A federal investigation into the goings-on in Florida’s sleepy capital city, Tallahassee, has been thrust into the national political spotlight, with questions about how it will affect the most closely watched governor’s race in the country.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Three men with grand redevelopment plans went to Tallahassee in 2015, eager to schedule work meetings and social gatherings with the most well-connected residents of City Hall who could help their projects become reality.
One lobbyist in particular drew their attention: Adam Corey, a businessman whose friendship with the mayor dated back to their college days, when both served in student government. Through Corey, the out-of-town businessmen would get so cozy with local leaders that they partied with a city commissioner in Las Vegas and toured New York Harbor with the Tallahassee mayor.
The businessmen, however, were really undercover FBI agents engaged in a two-year operation to root out corruption in city government. The mayor was Andrew Gillum, a rising star in Democratic politics with his sights set on higher office.
Gillum shocked the state’s political establishment Tuesday and won the Democratic nomination for Florida governor. Now, the federal investigation into the goings-on in Florida’s sleepy capital city has been thrust unexpectedly into the national political spotlight, with questions about how it will affect the most closely watched governor’s race in the country.
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“I don’t think anybody expected Mayor Gillum to be the nominee, but now he is, and all of this stuff is going to come under really close scrutiny,” said Ben Wilcox, research director for Integrity Florida, a watchdog group. “And it’s not going to look good for our city.”
Gillum said he had been told he is not a target in the investigation. The issue received little notice outside of Tallahassee during the primary campaign because Gillum largely trailed in polls and did not draw attacks from his Democratic opponents. In the few days since securing the nomination, however, Republicans have made the lingering corruption questions a central issue.
“This guy can’t even run the city of Tallahassee,” Rep. Ron DeSantis, his Republican opponent, said last week on Fox News. “There is no way Florida voters can entrust him with our entire state.”
Gillum has been mayor since 2014 but has held office in the city since 2003, when, at 23, he became the youngest person ever to win a seat on the Tallahassee City Commission.
He said he met with FBI investigators in his home last year and was assured that their interest was in other targets. He did not have a lawyer present but was authorized by the agents to describe their conversation, Gillum said. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida declined to comment.
From the beginning, Gillum has insisted a corruption inquiry in which he said he played no direct role should not be an impediment to his campaign for governor. But he acknowledged that the investigation has rocked city government in Tallahassee since federal authorities delivered their first subpoenas in the case last summer.
“What kept me going even through that difficult time was my knowledge that I would never do anything to compromise my morals, my values, my family, my children, my vote,” Gillum said in an interview last week. “I was very clear in that, which is why I was not afraid to keep going on the trail, keep answering questions, continue to take it on the chin.”
At issue is a vote in June 2016 to expand a city redevelopment district to include properties that the undercover agents posing as developers said they wanted to invest in if the properties became eligible for public dollars. It would have been unlawful for public officials to accept money or other consideration from the purported developers in exchange for favorable votes.
Gillum was not present for the vote that approved the boundary change. But the investigation revealed he had spent time socializing with Corey, the lobbyist, and the undercover agents in New York, including taking a boat ride to the Statue of Liberty and seeing a Broadway performance of the hit musical “Hamilton.”
Gillum and Corey met in college, when they were involved in student government at Florida A&M University and at Florida Gulf Coast University, respectively. They remained friends — Corey served as Gillum’s volunteer campaign treasurer in his 2014 run for mayor — until the investigation; Gillum told The Tallahassee Democrat he has severed ties with Corey.
The trip to New York in August 2016 raised questions of why the mayor was spending personal time with developers who had potential business before the city. Similar questions resulted from another trip that Gillum took with his wife and several lobbyist friends — including Corey — to Costa Rica in May 2016.
Gillum’s campaign said in response to written questions Friday that the “Hamilton” tickets and the mayor’s hotel stay at the Millennium Hilton hotel in Manhattan were paid for by his younger brother, Marcus Gillum, who was on the New York trip. The brothers attended the musical along with Corey and one of the undercover agents. Marcus Gillum could not be reached for comment.
During the Costa Rica trip, Corey emailed Gillum a calendar invitation scheduling tapas and drinks with two of the undercover agents upon their return to Tallahassee. The invitation suggested Gillum and Corey had engaged in city business on the trip, though Gillum’s campaign denied that.
Corey is also a city vendor: He received $2.1 million in public funds to turn an old power plant in the community redevelopment district into a high-end restaurant named Edison, where the tapas-and-drinks meeting would later take place. Gillum voted for Corey to receive those funds in 2013, after city lawyers deemed it would not be a conflict of interest.
“It was a trip amongst a large group of friends from Tallahassee, as lots of people take,” Geoff Burgan, a spokesman for Gillum’s campaign, said of the Costa Rica trip.