Former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has announced that he will not run for president in 2020, but will instead be registering voters to turn the state Democratic before the next presidential election.
“It requires that we get out there, and that we organize, and that we activate and that we produce a voter who is going to show up, not just on Election Day, but the day after they’re going to be there to hold you accountable,” Gillum said Wednesday night at the historically Black Florida Memorial University.
Last week, Gillum and his supporters launched the voter outreach organization Bring It Home Florida. The organization is named after his campaign slogan from his 2018 gubernatorial run.
After the successful bid of Florida’s Amendment 4 in the last election, which sought to restore voting rights to ex-felons who complete their sentence, Gillum is optimistic about Democratic voter engagement moving forward. (Though Florida’s Republican lawmakers are now considering changing what that means and who would qualify under the law.)
“Because we turned out and we voted like our lives depended on it, 1.4 million people now have the ability to register to vote here in the state of Florida,” Gillum said. “That is a big deal.”
President Donald Trump narrowly won Florida in 2016, the biggest swing state in the country, with only 29 Electoral College votes. Trump’s 2020 campaign will have a large presence in Florida.
Having lost by nearly 30,000 votes across the state, Gillum said that whoever becomes the Democratic nominee will have a huge chance at winning the presidency if they can turn Florida.
“The road to the White House runs through Florida,” Gillum said Wednesday. “We can deny Donald Trump a second term right here in the state of Florida.”
Similar efforts to register voters are underway in Georgia, with former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams using her platform to fight voter suppression after it proved to be a major issue in Georgia’s recent, highly contentious election.
When asked why he and Abrams were not also running for president, like Beto O’Rourke (who is white and lost his race by a far larger margin than did Gillum and Abrams), Gillum responded:
“There’s no doubt that O’Rourke enjoys a set of privileges in his decision making that other candidates don’t.” He added, “Listen, man, we’re used to working.”
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