In 2016, roughly two years into his term as Tallahassee’s mayor, Andrew Gillum joined forces with billionaire activist Tom Steyer to hold a summit for members of a young elected officials network.
Gillum, who co-founded the YEO Network in 2006, hinted at his ambitions then, throwing out statistics from Rutgers that 53 percent of presidents serving in the 20th century held elected office before the age of 35. Gillum served in some capacity since he was 23. He also talked about his desire to change the conversation around climate change, expressing frustrations with officials in Washington who have all but given up on legislation related to climate adaptation or a carbon tax to address what a majority of scientists consider a clear threat to the planet.
Gillum won the Democratic nomination for governor of Florida Tuesday night, coming from behind to upset the party establishment and stun the political world. No poll had him in the lead, but a late surge, boots on the ground, and an assist from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Steyer combined for a winning formula for Gillum.
Here are excerpts of a February 2016 interview with Gillum on the sidelines of a clean energy and environmental justice academy that he organized with Steyer. It’s been edited for brevity.
The theme I’m gathering is to connect the science behind climate change — it causing coastal erosion, flooding, etc. — to equity, racial justice aspect.
Gillum: For a long time, environment, climate change has been a wealthy, white person’s conversation and has had a lot more to do with interrupting their quality of life from the standpoint of no snowfall and so we can’t go skiing; visited Alaska and glaciers are melting. You know, polar bears are losing their habitat.
Well, all the time while that scene was playing out, in communities across the country, black and brown communities are being besieged by the impacts of climate change. They can’t play outside because the air is too dirty and their asthma gets set off. Their neighborhoods and communities don’t have parks available to them because they are surrounded by some of the more toxic uses that are almost always situated in poor black and brown communities. The utility, the power plant, the water sewage treatment plant, the trash disposal facility almost always associated and [are] located next to these poor black and brown communities.
So we’ve been dealing with these impacts for a long time, and what we now need to do is for the leaders of those communities to connect the conversation around global climate change to a conversation that includes climate justice and environmental justice and how those impacts show up in our communities every single day in a negative way and how they impact the people we want to represent.
The divide between the sort of heady approach to climate change that I think was in many ways brought to the forefront by Al Gore — very heady and Powerpointy conversation — was disconnected and has been disconnected from what is a real, urgent condition that poor and black and brown communities have been living in and continue to live in.
Are you worried that connection will be stymied or stopped by national leaders?
Gillum: When we make that connection, the constituency that demands action and change on this will grow. While I have identified black and brown communities up to this point, in Appalachia we’re talking about poor, white communities that if we were to talk politically are voting against their own self-interest. When we start to awaken that beast and you have a coalescing of traditionally unallied constituencies demanding change, our elected officials will have to respond. And if they don’t respond they’ll be put out of office.
People are showing up to demand more from their elected officials and their vetting that frustration out in completely unpredictable ways, and while I disagree with a lot of misplaced energy — blaming the other I think some of the energy is misplaced
When we stop long to think and get a leader who breaks through and starts to identify what’s really at the heart of some of these driving issue on the economy, on joblessness, on poverty and intergenerational poverty, on environment and why in Miami and in Brickell Avenue they have to shut down the roads after a normal, light rainfall.
Will your generation bring change on climate policy?
Gillum: I was elected as youngest city commissioner at the age of 23. Young people were hugely important to my winning. This is a watershed issue in our generation. We are part of what is helping to shift this conversation from a heady, white-wealthy-person-exclusive conversation to one that would look more like America because our generation is more reflective of the diversified nature of our country.
Finally, people of color will have a more substantial role in the decision-making. We come to this conversation being fully informed and fully equipped and fully embodying our generational priorities as well as our demographic shifts that the country has experienced.
So beyond this, do you intend on staying in government? Running for another office?
Gillum: I don’t know. Research done by Eagleton at Rutgers, showed at that time, that of members of congress, 50 percent were elected to office before the age of 35. Presidents of the U.S. in the 20th century: 63 percent of them served in elected office before the age of 35. So there’s an informal pipeline that exists. You throw a stone in that room and you’ll hit a future governor, a future member of congress, a future US Senator. What that means for me, I’m not completely sure yet.
Tell me more about YEO and what you’re trying to accomplish with the network
Gillum: What we try to encourage our members to do is to act on the edges of their authority. What I mean by that is most elected officials operate at the center of their authority being careful enough not to offend any group too much.
Sometimes leadership is setting the temperature and not just gauging it. To do that you have to operate sometimes in uncomfortable places in order to move not only your colleagues but to move the public will in a much more courageous direction. I wouldn’t have built it if we were just regurgitating the same kind of leadership.
The idea was to create a bolder, more unapologetic set of leaders.
