“I totally underestimated the impact that losing the race for governor had on my life,” said Mr. Gillum, who for months had been unavailable for comment, in an 11-minute video on Instagram. “What’s being portrayed — I don’t know that Andrew,” State Representative Shevrin D. Jones, a friend since college who texted Mr. Gillum the day after the Miami Beach incident to offer support, said before Mr. Gillum left rehab. After he conceded the race twice — first on election night, then after a recount confirmed he had lost to Mr. DeSantis by about 32,000 votes — Mr. Gillum threw himself into growing a voter-registration organization, fund-raising for the Democratic Party and commentating for CNN. Had he become Florida’s first African-American governor, a young Democrat leading a Southern state and the nation’s biggest presidential battleground, speculation about Mr. Gillum’s future would have included the White House. Instead, he was left to inhabit the purgatory of ambitious politicians who lose and have no obvious public role to keep them relevant until the next election.

Source: New York Times July 21, 2020 15:34 UTC