that he was told by Orange elections staff that the forms couldn’t be accepted. The reason, he said, was because Secretary of State Ken Detzner directed county elections officials across the state to only use a newly written affidavit form made available only Friday afternoon.
“This new form, created with fewer than 16 hours remaining of a 48-hour extension, was clearly designed to suppress voters from having their voice heard,” Hodge said.
Hodge claimed the creation of the new form directly violated Walker’s ruling, which said ballots could be cured “in the same manner and with the same proof ” as before the original deadline of 5 p.m. Nov. 5, the day before Election Day.
“This directly undermines the integrity of the election process, and creates doubt in voters’ minds for the next election cycle,” Hodge wrote in a statement. “Federal Judge Mark Walk- er’s order directly spoke to the fact that these political games should NOT be occurring and that voters’ voices should be heard. … This type of voter suppression has no place in Florida and the games need to stop immediately.”
Democratic volunteer Chuck Dent said one woman with severe disabilities had extreme difficulty signing and voting in the first place.
“It’s twice now she’s done this,” he said of her vote and the initial affidavit she sent in. “And now this.”
Orange County Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles and the Department of State could not be reached for comment.
The deadline for counties to complete a manual recount of 93,000 overvotes and undervotes in the U.S. Senate election, in which Nelson trailed Scott by less than 13,000 votes, is noon Sunday.