Democrat Andrew Gillum conceded his hard-fought race for Florida governor Saturday and congratulated Republican Ron DeSantis.
Gillum conceded to DeSantis on election night, but backtracked after the margin between the two candidates narrowed. The race went to a legally required recount, but after an initial machine recount DeSantis still led Gillum by more than 30,000 votes.
Gillum, who is Tallahassee's outgoing mayor, didn't say in a Facebook video Saturday what he planned to do next.
"Stay tuned," he said in his brief remarks. Gillum said he will remain politically active. "The fight for Florida continues," he said.
Gillum had a dramatic rise and fall during 2018, coming from well back in the polls during the Democratic primary race to defeat frontrunner Gwen Graham in August. He then led DeSantis in almost every poll until coming up about 33,000 votes short in the general election.
The slim margin, just 0.41 percentage points, triggered an automatic machine recount that gained Gillum just one vote when it was completed Thursday, though several counties including Broward and Palm Beach did not report their numbers on time.
The even closer races for U.S. Senate between incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott and for state agriculture commissioner between Democrat Nikki Fried and Republican Matt Caldwell, with margins of less than 0.25 points, moved to a manual recount.
Gillum's announcement came hours after President Donald Trump said on Twitter that Gillum will be a "strong Democrat warrior" and a "force to reckon with."
It also came within minutes of the 5 p.m. Saturday deadline for voters whose mail-in ballots had been rejected for signature issues to fix them with county elections offices.
Orange County Democratic Chairman Wes Hodge claimed that the state was violating a judge's order by adding a last-minute obstacle for those voters.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled Wednesday that voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected because of mismatched signatures had until 5 p.m. Saturday to "cure" their ballots by sending in a signed affidavit and a copy of their IDs to their county supervisors of elections.
Copies of cure affidavits are available at every county elections office and website.
But after reaching out to more than 300 people who had a chance to cure their ballots and hand-delivering 76 affidavit forms, Hodge said Saturday that he was told by Orange elections staff that the forms couldn't be accepted. The reason, he said, was that Secretary of State Ken Detzner directed county elections officials across the state to only use a newly written affidavit form made available only Friday afternoon.
"This new form, created with fewer than 16 hours remaining of a 48-hour extension, was clearly designed to suppress voters from having their voice heard," Hodge said.
Orange County Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles and the Florida Department of State could not be reached for comment.
Walker's ruling was on one of multiple lawsuits filed by Nelson's campaign during the statewide recount, and one of the few in which he received a favorable ruling.
There were thousands of vote-by-mail ballots rejected because of mismatched signatures, but even after Walker's ruling, there was confusion over just how many of the rejected ballots could be corrected.
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