Andrew Gillum

Andrew Gillum

: Photo from Wikimedia Commons / Author of Photo: Colin Hackley

Overview

* Became an organizer with the People For the American Way Foundation in 2002
* Was elected Mayor of Tallahassee, Florida in 2014
* Lost to Ron DeSantis in race for Florida governor in 2018
* Embraces a far-left political agenda
* Became an alcoholic and illicit drug user
* Was caught in a hotel room with a gay escort while under the influence of drugs or alcohol in 2020


Born in Miami, Florida, on July 26, 1979, Andrew Gillum holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Political Science from Florida A&M University, where he was very active in the Student Government Association. In early 2000, he helped organize a large “March on Tallahassee” to protest Governor Jeb Bush’s 1999 executive order abolishing affirmative action in state university admissions and state contracting. To reward Gillum’s activism vis-a-vis this and other matters, the Center for Policy Alternatives recognized him as the nation’s top student leader in 2001. In 2002, Gillum became the Florida Field Organizer with the People For the American Way Foundation (PFAWF), spearheading its “Arrive With 5” initiative — a voter-mobilization campaign whereby young people pledged to bring five additional voters with them to the polls on Election Day.

In March 2003 the Florida Democratic Party recruited Gillum to serve as its interim Political Director, but just nine months later he returned to his previous position with PFAWF. Also in 2003, Gillum was elected to the Tallahassee City Council, a post he would hold for the next 11 years.

In late 2004, Gillum, in addition to his City Council duties, became the National Deputy Director of PFAWF’s “Young People For” program, a campus-based initiative designed to develop young leftist leaders across the United States. In 2005 he established the Young Elected Officials Network, which had a similar mission. The leading funder of this organization was George Soros‘s Open Society Institute.

In 2014, Gillum was elected Mayor of Tallahassee. In 2016 he was given a platform from which to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

On August 28, 2018, Gillum won the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial primary race in Florida. Among the more noteworthy endorsers of his campaign were Senator Bernie Sanders and the activist groups Democracy For America and Our Revolution.

To view Gillum’s positions on a variety of key campaign issues, see Footnote #1 below.[1]

During his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, Gillum released a video demanding that President Donald Trump be impeached because he had “obstructed justice” by firing former FBI Director James Comey.

In June 2018, Politico reported that Gillum had failed to disclose two home mortgages totaling $423,665 on financial disclosure forms dating back to 2014, and was thus in violation of state ethics laws requiring state officials to report any debts exceeding $10,000.

In August 2018, Gillum’s Republican opponent in the gubernatorial race, Ron DeSantis, said “we’ve got to work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction,” adding that “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.” Characterizing DeSantis’s remark as racist, Gillum subsequently told Fox News anchor Shepard Smith: “Well, in the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls. They are now using full bullhorns.”

The two leading individual donors to Gillum’s 2018 campaign were the prominent billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer. On August 23, 2018, Soros, who already had contributed $1 million to Gillum’s Forward Florida political committee, announced that he was giving $250,000 more. And Steyer, who had previously funneled $500,000 to Forward Florida, pledged another $300,000. These August donations coincided with a $3.5 million get-out-the-vote effort by a coalition of pro-Gillum leftist organizations. “I’m obviously deeply appreciative of Mr. Soros, as well as Mr. Steyer, both men who I’ve known them for some time,” said Gillum.

In September 2018, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Gillum “has aligned himself with several prominent anti-Semitic organizations known for promoting boycotts of Jewish goods and individuals,” most notably the Hamas-inspired Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and Dream Defenders. On August 29, 2018, Gillum appeared on a podcast where he was asked to comment on a recent conflict wherein the Israeli military had killed 60 Palestinians — mostly members of Hamas — who were among tens of thousands of Gaza-based rioters trying to infiltrate the Jewish state with jihadists and terrorists. Gillum replied: “None of us can look at those images and be okay with it … at the hands of this [Trump] administration, we now have even cited more violence by recognizing Jerusalem to be the capital [of Israel] and also to locate the United States embassy there, again just adding more fuel to the fire. I think it was a provocation by the president that was unnecessary and it has been costly from a human toll.” Later in the interview, Gillum characterized Israel’s military response to Hamas rocket attacks as “an outsized response that has created a humanitarian crisis.”

  • Gillum’s affection for Dream Defenders had been made plain as early as 2014 when he said: “We must learn from the successes of young leaders like the Dream Defenders and recruit, train, and connect thousands more local organizers and activists, particularly in underrepresented communities and regions of the country.”
  • On June 11, 2018, Gillum signed a pledge affirming his support for a Dream Defenders booklet titled Freedom Papers, which asserted that “police and prisons have no place in ‘justice’,” likened police officers to “slave catchers,” and stated: “Police were never meant to serve me and you … Police and prisons since their founding have always been about safety for the haves while wreaking havoc for the have-nots.” In an October 2018 podcast interview, Gillum said: “I’m for police accountability, but law enforcement … can’t do its job if it does not have a trusting relationship with the community. At the time that a law enforcement official has to go to a weapon, to a gun, to a baton, to a taser, then they have already have to go too far by their very presence. By the very trust that they inspire in community and in society, they are supposed to be able to bring most situations to heel.”

Notably, on Gillum’s watch, the city of Tallahassee and its surrounding Leon County metro area had been plagued by the highest crime rate in Florida for each of Gillum’s four years in office up to that point. In 2017, Tallahassee experienced more murders than in any previous year in its history.

In October 2018, newly uncovered text messages and email records showed that Gillum, during an August 2016 trip to New York, had accepted a high-priced ticket to the popular Broadway show Hamilton from Mike Miller, an undercover FBI agent who was investigating government corruption connected with Tallahassee, where Gillum was mayor. Gillum responded to the release of the documents by stating, “The goal is obviously to use my candidacy as a way to reinforce, frankly, stereotypes about black men.”

Also during the aforementioned 2016 FBI investigation of Tallahassee government officials, Gillum and his wife vacationed at an exclusive, $1,400-per-night luxury resort in Costa Rica with an entourage that included lobbyists, close friends, and investors Sean Pittman and Adam Corey. Corey, a longtime friend of Gillum, had developed the recently opened Edison Restaurant in Tallahassee with taxpayer money. Though Gillum claimed that the Costa Rican trip was personal in nature, and that he had paid for it (in cash) entirely on his own, emails subsequently obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat showed that during the vacation, Gillum had scheduled a May 16 meeting at the Edison between himself, Corey, and undercover FBI agent Mike Miller, who was posing as a developer. “Even without Corey setting up a business meeting during the trip,” stated the Tallahassee Democrat in June 2018, “ethics watchdogs said the trip blurs the lines between friendship and business, especially given the close ties between Gillum, Corey and Pittman and their dealings with the city.” In October 2018, Politico confirmed that Gillum had never paid for his use of the Costa Rican villa in 2016.

On October 31, 2018, Fox News reported that according to emails obtained as part of a Florida state ethics probe, Gillum had broken state law in February 2016 by using Tallahassee city funds to pay for a private round-trip flight on a developer’s plane. The purpose of the trip was to meet prospective campaign donors in Tampa Bay – lobbyists, local business executives, and high-profile trial attorneys. Prior to this revelation, Gillum’s office had falsely maintained that the trip in question was for official business.

Notwithstanding the cloud of controversy that was forming around Gillum, former Vice President Joe Biden, during an October 2018 campaign event in Tampa, lauded him as “one of the most exciting, new, young leaders in the nation” and stated that the upcoming November election was about “reclaiming America’s soul, for real.”

On November 2, 2018, former president Barack Obama delivered an impassioned campaign speech supporting Gillum’s gubernatorial bid. Said Obama: “So, you want someone who is actually going to work for working people? Andrew Gillum is somebody who is going to work for working people. … He knows the promise of this country. So he’s not going to work for people who had it handed to them. He’s going to work for people who had to work their way up just like his parents did to look after him, to look after their families. Andrew has lived the American Dream. And if you give him your vote, he will fight to make sure every child in Florida has the same chance that this state and this country gave him.” At the same rally, Gillum said: “We have an opportunity to send both Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump a message. We have a chance to send them an unapologetic message: that their brand of politics is no longer acceptable in the state of Florida.”

On November 6, 2018, Gillum narrowly lost the Florida gubernatorial election to DeSantis.

In the early morning hours of March 13, 2020, Gillum was present during an incident involving crystal meth at the Mondrian South Beach Hotel in Miami Beach. Specifically, two policemen responded to a cardiac-arrest distress call from the hotel just before 1 a.m.  When the officers arrived at the scene, they found a Miami Beach Fire-Rescue team already there, treating a man named Travis Dyson, an openly gay male escort, for a possible drug overdose. An acquaintance of Dyson, Aldo Mejias, told police that Andrew Gillum was also inside the hotel room under the influence of an unknown substance and had been vomiting in a bathroom. Officers later reported that when they had tried to speak with Gillum, he was “unable to communicate due to his inebriated state.” In a statement issued that same day to Miami Herald reporter David Smiley, Gillum said: “I was in Miami last night for a wedding celebration when first responders were called to assist one of my friends. While I had too much to drink, I want to be clear that I have never used methamphetamines.”

On March 15, 2020, Gillum announced that he would be entering a rehab facility, explaining that after his loss in the 2018 gubernatorial election, he “fell into a depression that has led to alcohol abuse.”

In February 2021, it was reported that Gillum in fact had paid Travis Dyson for sex on multiple occasions. Dyson alleged that he and Gillum had first gotten together on Grindr, a dating app for homosexuals. Dyson also said that during a number of their sexual encounters, both he and Gillum had taken Gamma Hydroxybutyrate, a drug that can heighten a user’s sex drive.

On June 22, 2022, Gillum, who had been under federal investigation on suspicion of accepting gifts from lobbyists and vendors during his time as mayor of Tallahassee, surrendered to authorities over 21 criminal counts that included charges of lying to the FBI, wire fraud, grant fraud, bank fraud, campaign contribution fraud, fund fraud, conspiracy, and making false statements. As one Florida news outlet reported:

“The 26-page indictment points to the FBI conducting a public corruption investigation that began in April of 2015. In one instance, an FBI undercover agent posing as a developer interested in purchasing and developing property in Tallahassee was solicited to make a $5,000 campaign contribution for Gillum’s political action committee, to pay for a fundraising dinner, and in a trip to New York, paid for Gillum’s lodging, food and drink, ‘a boat ride around New York harbor, and a ticket to the Broadway show Hamilton.’

“The indictment stated that Florida law required municipal officials, such as Gillum, to file a Quarterly Gift Disclosure with the Florida Commission on Ethics if any gift was accepted that was valued at more than $100. The indictment said that on Dec. 28, 2016, he did file a gift disclosure, but did not disclose the gifts from the undercover agent.

“There are other instances detailed in the indictment:

  • “Allegedly solicited campaign contributions (from undercover FBI agents) in exchange for favors as Mayor of Tallahassee and then lied about it during a criminal, federal investigation into corruption in the City of Tallahassee.
  • “Allegedly conspired to defraud (along with [co-conspirator Sharon Janet] Lettman-Hicks) several individuals with promises that the funds would be used for legitimate purposes, but were instead used for personal gain.
  • “Allegedly used a communications firm called P&P Communications Inc. (owned by Lettman-Hicks), to hide fraud. Gillum allegedly received regular payments disguised as employee wages.
  • “Took $200,000 from two organizations intended to be used as a grant for fighting the preemption of local governments’ regulations. The indictment alleges that Lettman-Hicks diverted $50,000 of it to the company P&P Communications [a company owned by Lettman-Hicks] and used those funds to pay Gillum’s ‘salary.’
  • “Allegedly took $150,000 of a $250,000 campaign contribution and had it diverted to P&P disguised as a contract to provide services on voter education, but it was instead disbursed to Gillum and Lettman-Hicks.”

One of the attorneys defending Gillum against the aforementioned charges was Elias Law Group partner Marc Elias, who, in conjunction with fellow attorney David Oscar Markus, released a prepared statement that said: “The government got it wrong today. The evidence, in this case, is clear and will show that Mr. Gillum is innocent of all charges. We look forward to putting this case to rest and giving Andrew and his family peace of mind once and for all.” Gillum, for his part, issued a statement saying: “There has been a target on my back ever since I was the mayor of Tallahassee.”

In December 2022, U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor refused to dismiss the federal charges that had been levied against Gillum, rejecting Gillum’s attorney’s claim that his client was being treated unfairly because he was a black man who had sought high political office.

On May 4, 2023, a jury found Gillum not guilty on the charge of making false statements to undercover FBI agents, and was hung on all the remaining counts.

On May 15, 2023, federal prosecutors, who had stated after the May 4 verdict that they intended to pursue a new trial, announced that they had now changed their minds and would dismiss the remaining charges against Gillum.

In addition to his political activities, Gillum has also served as a Board of Directors member with the New World Foundation, the Schott Foundation for Public Education, and the Opportunity To Learn Action Fund. Moreover, he has been recognized as an “emerging leader” by the Congressional Black Caucus, Jet magazine, Ebony magazine, the Association of Trial Lawyers for America (American Association for Justice), The Drum Major Institute, IMPACT, and the Washington Post.

Further Reading:Mayor Andrew Gillum” (Talgov.com, 2015); “Andrew Gillum” (Linkedin.com).

Footnotes:


  1. On a variety of key issues, Gillman:
    • strongly favors the expansion of Obamacare as a step toward a government-run, single-payer healthcare system;
    • strongly favors government-enforced affirmative action policies designed to compensate nonwhites and women for the effects of past and present discrimination;
    • strongly favors a steeply progressive income-tax structure where high earners pay disproportionately high rates, and where corporate taxes are increased significantly;
    • strongly favors the implementation of a pathway-to-citizenship for illegal aliens;
    • strongly favors the enactment of carbon taxes, higher CAFE standards for automobiles, and federal funding for the research-and-development of wind and solar power technology;
    • strongly opposes Voter ID laws as racist schemes that are designed to suppress minority voting;
    • believes that the enactment of voucher programs through which low-income parents can take their children out of substandard public schools and send them instead to superior private schools, constitutes bad public policy;
    • believes that the availability of guns should be severely restricted, even for law-abiding citizens who have never been convicted of a crime, and that the 2nd Amendment does not guarantee Americans the right to possess a firearm;
    • supports a complete ban on so-called “assault weapons”;
    • believes that the federal government should inject large amounts of funding – in the form of cash as well as federal job-creation programs – to help the U.S. economy recover from downturns that it may experience;
    • believes that the nationalization of banks and corporations is more appropriate than government bailouts of those entities when they fail economically;
    • calls for a national $15-per-hour minimum wage requirement for all workers; and
    • advocates the repeal of Florida’s “stand-your-ground” gun laws which permit people to use deadly force if they feel that their lives are threatened by an aggressor or assailant.

Additional Resources:


Andrew Gillum, Obama’s Mini-Me, Makes History With 21-Count Indictment
By Daniel Greenfield
June 24,

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