Gillum Thinks He Knows How to Take Florida From Trump

President Trump narrowly won Florida in 2016 with around 113,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton—and it's a lead former Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum wants to obliterate in 2020. The Democrat is launching a massive voter registration drive in the state, CBS reports. "We are going to commit ourselves to registering and engaging one million voters between now and 2020's presidential election," he said at a rally in Miami Wednesday. "The road to the White House runs through Florida. We can deny Donald Trump a second term right here in the state of Florida." In November, Gillum lost the governor's race by around 30,000 votes, a margin so slim he compares it to a "rounding error."

Gillum tells Politico that voter registration is "red flag No. 1" in Florida, which has more than 3 million unregistered eligible voters. There are also 1.4 million former felons whose voting rights will be restored under a ballot measure passed in November, though Republicans in the state legislature have been trying to impose conditions including the payment of court fees. Gillum tells the New York Times that to win in Florida, Democrats need to be as organized as Republicans have been for decades. "Florida is tired of being a cheap date," he says. "You can't just come in when it's a presidential election and we've got a nominee and then do a few months of organizing." (More Andrew Gillum stories.)