The man who nearly became Florida's governor is sitting in a jail cell right now, and the reason is absolutely wild.
Andrew Gillum, the former Democratic nominee who lost to Ron DeSantis by a razor-thin margin in 2018, has been thrown back into custody after a drug screening revealed methamphetamine in his system. This bombshell was first reported following developments out of Baldwin County, Alabama, where Gillum had been participating in a court-supervised testing program.
Here's how the whole thing unraveled. As part of his ongoing case stemming from a July arrest on drug possession and paraphernalia charges, Gillum was enrolled in Alabama's "color code" screening system. Every defendant gets assigned a specific color. You call a hotline daily. If your color gets announced, you show up for a test that same day. Simple enough, right?
Well, Gillum apparently did not show up when his color was called. So when he finally appeared before a judge on Thursday, prosecutors had him tested on the spot. The result? Positive for methamphetamine. The judge promptly ordered him back into custody.
Baldwin County Assistant District Attorney John Oxford confirmed the sequence of events to TMZ, explaining exactly how Gillum's missed screening led to the in-court test that sealed his fate.
Let that sink in for a moment. This guy came within roughly 34,000 votes of running one of the biggest states in America. Out of more than eight million ballots cast, the gap was less than half a percentage point. Florida dodged something truly unprecedented here.
But this is far from Gillum's first public crisis. Back in March 2020, police responded to a Miami Beach hotel room for a suspected drug overdose involving another individual. Officers reportedly found Gillum so intoxicated that he could not even speak to them. He was discovered vomiting in the bathroom. Three small baggies of suspected crystal meth were spotted in plain view on the bed and floor, according to the police report from that night.
Gillum was never charged in connection with that hotel incident. He later entered a rehabilitation facility and spoke publicly about battling depression and alcohol abuse following his gubernatorial defeat. He also came out as bisexual in 2020 while addressing the firestorm of attention surrounding the Miami Beach situation.
On the federal level, prosecutors once pursued corruption charges against the former Tallahassee mayor. A jury acquitted him on one count and deadlocked on the rest in 2023. The government ultimately decided not to pursue a retrial.
Now his legal headaches are piling up again. The positive meth test represents an alleged violation of conditions imposed while his Alabama drug case moves forward. It does not amount to a conviction on the underlying charges, but it certainly does not help his situation.
What a spectacular fall from political grace. From nearly occupying the governor's mansion to calling a drug testing hotline every single morning. Politics is truly stranger than fiction, and Andrew Gillum keeps proving that over and over again.
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