After Recount, Democrat Gillum Concedes Florida Governor Race to Republican DeSantis

Ron DeSantis, Andrew Gillum
Associated Press

After a strenuous recount process that ended Thursday, Democrat Andrew Gillum has thrown in the towel and conceded the Florida governor’s race to Republican Ron DeSantis, making DeSantis Florida’s governor-elect.

DeSantis defeated Gillum by 33,683 votes, or 0.41 percentage points.

Gillum, who withdrew his Nov. 6th concession to DeSantis once the election went to an automatic recount, released an official statement on Facebook saying, “We said we would fight until the last vote is counted. We are now closing out the hand recount phase in two of the statewide races.”

#TeamGillum, our fight continues.

Posted by Andrew Gillum on Saturday, November 17, 2018

Gillum, who serves as Tallahassee’s mayor, also congratulated Governor-elect DeSantis and thanked his running mate, Chris King, on Twitter Saturday evening.

“I want to congratulate @RonDeSantisFL on becoming the next Governor of the great state of Florida. My wife R. Jai and I could not be prouder of the way we ran this race. We could not be more thankful to my running mate, @ChrisKingFL and his wife Kristen.”

Gillum offered little insight as to what he plans to do next but informed his supporters to “stay tuned” in the video shared to Facebook.

Follow Kyle on Twitter @RealKyleMorris.

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