Sept. 7, 2018 –If Ben Jealous is regarded as a longshot to become governor of Maryland, Andrew Gillum’s chances to win the governorship of Florida looked like a moonshot — until he pulled off a miracle last month.
Now Jealous needs to take lessons from this fast-rising Tallahassee political star.
Gillum, like Jealous, came from behind to defeat a field of Democrats, running to the left of them with a strong endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jealous’ Lessons from Florida Mayor Andrew Gillum, Democratic nominee for Florida governor
But Gillum wasn’t just a few steps behind, as was the case with Jealous. The Tallahassee mayor was miles behind other Democrats running for Florida governor. In every poll, Gillum finished fourth or fifth in a field that included a former congresswoman, the wealthy mayor of Miami and a Palm Beach billionaire.
Yet he won by nearly 50,000 votes.
Collectively, his foes spent $90 million in their losing campaigns, while Gillum spent $4 million — much of it provided by two well-known billionaire liberal activists, George Soros and Tom Steyer.
Gillum didn’t pour his fund-raising dollars into Florida’s ultra-expensive TV ads. Instead, the money went into field organizing, phone banks and old-fashioned door-knocking. “Money doesn’t votes,” he said. “People do.”
Gillum quietly covered the state, holding events in out-of-the-way places and any site where folks wanted to hear from him. Voters learned about the mild-mannered, well-spoken 39-year-old mayor through word-of-mouth and slickly produced web videos.
His message resonated.
Issues People Care About
Jealous and Gillum are both youthful African Americans. But the Tallahassee mayor doesn’t use hard-edged, ultra-liberal “Our Revolution” rhetoric. Instead he calls for common-sense politics where candidates speak quietly and sensibly about issues that people care about: school funding, wages and jobs, health care as a right, immigration, and the environment are front-and-center in his Florida campaign.
So is race, thanks to a huge mistake by his opponent, Rep. Ron DeSantos, a die-hard defender of President Trump. In a post-primary interview, DeSantos told voters “don’t monkey it up” by electing Gillum — an expression roundly condemned as racist. Then came a series of grotesquely racist robocalls about Gillum produced by a white nationalist.
It boomeranged. At least for now, Gillum has a lead over DeSantos in the polls. His favorable rating is plus-13 compared to DeSantos’ plus-2.
So far, Gillum has energized voting groups that in the past under-performed on Election Day — blacks, Hispanics, millennials and women.
Here’s a revealing glimpse into his appeal: One-quarter of Democrats who came out to vote in the Florida primary had not cast a ballot in the last three elections.
The key to Gillum’s campaign seems to lie in following the lead of Barack Obama by presenting a positive message that embraces the American dream without using a sledge hammer and fiery bombast.
The American Way
On election night, Gillum said, “Right here in the state of Florida we are going to remind this nation of what is truly the American way. We’re going to unite this state. What’s going to bring us together is our common and shared belief that regardless of where you come from, regardless of what your mother or your father did for their profession, regardless of what side of the tracks you live on, that every single Floridian ought to have their equal and fair shot at the American dream.”
As of Labor Day, that message is resonating.
It has also caught on in the U.S. Senate race in Texas, where another decided underdog, Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rouke of El Paso, has come from far, far behind in the polls to close-to-even with incumbent Tea Party Republican, and born-again Trump cheerleader, Ted Cruz.
Jealous’ Lessons from Florida Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.
The youthful, attractive O’Rouke is running a New Age, shoe-leather campaign of compassion and caring for Texans of all varieties. He’s traveling in a rented pick-up truck to all 254 counties (even driving into the heart of deep red Republican territory) talking to overflow crowds in the most unlikely places.
He’s live-streaming his daily actions, too.
Some 44,000 people viewed him eating a hamburger for lunch one day. Another 42,000 watched as he drove off in his pickup while forgetting to grab his cup of coffee from the hood of the truck.
An astounding 44 million people viewed a talk he gave defending the right of NFL players to kneel during the National Anthem:
“There is nothing more Americans than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere or any place. Reasonable people can disagreed on this issue. And it makes them no less American to come down on a different conclusion.”
Texans have been captivated by O’Rourke’s positive, optimistic message. He’s becoming a cult figure, and an unconventional spokesman for people fed up with today’s poisonous politics.
Armadillos and Yellow Lines
Like Gillum and Jealous, O’Rourke embraces far-left ideas, but he does so in a non-threatening way. He explains his liberalism, and his refusal to take centrist positions in a decidedly conservative state, by telling audiences, “the only thing you’ll find in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos.”
Folks in Texas get what he’s talking about.
It’s still an uphill slog for Democrats in right-leaning Texas and in conservative Florida, but victory is no longer out of reach.
Jealous’ challenge is to re-calibrate his badly off-line messages to Maryland voters and more closely follow the Gillum and O’Rourke approaches. He needs to sound less like an angry Bernie Sanders and more like a calm and compassionate Barack Obama.
He’s still got time to steer his campaign toward calmer waters where he can effectively explain his policy differences with Gov. Larry Hogan without scaring off voters.
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