Ex-Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum arrested on drug possession charges

Former Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum speaks to supporters during a gathering at the Florida Democratic Party state conference in Orlando, Fla., on June 7, 2019. (John Raoux / AP Photo)

DAPHNE, Ala. — Former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has been arrested on drug possession charges in Alabama after police say they pulled him over for erratic driving and found marijuana and meth in his vehicle.

It’s the latest legal trouble for the ex-Tallahassee mayor, who narrowly lost to Republican Ron DeSantis for governor in 2018 and was once considered a rising star of the Democratic Party.

Gillum, 46, was arrested on July 2 in Daphne, about 11 miles (17.7 kilometres) east of Mobile on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. He is charged with marijuana possession and unlawful possession of a controlled substance, the Daphne Police Department said. Jail records show he was released on July 3.

Court records for Gillum’s case were not yet available, the Baldwin County Clerk of Court’s office said. Information on a lawyer who could speak on his behalf wasn’t immediately available.

A message seeking comment was left for the local district attorney’s office.

Gillum is a co-host of the politically themed Native Land Pod, which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding News and Information Podcast in 2025. A message seeking comment was left for the podcast’s production company.

In a news release, the Daphne Police Department said officers stopped Gillum’s vehicle around 10:45 p.m. and initiated a probable cause search after one of them noticed a glass pipe on the center console.

They found several rolled marijuana cigarettes and three packages of a substance that tested positive for methamphetamine, police said.

Gillum, who served as mayor of Florida’s capital from 2014 to 2018, came within less than a percentage point of being elected the state’s first Black governor, losing to DeSantis by fewer than 34,000 votes.

In 2020, Gillum was found in a Miami Beach hotel room with a man who had apparently overdosed on drugs. Police said Gillum himself was too inebriated to talk about what happened.

The man survived and no one was ever charged with a crime for the overdose, but Gillum withdrew from public life for months afterward while seeking treatment for alcohol abuse and depression. Months later, he told a TV interviewer that he had to come to grips with what he had done.

“So much of my recovery has been about trying to get over shame,” Gillum said on the Tamron Hall talk show in September 2020.

In 2022, Gillum was indicted on federal conspiracy and wire fraud charges for allegedly funneling tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations through third parties back to himself for personal use.

A 2023 trial ended in a hung jury on those charges and an acquittal on charges that Gillum lied to undercover FBI agents posing as developers who paid for a 2016 trip he took with his brother to New York, including hotel rooms, meals, a boat tour and a ticket to the hit Broadway show “Hamilton.”