Posted on November 8, 2018

Election Results in Florida and Georgia Prompt Soul-Searching for African Americans

Robert Samuels and Vanessa Williams, Washington Post, November 7, 2018

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“When we vote, we win,” was one of Gillum’s trademark phrases, and Maxwell and his friends believed it.

They voted. Still, their candidate lost.

Democrats in Florida and Georgia awoke Wednesday feeling a complicated mix of emotions after two rising black political stars and would-be governors appeared to fall painfully short of victory.

That pain was even more acute in African American communities, which sought to show how powerful they could be as a voting bloc in a divisive political period. There was deep disappointment, of course, and in some cases defiance and anger, over racist attacks that targeted both candidates, and, at times, hope that perhaps important lessons were learned for future candidacies.

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In some ways, Gillum, 39, the mayor of Tallahassee, and Stacey Abrams, 44, a longtime Georgia state lawmaker, represented two of the Democratic Party’s biggest heartbreaks of Tuesday’s elections.

Both received help from former president Barack Obama and other African American figures in the final days. That support included an Abrams town hall hosted by Oprah Winfrey. The efforts helped spark unusually high turnout — but it wasn’t enough.

Abrams and her supporters were defiant Wednesday, accusing Georgia Republicans of seeking to suppress the black vote.

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Georgia election officials’ actions reflected “either incompetence or corruption or both,” said longtime civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had campaigned for Abrams and Gillum in the closing days of the campaigns. He said it was inexcusable that at several polling sites in Atlanta, including at Morehouse College, not enough machines were provided, resulting in hours-long waits to vote. Jackson said Abrams is right to protest the results.

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Felicia Davis, an activist in Forest Park, {snip} also pointed to the candidacy of Democrat Ben Jealous, a former NAACP leader, who lost his bid for Maryland governor on Tuesday.

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Gillum’s loss was something of a shock to some. He had been leading Republican Ron DeSantis in several polls, and anticipation was building among liberals nationwide that he would make history in a state that had backed President Trump and had not elected a Democratic governor since 1994. After all, Florida had also backed Obama twice, proof that the state could vote for a black candidate.

Instead, Gillum’s narrow loss prompted soul-searching among Florida Democrats, who wondered whether the candidate might have done more to mobilize voters in liberal South Florida — or if, in his quest to energize the liberal base, he failed to connect with the broader, multiethnic coalition that had lifted Obama.

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It is also possible, Gibson said, that Gillum’s candidacy had energized voters who were uneasy about having a black governor.

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The hectoring worked: She voted in her first midterm election in more than a decade. She acknowledged that she didn’t know much about Gillum but cited two major factors in her support for him.

“I knew he was black,” she said. “I also knew I didn’t like Trump, and Republicans have to be stopped. They are trying to take away food stamps and my disability. How will I eat?”

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