Florida Democrats — following 20 years of failure with five white centrist gubernatorial candidates — are going in a radically different direction by choosing their first African-American nominee for governor, one who ran on an unabashedly liberal platform.

The upset win on Tuesday of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, in defiance of polls and conventional wisdom, marked a profound political shift in the nation’s most crucial swing state as Democrats took a page from the GOP in choosing a candidate who they hope will energize their base. Gillum’s victory makes Florida’s race for governor a choice between new-era liberalism and the Republican Party under President Donald Trump and his handpicked candidate, Rep. Ron DeSantis.

Story Continued Below

Under the glare of cable news coverage Wednesday, the race rapidly became a campaign about the intersection of race and ideology after DeSantis went on Fox News to define Gillum as a far-left radical who would damage the state’s finances.

“The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda, with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state,” said DeSantis, who praised Gillum’s debate performances and described the Democrat as “an articulate candidate for those far-left views.”

Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman, Terrie Rizzo, called out the simian metaphor on Twitter and said “it’s disgusting that Ron DeSantis is launching his general election campaign with racist dog whistles.” Gillum retweeted the comment without adding anything.

A Fox News anchor later took the extraordinary step of saying “we do not condone this language” by DeSantis.

DeSantis spokesman, Brad Herold, called Rizzo’s claim “absurd” and said DeSantis was criticizing Gillum over his ideology, not his race. The night before, Herold took to Twitter sarcastically to thank one of liberalism‘s newest political stars, New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for tweeting her support for Gillum.

“The progressive movement is transforming the country – and he proved that again tonight. Gillum ran on Medicare for All, Legalizing Marijuana, #AbolishICE & more,” she wrote.

DeSantis tussled with Ocasio-Cortez earlier in the campaign when he referred to her as a “girl” who supports socialism. Democrats accused him of sexism and Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to clap back and note she’s of Puerto Rican descent along with a large number of Boricua voters in Florida.

The raw racial politics and Gillum besting the presumed frontrunner, centrist Gwen Graham, underscore the widening differences between the two major political parties in Florida.

A minority of the Florida Democratic Party, 48 percent, is white. Today, about 28 percent of registered Florida Democrats are African-American, who comprise about 13 percent of the overall 13 million-person voter rolls in the state. About 16 percent of the overall voter rolls is Hispanic.

In contrast, the Republican Party of Florida is 83 percent white while the overall voter rolls are 64 percent white. The GOP has lost minorities ever since former President Barack Obama won the state for the first of two times in 2008. About 11 percent of the GOP in Florida is Hispanic, the overwhelming majority of whom are anti-Castro Cuban-Americans who are particularly attuned to the criticisms of Gillum as an alleged “socialist.”

Trump’s election and his inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants were perceived in Florida’s elite political circles as disqualifying. Yet Trump carried the state in 2016 by just over a point, thanks to strong white voter turnout. The victory shocked the political class and ushered in a round of internal debate among Democrats, who wondered if the party needed a white centrist again.

But for the growing coalition of African-Americans, Hispanics and mixed-race voters in the Democratic Party, the lesson from 2016 as they headed into 2018 was that Hillary Clinton couldn’t excite the base, just like most of the Democrats before her.

“We tried the white middle-of-the-road people the last five times, and it didn’t work. Why not try something else?” said state Sen. Oscar Braynon, an African-American Democrat and outgoing Florida Senate Democratic minority leader.

“For the first time, with Gillum, I have a candidate I can take to my community and I don’t have to introduce them and explain why they’re going to be different from everybody else,” Braynon said.

Democrats started getting slaughtered in Florida midterms in 1998, when Buddy MacKay, a white centrist from Ocala, lost the governor’s race to Jeb Bush. In 2002, Bush beat another centrist white man, Bill McBride, who hailed from the Tampa Bay region. Four years later, Congressman Jim Davis of Tampa lost to then-Republican Charlie Crist, who won despite it being a Democratic wave year. In 2010, Rick Scott beat McBride’s wife, Alex Sink, in the governor’s race. And four years after that, Scott successfully defended his seat when Crist, who also hails from the Tampa Bay region, tried to mount a comeback as a Democrat.

In each of the midterms, Democratic turnout lagged Republican performance. Still, two Democrats managed to get elected in 2006, Sink when she ran for CFO and Sen. Bill Nelson. Nelson also rode Obama’s coattails in 2012 when he won reelection. Nelson’s standing in Florida has served to bolster the case of centrist Democrats; critics of the theory say Nelson is more of a lucky anachronism. Now Nelson faces Scott in a Senate race, and Democrats hope that Gillum’s presence on the ballot, along with the party’s first-ever African-American attorney general nominee, Sean Shaw, will juice minority turnout in November.

Gillum, like other liberals, said previous Democratic candidates failed to appeal to voters because “we didn’t represent out values.”

“When we’re unapologetic in pushing our values, we win,” Gillum says frequently on the campaign trail. “We don’t win by becoming Republican Lite. We’ve tried that before.”

After decades of abiding by the notion that Democrats need a moderate who appeals to swing voters, Gillum’s nomination challenged the orthodoxy and worried some because of the newness of the experiment that his candidacy poses. Also of concern, a wide-ranging FBI probe at Tallahassee City Hall that DeSantis already held up as a sign of Gillum’s “corruption.“

But Ben Pollara, a Miami consultant and top Democratic fundraiser, said Republicans can only get so many miles out of the attack when the president’s former campaign manager was convicted last week of corruption charges just as Trump’s former lawyer admitted to a criminal campaign-finance conspiracy amid an ongoing criminal probe of his campaign.

Gillum’s win Tuesday rested on two major pillars: African-American voters and white liberals, who were among his earliest supporters. Though underfunded, Gillum’s campaign was kept alive by a late endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and outside money from California billionaire Tom Steyer and liberal financier George Soros.

Steyer committed his NextGen group to lead a network of liberal organizations that helped turn out voters. Many of the groups, which advocate for social justice and an increased minimum wage, registered and turned out minority voters in big counties like Miami-Dade, Broward and Duval, which covers Jacksonville. In the 15 counties with the largest black Democratic population, Gillum rolled up some of his biggest margins over fellow Democrats Graham, Philip Levine, Jeff Greene and Chris King.

On Wednesday, Trump praised DeSantis and name-checked Gillum on Twitter by portraying him as an easy-to-beat candidate.

“Not only did Congressman Ron DeSantis easily win the Republican Primary, but his opponent in November is his biggest dream….a failed Socialist Mayor named Andrew Gillum who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his city,” Trump wrote. “This is not what Florida wants or needs!”

Gillum replied: “What our state and country needs is decency, hope, and leadership. If you agree, join us at http://AndrewGillum.com. Also, @ me next time, @realDonaldTrump.”

Most of Gillum’s day after the election was spent navigating the unexpected win and the crush of national press attention. Because he won with only 34 percent of the vote, Gillum spent Wednesday building bridges with the other campaigns and preparing for the election.

“Democrats are divided,” said Democratic pollster Steve Vancore, who lives in Tallahassee as do Gillum and Graham. “One third is enthusiastic for their guy saying, ‘Yay! We got our guy!’ And the other two thirds are like, ‘Who is this guy? What happened?’ So one third is enthusiasm and the other third is a question mark.”

Gillum, Vancore said, is the new face of the party.

“This is history,” he said.

GREAT STORY — WSJ’S JULIE BYKOWICZ: “The New Lobbying: Qatar Targeted 250 Trump ‘Influencers’ to Change U.S. Policy: Blockaded by Mideast neighbors, the emirate deployed an unconventional lobbying campaign to win over an unconventional U.S. president”: “Longtime New York restaurateur Joey Allaham visited Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue late last year with an offer for lawyer Alan Dershowitz. Come visit Doha, the capital of Qatar, by invitation of the emir.

“Mr. Dershowitz says he hadn’t met Mr. Allaham before and initially demurred before agreeing to go. The professor also didn’t know he was on a list of 250 people Mr. Allaham says he and his lobbying-business partner, Nick Muzin, identified as influential in President Trump’s orbit.

“The list was part of a new type of lobbying campaign Qatar adopted after Mr. Trump sided with its Persian Gulf neighbors who had imposed a blockade on the tiny nation. Qatar wanted to restore good relations with the U.S., Mr. Allaham says. Win over Mr. Trump’s influencers, the thinking went, and the president would follow. …

“Atypically, it also turned to friends, associates and well-placed admirers of the president. It deployed the list of 250 ‘Trump influencers’ such as Mr. Dershowitz who are known to have the president’s ear formally or informally, Mr. Allaham says. He and Mr. Muzin say they compiled the list and approached their targets, sending roughly two dozen to Doha, covering their expenses and paying some directly. Among others they sent were former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and conservative radio host John Batchelor.” WSJ

SPOTTED: IVANKA TRUMP leaving Russell at 12:15 p.m. today.

THE PRESIDENT, at 10:30 a.m.: “White House Counsel Don McGahn will be leaving his position in the fall, shortly after the confirmation (hopefully) of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. I have worked with Don for a long time and truly appreciate his service!”

— THIS MORNING, AXIOS’ JONATHAN SWAN: “Top White House officials and sources close to White House counsel Don McGahn tell Axios that McGahn will step down this fall — after Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, or after the midterms. …

“We’re told that Trump has not formalized a successor. But McGahn has told a confidant he would like his successor to be Emmet Flood, a Clinton administration alumnus who joined the White House in May to deal with the Russia probe.” Axios

— @ChuckGrassley at 10:53 a.m.: “@realDonaldTrump I hope it’s not true McGahn is leaving WhiteHouse Counsel. U can’t let that happen.”

HOW DID THE WHITE HOUSE LEG AFFAIRS folks not tell key stakeholders like Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee?

FLASHBACK: DARREN SAMUELSOHN reported on March 23: “President Donald Trump’s top White House lawyer, Don McGahn, is expected to step down later this year, though his resignation is contingent on the president finding a replacement and several other factors, according to four sources familiar with McGahn’s thinking. … He’s told associates he’d like to leave the White House by the summer, but it could also be put on hold through the 2018 midterms.” POLITICO

Good Wednesday afternoon. WHAT RUDY IS UP TO … BESIDES SUNDAY SHOW APPEARANCES: “Giuliani got paid for advocacy in Romania,” by Marianne LeVine and Lili Bayer: “Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, said he was paid by a global consulting firm when he sent a letter last week calling for changes to Romania’s anti-corruption program — a stance that contradicted the U.S. State Department’s official position.

“Giuliani’s letter to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis appeared to take sides in a fight at the top of the Romanian government over how to rein in high-level corruption. … Giuliani’s letter has drawn criticism from some officials in Romania.” POLITICO

RUSSIA WATCH — “Trump administration seeks to ease tensions with Moscow as new sanctions loom,” by WaPo’s John Hudson: “The prospect for rapprochement between the two adversaries remains slim … Pompeo’s effort to find a way forward with Russia is supported by major European allies with economic ties to the United States and Russia, such as Germany and Italy, but has rattled some post-Soviet bloc countries wary of engagement with Moscow.” WaPo

WHAT ELSE IS ON THE PRESIDENT’S MIND … at 8:40 a.m.: “‘Anonymous Sources are really starting to BURN the media.’ @FoxNews The fact is that many anonymous sources don’t even exist. They are fiction made up by the Fake News reporters. Look at the lie that Fake CNN is now in. They got caught red handed! Enemy of the People!”

… at 8:41 a.m.: “When you see ‘anonymous source,’ stop reading the story, it is fiction!”

— THE WHITE HOUSE frequently asks for anonymity in discussing things. This is noise.

ABOUT LAST NIGHT — “Gillum’s upset win in Florida swells the surge of black leaders,” by David Siders: “Five years after the rise of Black Lives Matter — and against the backdrop of a White House that has inflamed racial tensions nationwide — [Andrew] Gillum’s upset win in Florida laid bare the potency of a new generation of black leaders gradually coming to power within the Democratic Party. …

“Gillum, [Stacey] Abrams and [Ben] Jealous are significant to national Democrats not only for the governorships that they could win, but also the shape of the party in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.” POLITICO

— Rebecca Morin: “DeSantis launches campaign against Gillum by telling Floridians to not ‘monkey this up’”

— DAVID SIDERS: “Tuesday’s other big winner: Bernie Sanders”: POLITICO

DATA DU JOUR — NBC … “Poll: Millennials disillusioned about midterm elections,” by Stephanie Perry: “Millennials are disillusioned about political institutions and the 2018 midterms, according to results from a new NBC News/GenForward survey. … While a majority (55 percent) of millennials say they will probably or definitely vote in the midterm election this November, 19 percent of millennials say they definitely or probably will not vote. Another quarter are uncertain about whether or not they’ll vote. …

“Perhaps a bright spot for Democrats, a plurality of Asian American millennials (47 percent) and a third of Latino millennials say this year’s midterms are more important than past elections. … The sense of disillusionment and division is seemingly both anti-Trump and anti-establishment, signifying that perhaps millennials see Trump as a political insider.” NBC

— “Trump Has Changed How Teens View the News: Young people can see the president’s tweets as jokes, but they still often share his negative feelings about the press,” by Taylor Lorenz: The Atlantic

CNBC’S BRIAN SCHWARTZ: “Billionaire Peter Thiel gives first six-figure donation of the midterm campaign cycle to the RNC”

THE INVESTIGATIONS — MURRAY WAAS in the N.Y. Review of Books, “The Flynn Tapes: A New Tell”: “In early February 2017, a senior White House attorney, John Eisenberg, reviewed highly classified intelligence intercepts of telephone conversations between then-National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and Russia’s ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, which incontrovertibly demonstrated that Flynn had misled the FBI about those conversations, according to government records and two people with first-hand knowledge of the matter. It was after this information was relayed to President Trump that the president fired Flynn, and the following day allegedly pressured then-FBI Director James Comey to shut down a federal criminal investigation into whether Flynn had lied to the FBI.

“[T]hese new disclosures … constitute the strongest evidence to date that President Trump may have obstructed justice. … The president’s legal team has claimed that Trump did nothing wrong because he did not understand that Flynn was in criminal jeopardy when, according to the former FBI director’s testimony, he asked Comey to go easy on Flynn. The new information that Trump and others in the White House were aware that the intercepts revealed that Flynn had lied to the FBI directly contradicts those claims.” NYRB

— “Sources: Second Trump Org employee discussed immunity deal,” by CNN’s Erica Orden and Evan Perez: CNN

— THE DAILY BEAST’S BETSY WOODRUFF: “Maria Butina: Private Messages Reveal Accused Russian Spy’s True Ties to D.C. Wise Man”: “The executive director of … the Center for the National Interest, insisted that its interaction with Butina was ‘very limited.’ But previously unreported emails and direct messages between Butina and officials at the Center show her relationship with the think tank’s president—former Richard Nixon adviser Dimitri Simes—was closer than previously understood. … Simes looked to use his connections with Butina and her associate, Russian Central Bank official Alexandr Torshin, to advance the business interests of one of the Center’s most generous donors.” The Daily Beast

A DIFFERENT INVESTIGATION … “U.S. Probing Whether Malaysian Fugitive Laundered Funds to Pay Chris Christie and Trump Lawyer,” by WSJ’s Bradley Hope in London, Tom Wright in Hong Kong and Rebecca Davis O’Brien in New York: “The Justice Department … is now pursuing a criminal investigation in which [Jho] Low, who has U.S. assets, is a target …

“The team of lawyers and consultants working for Mr. Low includes Mr. Christie, who briefly headed Mr. Trump’s presidential transition team; Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz ; Bobby Burchfield, a lawyer who has served as the Trump Organization’s outside ethics adviser; and Ed Rogers, a Washington lobbyist with close ties to the Republican Party.” WSJ

HMM … “Is the U.S. government wasting millions on trips abroad?” by Tik Root and Chris Zubak-Skees for The Center for Public Integrity and The Guardian: “[The] U.S. government system for foreign travel expenses … is significantly more generous than the comparable standards set by other countries and institutions. The disparity could be costing American taxpayers millions of dollars annually. Moreover, many of the entities tasked with setting, maintaining and overseeing these per diem rates … also benefit from them. …

“And government inspector general reports suggest that the U.S. government per diem system is ripe for mistakes or abuse.” The Center for Public Integrity

HEADS UP — “With Ships and Missiles, China Is Ready to Challenge U.S. Navy in Pacific,” by NYT’s Steven Lee Myers in Dalian, China: “A modernization program focused on naval and missile forces has shifted the balance of power in the Pacific in ways the United States and its allies are only beginning to digest. While China lags in projecting firepower on a global scale, it can now challenge American military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.

“That means a growing section of the Pacific Ocean … is once again contested territory … To prevail in these waters, according to officials and analysts who scrutinize Chinese military developments, China does not need a military that can defeat the United States outright but merely one that can make intervention in the region too costly for Washington to contemplate. Many analysts say Beijing has already achieved that goal.” NYT

BORDER TALES — “Stricter vetting for migrant youth means taxpayers spend more — and parents wait,” by WaPo’s Steve Thompson: “The government has been beefing up its vetting procedures, concerned about human trafficking and the possibility that teens may have been involved in gang activity at home and could pose a public threat. … The increased scrutiny has boosted the lengths of shelter stays and the cost to taxpayers — hundreds of dollars per child per day, officials say.” WaPo

MEDIAWATCH — Alex Hardiman will be The Atlantic’s chief business and product officer. She is currently head of news products at Facebook.

SPOTTED at the Kennedy Center last night for the White House Historical Association’s Presidential Sites Summit: Deborah Rudder, Mike McCurry, Stewart McLaurin, Wilbur Ross, Fred Ryan, Chuck Robb, Betsy Klein, John Rodgers, Tammy Haddad, Anita McBride, Jamie Vanderbilt, David Rubenstein, Adan Canto, Kirk Saduski, Capricia Marshall, Mack McLarty, Mark Updegrove, Clifton Truman Daniel, Massee McKinley, Tweed Roosevelt, Lynda Johnson Robb and Susan Ford Bales. Pic

TRANSITIONS — Kate MacGregor will be deputy chief of staff for policy at the Interior Department. She is currently a principal deputy assistant secretary. … Josh Arnold is now adviser to the executive director at Heritage Action. He previously was adviser to the president for donor relations at the Heritage Foundation. … William Lee will join United Talent Agency’s speakers division in Washington. He was previously vice president for sales at Washington Speakers Bureau.

WEEKEND WEDDING — Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, married Lori Ann Burd, attorney and director of the environmental health program at the Center. The couple married on Mt. Hood outside Portland and honeymooned by going backpacking in the Canadian Rockies. Pic by Drew Bird … Another pic

WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Laura Collins, deputy director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative and alum of American Action Forum and the RNC, and Dana Collins, associate general counsel at Lockheed Martin, welcomed Luke Michael, who joins big sister Julia.

— Sophia Lalani, defense and foreign policy adviser for Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Ali Cumber, VP for Kaiser Associates and a KPMG alum, welcomed son Reza Yaqim Cumber. Reza is a Persian name meaning “contentment.” Pic … Another pic

BONUS BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Sylvia Acevedo, CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA. How she’s celebrating: “Since my birthday is during the week, I am celebrating it this weekend with family and friends at the National Book Festival in D.C.” Q&A

• Anna Palmer @apalmerdc
• Jake Sherman @JakeSherman
• Daniel Lippman @dlippman
• Eli Okun @eliokun

View all our politics and policy newsletters