Race, socialism define first day of Florida campaign for governor

Florida Democrats — following 20 years of failure with five white centrist gubernatorial candidates — are going in a radically different direction by choosing their first African-American nominee for governor, one who ran on an unabashedly liberal platform.

The upset win on Tuesday of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, in defiance of polls and conventional wisdom, marked a profound political shift in the nation’s most crucial swing state as Democrats took a page from the GOP in choosing a candidate who they hope will energize their base. Gillum’s victory makes Florida’s race for governor a choice between new-era liberalism and the Republican Party under President Donald Trump and his handpicked candidate, Rep. Ron DeSantis.


Under the glare of cable news coverage Wednesday, the race rapidly became a campaign about the intersection of race and ideology after DeSantis went on Fox News to define Gillum as a far-left radical who would damage the state’s finances.

“The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda, with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state,” said DeSantis, who praised Gillum’s debate performances and described the Democrat as “an articulate candidate for those far-left views.”

Florida's Democratic Party chairwoman, Terrie Rizzo, called out the simian metaphor on Twitter and said “it’s disgusting that Ron DeSantis is launching his general election campaign with racist dog whistles." Gillum retweeted the comment without adding anything.

A Fox News anchor later took the extraordinary step of saying “we do not condone this language” by DeSantis.

DeSantis spokesman Brad Herold called Rizzo’s claim “absurd” and said DeSantis was criticizing Gillum over his ideology, not his race. The night before, Herold took to Twitter sarcastically to thank one of liberalism‘s newest political stars, New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for tweeting her support for Gillum.

“The progressive movement is transforming the country - and he proved that again tonight. Gillum ran on Medicare for All, Legalizing Marijuana, #AbolishICE & more,” she wrote.

DeSantis tussled with Ocasio-Cortez earlier in the campaign when he referred to her as a “girl” who supports socialism. Democrats accused him of sexism, and Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to clap back and note she’s of Puerto Rican descent along with a large number of Boricua voters in Florida.

The raw racial politics and Gillum besting the presumed front-runner, centrist Gwen Graham, underscore the widening differences between the two major political parties in Florida.

A minority of the Florida Democratic Party, 48 percent, is white. Today, about 28 percent of registered Florida Democrats are African-American, who comprise about 13 percent of the overall 13 million-person voter rolls in the state. About 16 percent of the overall voter rolls is Hispanic.

In contrast, the Republican Party of Florida is 83 percent white, while the overall voter rolls are 64 percent white. The GOP has lost minorities ever since former President Barack Obama won the state for the first of two times in 2008. About 11 percent of the GOP in Florida is Hispanic, the overwhelming majority of whom are anti-Castro Cuban-Americans who are particularly attuned to the criticisms of Gillum as an alleged “socialist.”

Trump’s election and his inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants were perceived in Florida’s elite political circles as disqualifying. Yet Trump carried the state in 2016 by just over a point, thanks to strong white voter turnout. The victory shocked the political class and ushered in a round of internal debate among Democrats, who wondered if the party needed a white centrist again.

But for the growing coalition of African-Americans, Hispanics and mixed-race voters in the Democratic Party, the lesson from 2016 as they headed into 2018 was that Hillary Clinton couldn’t excite the base, just like most of the Democrats before her.

“We tried the white middle-of-the-road people the last five times, and it didn’t work. Why not try something else?” said state Sen. Oscar Braynon, an African-American Democrat and outgoing Florida Senate Democratic minority leader.

“For the first time, with Gillum, I have a candidate I can take to my community and I don’t have to introduce them and explain why they’re going to be different from everybody else,” Braynon said.

Democrats started getting slaughtered in Florida midterms in 1998, when Buddy MacKay, a white centrist from Ocala, lost the governor’s race to Jeb Bush. In 2002, Bush beat another centrist white man, Bill McBride, who hailed from the Tampa Bay region. Four years later, Congressman Jim Davis of Tampa lost to then-Republican Charlie Crist, who won despite it being a Democratic wave year. In 2010, Rick Scott beat McBride’s wife, Alex Sink, in the governor’s race. And four years after that, Scott successfully defended his seat when Crist, who also hails from the Tampa Bay region, tried to mount a comeback as a Democrat.

In each of the midterms, Democratic turnout lagged Republican performance. Still, two Democrats managed to get elected in 2006, Sink when she ran for CFO and Sen. Bill Nelson. Nelson also rode Obama’s coattails in 2012 when he won reelection. Nelson’s standing in Florida has served to bolster the case of centrist Democrats; critics of the theory say Nelson is more of a lucky anachronism. Now Nelson faces Scott in a Senate race, and Democrats hope that Gillum’s presence on the ballot, along with the party’s first-ever African-American attorney general nominee, Sean Shaw, will juice minority turnout in November.

Gillum, like other liberals, said previous Democratic candidates failed to appeal to voters because “we didn’t represent our values.”

“When we’re unapologetic in pushing our values, we win,” Gillum says frequently on the campaign trail. “We don’t win by becoming Republican Lite. We’ve tried that before.”

After decades of abiding by the notion that Democrats need a moderate who appeals to swing voters, Gillum’s nomination challenged the orthodoxy and worried some because of the newness of the experiment that his candidacy poses. Also of concern, a wide-ranging FBI probe at Tallahassee City Hall that DeSantis already held up as a sign of Gillum’s “corruption.”

But Ben Pollara, a Miami consultant and top Democratic fundraiser, said Republicans can get only so many miles out of the attack after the president’s former campaign chairman was convicted last week of corruption charges just as Trump’s former lawyer admitted to a criminal campaign-finance conspiracy amid an ongoing criminal probe of his campaign.

Gillum’s win Tuesday rested on two major pillars: African-American voters and white liberals, who were among his earliest supporters. Though underfunded, Gillum’s campaign was kept alive by a late endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and outside money from California billionaire Tom Steyer and liberal financier George Soros.

Steyer committed his NextGen group to lead a network of liberal organizations that helped turn out voters. Many of the groups, which advocate for social justice and an increased minimum wage, registered and turned out minority voters in big counties like Miami-Dade, Broward and Duval, which covers Jacksonville. In the 15 counties with the largest black Democratic population, Gillum rolled up some of his biggest margins over fellow Democrats Graham, Philip Levine, Jeff Greene and Chris King.

On Wednesday, Trump praised DeSantis and name-checked Gillum on Twitter by portraying him as an easy-to-beat candidate.

“Not only did Congressman Ron DeSantis easily win the Republican Primary, but his opponent in November is his biggest dream....a failed Socialist Mayor named Andrew Gillum who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his city,” Trump wrote. “This is not what Florida wants or needs!”

Gillum replied: “What our state and country needs is decency, hope, and leadership. If you agree, join us at http://AndrewGillum.com. Also, @ me next time, @realDonaldTrump.”

Most of Gillum’s day after the election was spent navigating the unexpected win and the crush of national press attention. Because he won with only 34 percent of the vote, Gillum spent Wednesday building bridges with the other campaigns and preparing for the election.

“Democrats are divided,” said Democratic pollster Steve Vancore, who lives in Tallahassee, as do Gillum and Graham. “One-third is enthusiastic for their guy, saying, ‘Yay! We got our guy!’ And the other two-thirds are like, ‘Who is this guy? What happened?’ So one-third is enthusiasm, and the other third is a question mark.”

Gillum, Vancore said, is the new face of the party.

“This is history,” he said.