A few random thoughts on @AndrewGillum’s FBI scandal tampabay.com/florida-politi…
1) This scandal is a big part of the reason so many of us in the political press corps and his Democratic primary rivals were skeptical of Gillum’s prospects of winning the primary.
Other than strong reporting by The Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee Reports, most of the Florida press gave it little attention because Gillum was such an underdog.
His Democratic rivals barely mentioned it (publicly) because they assumed for much of the year Gillum would drop out the race. When it was clear he would not, they did not want to antagonize Dem activists and especially African-American voters, by attacking a popular black leader
2. The timing of these new revelations, two weeks before Election Day, is lousy, yes. But it would have been much worse had it come out four or five months ago, before Gillum squeaked to victory in the primary.
3. Gillum handled this terribly. For at least a year, he has been evasive, stonewalling, misleading and, perhaps, untruthful about his trips/junkets with a lobbyist pal and undercover FBI investigation.
He says the FBI asked him not to discuss it. So what? If you're running for governor of America's third largest state and you did nothing wrong, get the facts out there. Put it behind you, rather than have to answer questions just as six million people are casting their votes.
And playing the race card when facing legitimate questions makes you look like another cynical pol, when you're running as an optimistic, unifying idealist.
