Andrew Gillum, the 39-year-old candidate for Florida governor, had a promising primary campaign with a serious shortcoming: he was the only one of five Democratic candidates who didn’t have either a family legacy in politics or millions of dollars of his own to fund his race.
But Gillum’s financial fortunes changed sharply after he sat down in early May with the preeminent angel funder of the progressive movement, billionaire George Soros, in California’s Berkeley Hills.
At the Claremont Club & Spa, according to multiple people familiar with the meeting, Gillum and Soros had a sprawling after-dinner conversation about Gillum’s plans to turn out progressive and non-white voters and then, if he won, to expand Medicaid, recognize the threat of man-made climate change and enact gun control legislation after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida.
