There are political careers that end at the ballot box and there are political careers that end in a traffic stop in Daphne, Alabama, with a glass pipe on the center console and three packages testing positive for methamphetamine in the car, and Andrew Gillum, who came within 0.4 percentage points of becoming governor of Florida in 2018, has produced the second kind.
Gillum was arrested in Daphne, Alabama, on July 2 after police stopped him for erratic driving, per Fox News. Officers noticed a glass pipe on the center console, which is the detail that makes a traffic stop into a search, and the search produced several rolled marijuana cigarettes and three packages of a substance that tested positive for methamphetamine, per police. He was booked into the Daphne City Jail on charges of unlawful possession of a controlled substance and possession of marijuana. He was the candidate Oprah Winfrey campaigned for. He was the candidate Barack Obama endorsed. He lost to Ron DeSantis by 32,463 votes out of more than 8 million cast, which is the margin that separated him from the governorship and which DeSantis’s supporters described as a mandate and Gillum’s supporters described as an injustice and which now exists in the same biographical record as a traffic stop in Daphne.
This is not Gillum’s first public difficulty since 2018. In March 2020, he was found unresponsive in a Miami Beach hotel room alongside a man who had overdosed on crystal methamphetamine, in an incident that Gillum described at the time as a “medical emergency” and for which he subsequently entered a rehabilitation facility and publicly acknowledged struggling with alcohol. In June 2023, he was indicted on federal charges of wire fraud, conspiracy, and making false statements to FBI agents in connection with alleged misuse of campaign funds, charges for which he was acquitted on the conspiracy count and which resulted in a mistrial on the remaining charges after a jury was unable to reach a verdict. He had been living in Tallahassee and working as a political consultant.
Daphne, Alabama, is a city of approximately 26,000 people on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, which is not a place that appears in most accounts of Andrew Gillum’s life prior to July 2, 2026.
DeSantis is currently the governor of Florida, serving his second term, and has not commented on the arrest. The 0.4 percentage point margin remains what it was.
When the candidate who nearly became governor is arrested for methamphetamine on a traffic stop in Alabama eight years later, what exactly did the 2018 election decide?
Sources
Fox News: Former Florida Democratic governor candidate Andrew Gillum arrested on drug charges
