After losing to DeSantis, Andrew Gillum crashed and burned, taking the Florida Democratic Party with him | Opinion

As fast as Democrat Andrew Gillum’s star rose in Florida five years ago, it crashed and burned — and with it, Gillum took Florida’s Democratic Party, which really hasn’t recovered, unable since to offer up a robust statewide candidate like was for a while.

Yes, Charlie Crist put up a fruitless fight to try to defeat Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022, but he failed to energize the party. But in 2018, Gillum did. He was among a crop of young Black politicians nationwide making a name for themselves following the end of the Barack Obama administration. Georgia had Stacey Abrams; Florida had Gillum trying to get fresh, new Democratic voters registered in significant numbers.

Gillum lost to Republican candidate DeSantis, then an unknown quantity in South Florida, by fewer than 34,000 votes, or 0.41 percentage points.

If federal prosecutors are right, behind that enthusiastic, young candidate hid a different version of Gillum. The former mayor of Tallahassee and a former political adviser went to trial on corruption-related charges on Monday.

It’s hard not to be relieved a sitting governor was not indicted. Although the Herald Editorial Board recommended him in 2018, it’s a stroke of luck Gillum didn’t win. Imagine the chaos and instability his arrest would have created were he in office.

Gillum bears a big share of the blame for delivering us the semi-autocratic DeSantis. He was dogged during the 2018 campaign by an FBI public corruption investigation into Tallahassee City Hall. There were the tickets to Broadway’s hit musical “Hamilton” he got from undercover agents posing as developers. It’s likely that cost him at least some of those 34,000 votes that gave DeSantis a win.

A Gillum governorship would have looked very different, minus the scandals. No culture wars in the state, no “Don’t say gay” law, no attacks on academic freedom at state universities, no six-week bans on abortion — a different, but, unfortunately, fantasy world.

After his loss, Gillum promised to continue his fight, saying that, although he had lost to DeSantis, he would sign up 1 million more Democratic voters.

It didn’t happen, then he unraveled. In 2020, Gillum was found by police in a South Beach hotel room in the company of a man who appeared to have overdosed on drugs. Rehab followed.

And last year, he was indicted by a federal grand jury, accused of lying to FBI agents and defrauding campaign mega-donors and organizations that believed they were donating to legitimate political causes. He denies wrongdoing and accuses the investigation of being political, the same trope we have heard from Donald Trump about his legal issues.

Gillum could have made history as the first Black governor of Florida, but his own demons helped bring him down. He is a tragic figure in some ways. Today’s Florida is solid red, and DeSantis is probably running for president.

And there was collateral damage. Much like Gillum’s career, the Florida Democratic Party today is in shambles. “A hollow shell” of itself, DeSantis recently said of the opposing party. We agree.

Gillum’s fall from grace is not the only cause of the troubles afflicting his party. Voter registration has been trending Republican for years, and Democrats’ lack of consistent engagement with voters predates Gillum.

But, looking back, his demise should have been treated like a bad omen. The 2022 elections turned out to be a blood bath for a party that’s struggled to raise money and find suitable candidates.

If the best Democrats could give us was Gillum, then they are in big trouble.