Startling Emails Detail FL Dem Gov Candidate Andrew Gillum’s Shameless Use of Mayor’s Office For Political Purposes

Facing a criminal investigation for using a government email system for political purposes, Florida Democrat gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has demonstrated a completely unacceptable lack of respect for the rule of law. Now, a new report from the Tallahassee Democrat explains how Gillum used his Tallahassee Mayor’s office for political gain, and often conducted campaign activities at the expense of taxpayers. This scandal is only getting worse for Gillum, and creates a giant headache for Florida Democrats.

The Tallahassee Democrat reports:

“More than just an interesting anecdote about Gillum’s gubernatorial campaign, it’s one of numerous examples of campaign-related and political emails that went through City Hall since last January. Many of them involve city staff and mayoral interns setting up meetings and appointments and passing messages of a political and campaign nature, often using their private accounts during working hours to relay campaign-related messages, frequently through Whitaker.

State ethics rules prohibit public officials from ‘corruptly’ using their position, staff or resources for personal gain. They also prohibit public employees from campaigning on behalf of their favorite candidates on the taxpayer’s time.

The more than 13,000 emails obtained from the Mayor’s Office by the Democrat from January 2016 to March of this year show a busy and confusing intersection between the personal, the political and the professional — one that may blur ethical boundaries between the worlds of city business and political aspirations, between public employees and campaign staff as well as his work with People for the American Way as director of the YEO Network.

They also illustrate that political content was not limited to emails that surfaced earlier this year on software the Mayor’s Office bought from a Democratic Party vendor with city money.

The software has dogged Gillum’s campaign since the days before he officially announced his candidacy. The emails came to light on the same day he filed papers to run, and he was forced to pay back the city $5,000 and apologize for what he called an inadvertent ‘human error.”