Well, you can be forgiven if you’ve entirely forgotten, or if you never knew. Because unless you lived in Florida or voraciously followed all sorts of Republican gubernatorial campaign combat, why on Earth would you remember that name?
We here in the Sunshine State, however, light grateful candles that we do not have to put the title ‘Governor’ before it.
In 2018, then Congressman Ron DeSantis squared off against the young and rumored to be charismatic mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum in the contest to see who would replace Rick Scott as Florida’s governor.
Their first debate just happened to coincide with the day that pipe bombs arrived – thankfully intercepted before anyone was hurt – addressed to Democratic congressional and party leaders and/or their offices.
Gillum used it as you might expect. He was a smooth race-baiting, professional grievance-class piece of work.
Pretty on the outside but whoo, boy – empty and nasty piece of work internally.
Naturally, Gillum had the Bernie wing of the party endorsement.
Gillum had been the flashy mayor of Tallahassee for four years at that point, and in the Democratic primary, he had smoked the shorts off of his challenger, Gwen Graham, the daughter of a revered old Florida name, Bob Graham.
Now, I was already going to dunk on Neera Tanden for Platner today, but then this Gillum thing came up and she, like, hands me this Xweet. It yet again illuminates how pathetic Democratic strategists are when something looks too pretty, new, and exciting to be true.
OMG this post is HILARIOUS today.
— tree hugging sister 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) July 7, 2026
…And there were a lot of progressive journalists who just ate that up. I liked Gillum, believed it and it was wrong.
There are no lessons they will ever learn.
It was nip and tuck right up to the last second.
Ron DeSantis has won his race to become Florida’s next governor, The Associated Press projects, derailing Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum’s bid to become Florida’s first black governor. The former Republican congressman’s victory ends a nail-biter of a race between the two men, who by late Tuesday night remained separated by just 1 percentage point.
The win did not come easily.
Gillum rode an unapologetically progressive platform to an upset victory in the Democratic primary earlier this year, shocking his better-funded opponents to emerge as a fitting foil to DeSantis. Endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Gillum mobilized his liberal base to face DeSantis, who made no bones about his close support for President Trump.
DeSantis, for his part, won his own primary against his more moderate opponent by a surprisingly wide margin.
Yet in this battle of progressive and conservative favorites, it was ultimately DeSantis who emerged with the general election win. He has promised to reduce the corporate income tax and has railed against “government takeover of health care.”
The night turned out to be all GOP, as Rick Scott’s Senate attempt took down longtime Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson.
So, after losing the recount as well (even though Broward County was remarkably adept at ‘finding’ votes weeks later), the talented, charismatic guy who had everyone fooled – or they had just seen what they wanted to see is more like it – left to pursue his options elsewhere. And as he was carrying the Democratic mantle of ‘stolen election,’ he probably could have followed Stacey Abrams’s path to fame and fortune.
But, sadly, Andrew Gillum wound up kind of where quite a few of us thought he was going to when more details about who he really was emerged post-campaign. For one thing, he was a public relations creation – not an actual public servant at his core. The Leon County Republican Club had done a bang-up job of keeping track of Gillum on their Facebook page over his term – or trying to, as it were – especially during Hurricane Michael, in October of 2018, just prior to the election.
Now, Cat 5 Michael devastated Mexico and Panama City Beaches, not to mention everything in between. Horrific. Flattened the landscape. Tallahassee, miraculously, wound up with only a glancing blow, although it still was enough that 97% of the area had no power, water outages were common, that sort of thing, plus tens of thousands of trees down.
Gillum was totally overwhelmed, and the Leon GOP would be at scheduled recovery events with their camera ready. The photogenic mayor would show up in a clean shirt, sleeves rolled up, lift a branch, move it to a dumpster… and leave. Or he’d stand and nod his head…and leave. Or he wouldn’t show at all. It was a version of ‘Where’s Waldo’ – trying to find the mayor doing something for the city in the storm’s aftermath.
There were even epic turf wars breaking out between volunteer power crews from other counties and states who’d come in to help because Gillum was so OBE (Overcome By Events) or just incompetent.
We were all like, this isn’t New Jersey and electrical unions! What is he doing?!’
Social media continues to swirl about what Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum knew and when he knew it regarding offers of help from outside utilities to get Tallahassee’s juice flowing again.
City and outside electric repair crews are still working throughout the capital after Hurricane Hermine. The state reported 17,099 customers in Leon County, including those served by other than the City of Tallahassee utilities, were still without power.
Gillum says he was “never aware” of a formal offer by Florida Power & Light, for instance, to aid in restoring power. He referred to a roundtable briefing with Gov. Rick Scott that included him and FPL president Eric Silagy, among many others.
“I heard them list what assets they had available, as did the several other utilities present in the room,” Gillum told FloridaPolitics.com.
In an earlier Facebook post, he added: “We are happy to accept any help from any person or organization that is going to accelerate the speed at which we can safely restore power to our residents.”
But a review of a video of that Friday meeting shows Silagy did extend a helping hand, whether formally or informally.
During that briefing, Silagy said his utility had “redeployed a fair number of people in the north, (around) Lake City … we have 575 personnel there now.
“I’m going to send those out unless anybody needs them,” he says in the video.
Gillum is sitting directly across the table from Silagy. And city utilities chief Rob McGarrah can be seen two seats down, nodding his head as Silagy speaks.
It’s just as well that Gillum’s term was up so someone who had a clue could get the city up and running.
Two years later, the great progressive hope who was going to save Florida Democrats was finally caught on film again.
But whatever it might have looked like, he swore he totally didn’t… um… inhale.
Just like it totally WASN’T a drug-fueled males-only sex party.
Former Florida gov. candidate Andrew Gillum found inebriated in hotel room with suspected overdose victim
“While I had too much to drink, I want to be clear that I have never used methamphetamines,” Gillum said.
Former Florida Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum is named in a police report Friday saying he was “inebriated” and initially unresponsive in a hotel room where authorities found baggies of suspected crystal methamphetamine.
…Gillum was the first black nominee in a major political party to run for governor in Florida. He lost narrowly to Republican Ron DeSantis in the 2018 election.
Since then, Gillum has mounted an effort to register Democratic voters in Florida and frequently appears on cable news channels as a political commentator.
In 2019, the Florida Commission on Ethics found probable cause that Gillum violated state ethics laws when he accepted gifts during out-of-town excursions with lobbyists and vendors and failed to report them. This included tickets to a performance of the musical “Hamilton.” A settlement of $5,000 was agreed to in that case
Whatever the married Gillum did do was enough for him to do the ‘rehab march’ and – oh, what a surprise to no one in Florida who had seen ‘other’ photos of the candidate – come out as bisexual.
Gillum came out as bisexual Monday during his first sit-down interview since March, when police found him inebriated and unconscious in a South Beach Miami hotel room with two men. (Drugs were found at the scene, though Gillum denies he used illegal substances and was not arrested.) That incident prompted Gillum to seek treatment and generated speculation that the former Tallahassee mayor and married father of three was gay.
The scandal seemed like it could be a sad crescendo to the promising political career of a man who came within a percentage point of being Florida’s first Black governor in 2018. And it is anything but clear what his path forward as a politician may be. But it’s significant that Gillum saw coming out so publicly as valuable.
“To be very honest with you, when you didn’t ask the question, you put it out there, is whether or not I identify as gay,” he said to talk show host Tamron Hall. “And the answer is, I don’t identify as gay, but I do identify as bisexual. And that is something that I have never shared publicly before.”
STUNNING! BRAVE! HE’S THE VICTIM HERE!
…And David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a Black LGBT civil rights organization, called Gillum’s experience coming to terms with his own sexuality relatable for many queer Black Americans.
“Black members of the LGBTQ+ community across the country watched Andrew Gillum’s interview with Tamron Hall today with empathy and love, as so many of us can relate to the complex issues and feelings he conveyed,” he said. “When we are forced by harmful societal expectations to operate in black and white, with no room to express the many gray areas of ourselves that make us who we are, we get hurt.”
Among the conversations that have swept the country this past summer about racism in America were discussions about homophobia within the Black community and racism within the LGBT community. Gillum’s interview showcased a Black man in the LGBT community embracing and discussing his identities and how he and those close to them are attempting to understand them better and how they shape his worldview, including his politics.
Whatever sad Andrew Gillum has been up to since 2020, besides beating his race-grievance drum…
My Democrat bf got upset with me when I said @AndrewGillum had no business on #essence2026 Global Black Economic Forum, given his 2020 drug binge gay escort infidelity history…boy was I RIGHT! https://t.co/fxHLRBj7Hf pic.twitter.com/UDNqKvzJcc
— THE RECLAMATION OF 🇺🇸 (@Coutorce) July 7, 2026
…I had no idea. I never gave the loser a second thought besides thanking God he never became governor and snickering about how Democrats self-deludedly snookered themselves.
Then, lo and behold, on the cusp of yet another shiny, new, hairy Democratic thing melting down in public, where they ignored all the WOOT! WOOT! WOOT! signs in their stampede to electoral glory, who should surface close to home here, but Andrew Gillum, Cautionary Candidate Tale.
He’s on local TV not because he’s been asked to speak, but because they always show the booking photos.
A late-night traffic stop in Daphne led to drug charges against Andrew Gillum, a former nominee for Florida governor.
Police said officers recovered several rolled marijuana cigarettes and three packages of a substance that tested positive for meth.
— WEAR ABC 3 (@weartv) July 7, 2026
…According to a press release from the Daphne Police Department, officers pulled over Gillum as he was driving erratically at about 10:45 p.m. Thursday.
Police said one of the officers spotted a glass pipe on the center console of the vehicle, which led them to search the car.
According to police, several rolled marijuana cigarettes and three packages of a substance that tested positive for methamphetamine were also recovered.
Gillum was then arrested and booked into the Daphne City Jail before being transported to the Baldwin County Correctional Facility.
I wonder whose methamphetamines those were THIS time?
This seems fair.
Hey everyone!! Meet Andrew Gillum….
He’s the former Tallahassee mayor and 2018 Democratic nominee for Florida governor
He was also just booked into the Baldwin County jail for Meth and other drugs
Just another one of those good, wholesome people endorsed by Democrats!! pic.twitter.com/a55UbaDooT
— SaltyGoat (@SaltyGoat17) July 7, 2026
Yeah.
YEAH
Now, how ’bout that Platner guy, Neera?
Learned anything?
We might lose the country if Maine reelects the moderate lady who voted to impeach Donald Trump instead of the rapist with a Nazi tattoo!
— Rev. Dr. Ashanti Van Buren+ (@AshantiVanBuren) July 7, 2026
YEAH
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