Andrew Gillum, who narrowly lost 2018 race for Florida governor, is arrested

David Goodhue, Miami Herald on Jul 7, 2026

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Former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who ran for Florida governor against Ron DeSantis in 2018, was arrested last week in Alabama on drug charges, according to jail records.

Police in the town of Daphne arrested Gillum, 46, on Thursday on charges of possession of dangerous drugs, possession of drug paraphernalia and marijuana possession, according to Baldwin County jail records.

Chief Brian Gulsby said officers pulled over Gillum around 10:45 p.m. on U.S. Highway 98 because he was driving erratically. Police saw a glass pipe on the center console of Gillum’s car, along with three packages of what turned out to be methamphetamines, Gulsby said.

According to Gillum’s arrest report, officers found 3 grams of meth, eight marijuana cigarettes, several “blunts,” which are cigar-paper-wrapped marijuana joints, a bong, three glass pipes and four cut straws in his car.

The Miami Herald left a voicemail and text message to Gillum’s cellphone requesting comments. Celebrity news site TMZ was first to report on Gillum’s arrest.

Gillum was considered a rising star in the Florida Democratic Party after winning a seat on the Tallahassee City Commission when he was only 23 in 2003. He was elected mayor of Tallahassee in 2014.

During his term, Gillum was dogged by ethics probes, including one after the Tampa Bay Times obtained text messages that showed he received tickets for a Broadway play from his brother, who got them from an undercover FBI agent.

The Florida Commission on Ethics found probable cause that Gillum violated state ethics laws, and he ended up settling for $5,000 on one of the five violations, the Orlando Sentinel reported in 2019, with the commission dropping the remaining four charges.

During the 2018 race for governor, Gillum came close to defeating DeSantis, losing by only 34,000 votes.

That was followed by an embarrassing incident a little more than a year later in March 2020 when Gillum was found in a Miami Beach hotel room with two men, one of whom had a heart attack from what police believed to be a drug overdose.

Police also found three small plastic bags containing what they believed to be crystal meth in the room. Gillum was not arrested, and police said he was too intoxicated to answer questions about what happened.

He later denied using drugs that night and said he had too much to drink at a wedding celebration. He later went to rehab for alcohol abuse.

Then, in 2022, a federal grand jury indicted GIllum on 21 counts, including charges of lying to FBI agents and defrauding campaign mega-donors and organizations that believed they were donating to legitimate political causes.

In May 2023, the jury in his trial found him not guilty of lying to the FBI, but failed to reach verdicts on the remaining charges. Prosecutors then dropped the rest of the charges against him.

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