Gwen Graham: ‘We must all put all of our efforts behind Andrew Gillum’

By Nada Hassanein

Although she couldn’t give the victory speech she had hoped for, gubernatorial candidate Gwen Graham was met with booming cheers and applause from her supporters Tuesday night.

As she entered The Social, where her election party was being held in Downtown Orlando, she addressed a disappointed but encouraging crowd.

“I love you all, too,” Graham told her voters, with family members, including her father, former Governor Bob Graham, lined up behind her.

The election party at the bar and music venue, decked out in green and white balloons, hadn’t been very celebratory with little cheering or chanting among the chatter. Supporters expressed a mixture of nervousness and disappointment, which contrasted with the upbeat pop-rock background music as final counts showed Graham a couple of percentage points short of the coveted primary nomination.

“I was expecting to give a much different speech tonight,” Graham said, speaking slowly and deliberately and managing to smile throughout a short talk.

She told her supporters she congratulated Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who led the state’s Democratic primary race by more than 42,000 votes in a historic upset, the Florida Division of Elections showed. She said Gillum has been a longtime friend and encouraged her supporters to embrace his campaign for governor.

“I said, ‘Now, Andrew, go out and win this damn thing,’” Graham said she told Gillum. “Because this is too important for the state of Florida. This is too important. This election was never about the candidate. It was always about the importance for the future of the state that you all love… The future of Florida is at stake.”

The former congresswoman expressed her support for Gillum in his race against Trump-backed Florida Republican nominee Ron DeSantis.

“We must all put all of our efforts behind Andrew Gillum and make sure that we do everything we can,” she said, “to have him elected governor on Nov. 6, 2018.”

Click here to continue reading the Tallahassee Democrat report.