“Give them what they need,” the Rev. Marvin C. Zanders II said, “to bring it home.”

Those three words — bring it home — have been Gillum’s rallying cry since March, when the sunny Tallahassee mayor jumped into a crowded gubernatorial primary that almost no one expected him to win. As the midterm campaign heads into its final full week, they are on the lips of Democrats across Florida.

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It would be hard to overstate how much the party is banking on the excitement surrounding the candidacy of an unabashedly progressive 39-year-old African American.

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Gillum’s performance has given Democrats hope not only for taking back a governorship that they have not held in two decades, but also for the prospects of veteran U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in his closely fought race against current Gov. Rick Scott. Moreover, the updraft from the top of the ticket could help flip at least two GOP House seats.

Given the pivotal role that Florida plays in presidential contests, Democrats nationally are watching this year’s governor’s race as a barometer for 2020.

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Gillum’s Republican opponent, Rep. Ron DeSantis, has embraced President Trump as closely as any statewide candidate this year. One of his ads featured DeSantis reading “The Art of the Deal” to his infant son and helping his young daughter build a wall of toy blocks. Trump’s endorsement was a huge factor in DeSantis’s primary victory over Florida establishment favorite Adam Putnam.

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Gillum holds a narrow edge in the polls and is drawing healthy crowds, even in conservative areas of the state.

“What we’re seeing in the Gillum campaign is something that will be felt across the ticket, and that’s Democrats and Republicans and independents who recognize that politics are better when they are optimistic, when they are aspirational, when we are not pitting one group against another, when we’re not constantly on attack,” said Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.).

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But a campaign that looked like it might be an exception to the brutal politics of this midterm season has taken a rough turn into the final stretch. The candidates’ two debates have been stormy and largely untethered from any discussion of the issues — with DeSantis suggesting that Gillum would tolerate child molesters going free, and Gillum noting that white supremacist groups are running robo-calls in support of his Republican opponent.

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“Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist,” Gillum said. “I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”

The biggest unknown is how voters will react to new developments in a long-running FBI corruption investigation centered on city contracting in Tallahassee.

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Gillum has said repeatedly that he has been reassured that he is not a subject of the probe. But text messages that recently surfaced showed that he had not been entirely truthful about trips and entertainment he enjoyed with a lobbyist friend and an undercover agent posing as a contractor. Specifically, where the mayor has insisted he received tickets to the hit Broadway show “Hamilton” from his brother, the texts indicate he was aware they had been paid for by an undercover agent.

“I should have asked more questions to make sure that everything that had transpired was above board,” Gillum conceded in the second debate, which took place shortly after the text messages became public.

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It may be that none of this matters. Floridians are known to have a fairly high tolerance for ethical lapses in their politicians. Scott was elected governor twice despite the fact that he was once the head of a health-care company that paid huge fines for Medicare fraud. And this being a midterm, the final result will most likely be determined by which party does the best job of turning out its core voters.

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But even if Gillum holds his lead over the finish line, it will not be a pretty ending. A contest that looked like it might point to a way forward from the ugly politics of 2018 is instead becoming one of the best examples of how deeply we are stuck in them.