Exciting Gubernatorial Campaigns Fall Short of Historic

The 2018 Midterm election will be remembered by many African Americans as the year Florida and Georgia came close to electing African American Governors. As the dust begins to settle after the election, pundits are crediting President Donald Trump with “pulling” the Republican opponents of Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams by making campaign stops for them and using his platform to call Abrams “unqualified” and Gillum “a thief.”

During his concession speech , Gillum, who is mayor of Tallahassee, said, “I want to encourage you not to give up. I still plan to be on the front lines. We still have to be willing to show up every single day and demand our seat at the table every day.”

The polls indicated a close contest, but they suggested Gillum would be elected the next governor of Florida. However, in the end, voters chose former Congressman Ron DeSantis who had been accused of being racist.

The Director of the Urban Studies Institute at Morgan State, Dr. Ray Winbush, pointed to the “Bradley Effect” to explain the surprising outcome. The “Bradley Effect” is named after Tom Bradley, an African American who had served as mayor of Los Angeles. In 1982 he narrowly lost a campaign to become California’s governor after having a sizable lead in the polls. The “Bradley Effect” is defined as the discrepancy between the information voters give pollsters and the voter’s behavior in the voting booth.

According to Winbush, white voters “lied about who they were going to vote for in Florida. They never intended to vote for Andrew Gillum.”

Maryland’s Ben Jealous entered the general election against an incumbent governor supported by some African Americans. The former president of the NAACP is known as a formidable organizer, but Republican Governor Larry Hogan held off the challenge .

The battle for the governorship in Georgia lasted well into Wednesday morning. With allegations of voter suppression  by Republican Brian Kemp thrusting the race onto the national stage and the opportunity for Democrat Stacey Abrams to become the first African American female governor in history, the gubernatorial race drew President Trump to the state and celebrities like Oprah . And, at watch parties in homes and bars around the country, the Georgia Governor’s race claimed a big part of the evening’s political conversations.

At the campaign party for Arkansas’  Vivian Flowers , a state legislator who won re-election, supporters watched the extensive coverage of the Abrams/Kemp race.

Early in the evening, Flowers said, “My stomach is in knots about the Georgia, Florida and Texas races. I think voters are always looking for progress and prosperity, but too often voters come out to vote based on their fears, and their reaction to something.”

Flowers viewed the high voter turnout in this election as a sign of hope. “I think that people saw that these elections matter.”