Nearly half of Florida's households struggle to make ends meet, and as the son of a bus driver and construction worker, Andrew knows firsthand what it's like to have your parents choose between which bills to pay before a service gets cut off.

Andrew Gillum is the Democratic gubernatorial nominee for Florida. The following is from his " Economy and Jobs " webpage as it appeared as of October 19.)

As Governor, he will address the devastating inequality that has hurt our working families, who are forced to live paycheck to paycheck and feel that the opportunity to get ahead isn't available to them anymore.

This sounds really bad. But Gillum includes no numbers. Such as:

Florida leads the 10 largest states in job growth and has added 75,449 new businesses since December 2010, a 16.5% increase in private-sector employers[.] ... As of June [2017,] [Gov. Scott added] 1,615,700 new private and public sector jobs ... more than doubling his [campaign pledge of 700,000.] At 4.1%, unemployment in the state is at the lowest level since 2006 and lower than the 4.4% national rate, which itself is a 16-year low.

Gillum's webpage continues:

Under Andrew's leadership, Tallahassee is the fastest-growing economy per capita in Florida[.]

Very impressive...if it were true – but it isn't. To be fair, Gillum did, for a few days in January, have some basis for making such a claim. For then, as reported by the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee Reports, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released data for 2016 that, as Reports put it, found that in 2016, "the economy in Tallahassee grew approximately six times as fast as the Florida economy[.]"

Reports made this observation not in exultation, but as establishing a basis for skepticism. It went on to point out that the data were "not consistent [with other stats:] job growth (Florida: 2.8%, Tallahassee: 2.1%) and taxable sales (Florida: 5.3%, Tallahassee: 4.0%) during 2016," and also that Tallahassee lagged in real estate sales and consumer spending. On January 15, it reported that Tallahassee's top ranking was driven not by jobs or sales, but by the economic activity associated with insurance carriers in the wake of a hurricane (Hermine).

Gillum knows, or should know, all of this. Yet, as of this October 19 writing, his website continues to claim that "Tallahassee is the fastest-growing economy per capita in Florida[.]"

It isn't. In real growth, it isn't even close. If he is awake, Gillum must know this. He must know that his own economic record is far inferior to that of the policies of the Republican opponent. (And, for a governor, the economy is Job 1.) So we have to ask, why is this man running for that office?

Bert Peterson operates a website at 4thofjuly.info. He owes a hat tip to Tallahassee Reports.