At 37, Gillum is one of the youngest candidates to run for governor. | AP Photo Gillum tells supporters he's running for governor in 2018 Later apologizes for sending e-mail using 'my City of Tallahassee email system that were not officially government related.'

Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum will officially announce his candidacy for governor on Wednesday, making him the first major Democrat to join what might be a messy and crowded primary in 2018.

“This is an improbable journey but a wholly possible one,” Gillum told a group of supporters on a conference call Tuesday, noting he was in New York lining up donors and supporters. “There is a moment here for clear and authentic voices to break through.”


At 37, Gillum is one of the youngest candidates to run for governor. He might be the only African-American as well. The other prospective Democratic candidates are all white: Miami Beach Mayor Phil Levine, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham and Orlando Democratic donor and trial lawyer John Morgan.

Gillum said a formal announcement will be made Wednesday, but did not give a specific time or place.

Gillum laid out the case for his candidacy last Friday in an Orlando speech before the Central Florida Urban League, which Levine also addressed as well as Republican Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran, who also might run. Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, also a Republican, plans to run for governor as well now that Gov. Rick Scott is termed out after 2018.

Shortly after Friday's speech, Leon County’s Republican Party called on Gillum to step down from his seat as mayor and questioned his office’s decision to purchase software from a NGP VAN, company that specializes in Democratic electioneering. Gillum’s office had said the software was for constituent outreach, not campaigning.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported that Gillum had used the software to email constituents with messages that contained his old campaign’s logo and post office box address. The Tallahassee Reports blog, which broke the news of Gillum’s software contract issue, discovered that Gillum used the software to send out an email that listed his official address as mayor in touting a Clinton campaign event in November.

“These folks will try to paint me as something that I won’t recognize as myself,” Gillum said Tuesday on his conference call with supporters. “But I think it’s going to be a real important to get out there and tell our own story.”

But Gillum promptly reversed himself later Tuesday and admitted in a written statement that “there were emails sent from my City of Tallahassee email system that were not officially government related.”

“It is ultimately my responsibility that an official government email system in my office was used to send messages that were not related to government business,” Gillum said. “It was inadvertent, but that does not make it okay. I'm sorry, and I plan to reimburse the City of Tallahassee for all expenses related to the NGP email system.”

Earlier, on his conference call, Gillum said he was nervous and “jazzed up” to run and said that he would campaign “in places where they haven’t seen a Democratic candidate for governor” — a reference to rural and suburban white areas of the state that recent Democratic candidates have all but ignored, an omission that cost them in 2016.

Though Gillum downplayed talk of race on his conference call, it could be a boon to him in a closed Democratic primary against white candidates. About 28 percent of the Democratic primary electorate was African-American.

Compared to the other potential Democratic rivals, Gillum said, “we have the most public-policy making experience — 15 years — and a story to tell from those 15 years. No one will believe it ‘cause I’m 37 years old. And that’s ok. Because it will give us the strength of newness and not [being a member of the] establishment.”

Last September, he took plenty of heat, even tangling with Gov. Rick Scott, after Hurricane Hermine rolled through Tallahassee. It was the city’s first hurricane since 1985, and left some areas without power for weeks, and prompted angry messages on social media and during city council meetings.

During a face-to-face meeting with Scott to discuss the storm, the governor accused the city of turning down state help. The discussion came after the Scott administration issued a series of press releases highlighting the city's power outages.

"Your offers of help would be so much more authentic if they also did not come at the same time as press releases were being sent out," Gillum told Scott.

During a tense meeting, Scott fired back, saying that it was his goal to “push as hard as possible to get power back as fast as I can. If that bothers people, I’m sorry.”

The back-and-forth with Scott, who is hugely unpopular with Democrats, is likely to play to Gillum's advantage in a primary.

Gillum, who declined to run for Congress in 2016, is viewed as a rising star in Democratic politics. In 2003, at age 23, he was the youngest person elected to the Tallahassee City Commission, and has served as mayor since 2014.

He first got statewide attention in 2010 when he unsuccessfully made a bid for Florida Democratic Party chair against former state Sen. Rod Smith, the heavy favorite. He also got a brief spot on the main stage last year at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

He's been boosting his profile in recent weeks as prepared to announce his gubernatorial bid. Most notably, he posted a series of tweets on Twitter last Friday to say he was “seriously considering a run” for governor. He has also confronted the National Rifle Association, a longtime nemesis of Democrats, to broaden his appeal. After a handful of gun rights groups sued the City of Tallahassee over a city ordinance, Gillum held a press conference in front of the courthouse prior to a hearing and denounce the powerful lobby group.

UPDATED at 10:15 p.m. with Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum's statement apologizing in a written statement that “there were emails sent from my City of Tallahassee email system that were not officially government related.”