The 2018 Florida governor’s race will go down as one of the great sliding-doors moments in American politics. Ron DeSantis, after “begging” for Donald Trump’s endorsement, eked out a 0.4 percent win over the Democratic mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum. In the years since, DeSantis became an anti-lockdown Covid champion, a very expensive failed presidential candidate and is now hotly tipped to fill a Trump cabinet vacancy once he leaves the governor’s mansion in November.
Gillum has had a… different trajectory. Police officers found him in a hotel room with a male escort, suffering from a suspected crystal meth overdose in 2020. The married father-of-three checked himself into rehab and came out as bisexual later that year. Then on Thursday, he was taken into custody in Daphne, Alabama, and booked for possession of dangerous drugs, drug paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.
Gillum currently cohosts a podcast, Native Land, with political strategists Angela Rye and Bakari Sellers. The three appeared this weekend at Essence Fest in New Orleans, for a live taping with Representatives Jasmine Crockett and LaMonica McIver and State Senator Royce DuPlessis. Presumably, Gillum was on his way to NOLA at the time of his arrest.