Former President Barack Obama will campaign for Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in Miami on Friday afternoon, at a rally also featuring incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, before heading a few hours north to Atlanta to meet up with former state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams. Gillum could become Florida's first African-American governor with a victory next week. Abrams' election would make her the first ever female African-American governor in the country.
Victory for both, as Trump's itinerary makes clear, would come as a stinging personal and political rebuke. Both Republican gubernatorial nominees, former Rep. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, have clung tight to the President, who has taken an obvious interest in both races and lobbed insults at Gillum and Abrams.
Trump headlined a rally for the Florida Republican ticket, including DeSantis and Gov. Rick Scott, who is challenging Nelson, on Wednesday night in Fort Myers. He plans to return to the state this weekend. Vice President Mike Pence campaigned for Kemp on Thursday in Georgia, and Trump will visit the state on Sunday.
National Democrats have also aggressively championed the tops of their tickets, with former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, among so many others, all making trips to the region, which has been ruled by Republican governors for a generation. Tickets for both of Oprah Winfrey's Thursday events with Abrams were claimed about 20 minutes after they were made available barely 24 hours earlier.
In Florida, Democrats are hoping Obama's blessing can put Gillum over the top in a race he has led narrowly, but consistently, in polling since scoring an upset primary win in late August. It's also a deeply pragmatic exercise, with early voting underway and at least one polling place about a mile from the event.
Former Florida state Sen. Dwight Bullard, now the political director of New Florida Majority, described Obama's visit as a "passing of the baton moment" that could excite a few remaining skeptical Democrats while potentially enticing some left-leaning independents to turn out for Gillum.
"As a registered Democrat and someone who's been involved in Democratic politics, unfortunately, our party sometimes requires extra senses of reassurance. Otherwise people will ask, 'Why didn't this happen?' or 'Why didn't this person come down?'" Bullard said. "So this is the cherry on the top moment that really sends a clear message to those Obama voters from 2008 and 2012 -- that helped to win Florida -- that now it's time to come out, mobilize and be a part of history."
It will also place them very firmly at the center of a national political debate that has found an unusually close parallel in the Florida governor's race. That in mind, Democrats are betting that voters' seeing Trump and his predecessor in such quick succession could -- with Trump's fury cast against Obama's calm -- drive true swing and undecided voters into Gillum's and Nelson's arms. The President's attack Thursday on Abrams, when he said she was "not qualified" to be governor, is being viewed the same way by some of her supporters in Georgia.
At the typically boisterous Trump rally on Wednesday in Fort Myers, DeSantis, during his brief turn at the mic, attacked Gillum over a federal probe into public corruption in Tallahassee as a "Lock him up" chant rose from the crowd inside a keyed-up Hertz Arena. Gillum has said the FBI told him he was not a target of the probe. The President, who posted a plainly racist new midterm web ad hours before taking the stage in Florida, then described the 40-year-old Gillum as a "radical socialist" whose policies "would destroy your state."
No stranger to that line of attack, Florida Democrats believe Obama's remarks at the Ice Palace Film Studios in Miami will create an appealing partisan juxtaposition.
"That's a contrast that any Democrat would want and any Republican strategist or candidate dreads in this election cycle," said Eric Jotkoff, a former Florida Democratic Party communications director and spokesman for Obama's 2012 campaign. "It's something that Barack Obama helps really highlight. That 'split-screen' notion is a real thing. Politics is a choice, and it's a choice between two parties and two visions."
The races are also a referendum on whether Democrats can, after a generation of being almost completely shut out of power, succeed in the South by running more boldly progressive candidates. Obama won twice in Florida and lost by relatively narrow margins in Georgia (about 5 points in 2008 and 8 points in 2012) with pitches that largely predicted Gillum and Abrams, who have steeped themselves in progressive populism while being careful not to alienate moderate business interests. Like Obama, they have been mostly successful in synthesizing those messages with the aid of compelling personal narratives.
Republican candidates in 2018 have gone in a slightly different direction.
DeSantis and Kemp won their primaries by latching on to Trump and all that comes with him. While both have made occasional nods to their party's moderate establishment, a necessity in Florida, where a rolling series of environmental crises -- from toxic algae bloom to wildfires and stronger storms -- are dominating the political atmosphere in both typically Republican and Democratic strongholds, neither has made any real attempt to persuade centrist Democrats.
Still, Obama will have a heavier lift on his hands in Miami than Trump did in Fort Myers, where it seemed like just about everyone at his rally had already voted the party line.
"Who voted?" Trump asked the packed arena. When his question was met with an immediate roar, the President seemed genuinely taken aback. "Everybody voted already? No kidding. Let me see it again. Who voted?"
Again, the audience howled, leading Trump to deadpan: "Then what the hell am I doing here tonight?"
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