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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Andrew Gillum, who tried to energize Florida's young and minority voters through a Democratic coalition seeking to end Republican control of the governor's office, ended his bitter campaign Saturday as that first black candidate to be appointed to this post.
Gillum, whose chorus had been "bringing home" while he was telling the story of growing up poor in the state, concluded his campaign with a Facebook video that he recorded beside his wife in a park.
In his more than four-minute video, Gillum congratulated Republican Ron DeSantis and promised to remain politically active, even though his tenure as mayor of Florida's capital, Tallahassee, ends next week. Gillum said: "stay tuned".
Gillum, just 39, has drawn national attention and financial support from well-known Liberal billionaires with his first candidacy for a position all over the state. He used a liberal platform that included the expansion of Medicaid and raising taxes to spend more on education, even though both ideas would have been difficult to pass through the GOP-controlled legislature.
His last act as a candidate was less confrontational than that of another major African-American candidate in this year's mid-term elections: Stacy Abrams, in neighboring Georgia, ended his campaign for the governor Friday, yielding to a Republican with an indignant indignant tone establishing himself as a leading defender of voting rights.
"This has been the journey of our lives," said Gillum, appearing in the video with his wife, R. Jai Gillum. "Although no one wants to be more governor than me, it was not just an electoral cycle, it was about creating the kind of change in this state that really allows citizens to have their voices heard in the country. of our government, in our in our communities, we know that this struggle continues. "
Gillum's concession comes hours before Florida counties release official results Sunday afternoon after days of ballot contests for governor and a race in the US Senate – two mid-term elections monitored at national level have kept the presidential election alive since election day.
Gillum's brief remarks came a few hours after President Donald Trump, who at one point in the campaign had strongly criticized Gillum, congratulated him for running a difficult race.
"He will be a powerful Democratic warrior in the future – a force to be reckoned with!" said Trump in a Twitter post.
Gillum had initially conceded to DeSantis on the evening of the election, but he had retracted it when the reduced margin of safety between the two candidates narrowed. But he still remains in front of DeSantis with more than 30,000 votes following an automatic recount. Counties are completing a manual recount this weekend and must submit their official results no later than noon on Sunday.
Gillum's concession ensures that Florida Republicans will retain their grip on the governor's office since Jeb Bush's tenure began in 1999.
DeSantis, 40, was considered an outsider before Trump tweeted his support for DeSantis in December, a month before DeSantis took part in the race. Trump campaigned to help push DeSantis to a primary victory in August and visited Florida twice more to help the Republican in the final days of the election.
The DeSantis campaign did not respond to Gillum's remarks, but rather to a statement that the former congressman had issued two days ago.
"Campaigns are supposed to be the subject of lively debate with opposing ideas and visions for the future," DeSantis said. "The campaign for the governor has achieved this goal, as evidenced by the historic turnout of citizens of all parties across our state, but the campaigns of ideas must give way to governance and the mobilization of citizens to ensure the future of Florida.The campaign is now over, my goal will be. "
DeSantis stumbled after winning the primary on Aug. 28, telling Fox News that voters should not "ping that" by electing Gillum.
Despite the implications that DeSantis is racist – an idea he angrily challenged during a debate – he is about to officially win the state that Trump created in 2016. He promised to keep many of them intact. the same education policies and in place by the previous Republican governors.
DeSantis has been touted as a political underdog, despite three congressional terms and a US Senate candidacy in 2016, before giving up the race when Republican Senator Marco Rubio decided to run for re-election.
DeSantis is a former naval officer who graduated from law at Yale University before graduating from law school at Harvard University.
He won the recognition of his name at the primary with over 100 appearances on Fox News, often to defend the president.
DeSantis led a largely negative campaign, calling Mr. Gillum a socialist and claiming that he had overseen one of the most corrupt and most affected cities by state crime. Trump joins the critics by tweeting similar messages. The allegation of corruption stems from an ongoing investigation by the FBI on City Hall, for which Gillum said she was not a target and cooperate with her. The accusation that Tallahassee had the highest crime rate in the state was false.
Gillum described DeSantis as a subject of racial discord, repeatedly emphasizing his comment "monkey".
"I do not call Mr. Racant DeSantis, I'm just saying that racists believe it's racist," Gillum said before.
Gillum's announcement came as most of Florida's counties finished telling their story in the controversial US Senate race. The few results released on Saturday showed that US Democrat Senator Bill Nelson garnered only a few hundred votes in his fierce fight with incumbent Governor Rick Scott, a Republican.
State officials ordered a manual recount earlier in the week after an automatic recount provided by law showed Scott was running Democrat Bill Nelson with about 12,600 votes. More than 8 million voters voted in this race.
Nelson and the Democrats have filed several lawsuits after the tight election, challenging everything from the law on the mismatch of the state's signatures to postal voting deadlines.
If Nelson, 76, lost, it would probably mean the end of a long political career spanning four decades. Nelson was first elected to the US Senate in 2000. A win for Scott would mark his third victory since the launch of his political career in 2010 by a multimillion-dollar business man. At every race, Scott barely beat his Democratic opponent.
The current law requires an automatic recount in races where the margin is 0.5 percentage point or less. After the recount, if the differences in the runs are equal to or less than 0.25 percentage points, a manual recount is ordered. Local soliciting councils only examine ballot papers for which a vote has not been recorded by the voting machines.
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