Former Governor Sonny Perdue Says Cotton-Picking For Gillum's Opponent
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: There is a lot of ways to describe the significance of Tuesday's election in Florida, potentially historic is one way. If Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum wins his race, he will become Florida's first African-American governor. Now in a rally to Gillum's opponent, Ron Desantis, agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue chose - well, he made a comment, we will let you interpret it. Here's Perdue, a former governor of Georgia described the stakes.</s>SONNY PERDUE (R), FORMER GEORGIA GOVERNOR: Public policy matters. Leadership matters. And that's why this election is so cotton-picking important for the state of Florida. I hope you all don't mess it up.</s>COOPER: Well, Gillum is asked today if he had any reaction to Perdue's choice of words.</s>MAYOR ANDREW GILLUM (D), FLORIDA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: No, he should go back to Georgia. We will take care of Florida. Listen, we are trying our very best to end this race on a high note. As I have said throughout the campaign, we are working to give voters something they can vote for and not just against.</s>COOPER: Back with our political team. Van, how do you see this?</s>VAN JONES, CNN HOST, VAN JONES SHOW: You know, listen. I -- it's an archaic expression, but honestly, as a southerner, I hear that sometimes thrown around. So, you know, I'm trying not to go directly to the worst possible thing and then I get eat up. I think it's an unfortunate choice of words but I don't think that it was an intentional dog whistle. I really just don't.</s>NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes, I agree. I mean, I may have used that phrase before. I'm from the south, really small town in South Carolina, so I didn't necessarily, you know, it didn't land wrong for me. I think it's odd that Sonny Perdue who is, you know, a former Georgia governor is in Florida. It's sort of weird that way. I think it speaks to the fact that Ron Desantis has had trouble attracting crowds. Gillum has been much better about that. But I do think this race, it has been imbued with the racial dog whistling and that started with Ron Desantis. This whole idea of -- he said at some point, you know, don't elect Andrew Gillum. We don't want to monkey this up. And then you had the President calling Andrew Gillum a thief. So, you know, I think we are sort of sensitive to that in this race, but I think this particular instance of using the word cotton-picking, it didn't strike me as a sort of racial dog whistle.</s>DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: What I thought it so interesting was Gillum's response --.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely.</s>CHALIAN: -- is different than how he responded when his opponent said monkeyed up. Different than in the debate CNN hosted by Jake Tapper moderated where he went really hard back at Desantis and calls him out for the dog whistling or the, you know, the horn, the foghorn that he says more than a dog whistle that it's so loud. Here, two days out, I just think it tells us everything.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.</s>CHALIAN: That he did not want to make this about race at the end because he is not just courting a base in Florida, a very purple state. He is also courting -- he wants to make sure some white voters who may not be comfortable picking him to go ahead and pick him heading to the ballot box. That was a telling moment where that race is.</s>GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: This is not a place for him to stir the pot at all. I mean, it is close race. He wants those suburban, an ex-suburban voters who could get them (ph), and so certain again, he has made his point about race. That's done. And I think it was very clever.</s>RICK SANTORUM, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I saw it a little bit differently. I think he basically said, yes, it's about race, but we are not going there. So -- it was a very deaf move on his part because he basically confirmed that, yes, I see this as an insult. I see the system another dog whistle, but I'm going to end this on a high note. So I somewhat disagree with you because I think he did call him out. He just did it in a way that was -- I'm drawing the contrast because he has called out Desantis.</s>CHALIAN: Well. No. He throw out this campaign. So he may --. It's not like he --.</s>SANTORUM: He didn't do a damn thing. He didn't do set you up. This is a saying that, and I'm not -- he took it but he took a different approach.</s>CHALIAN: But he took a different approach in how to handle it.</s>DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I actually -- that was my first thought, was Republicans and Democrats, if you speak to them privately right now think that he has an edge in that race. I think he thinks he has an edge in that race and he is trying to land the plane here. And I thought he was deaf. And you know, I thought he handled it pretty well.</s>COOPER: How close do you think the race is?</s>AXELROD: Down there?</s>COOPER: Yes.</s>AXELROD: You know, its close. So I think, if he wins, it's going to be by a point, two points, three points, but he has been consistently ahead in the polls down there. If you talk to, and we all do talk to people on both sides. There's not a lot of optimism on the Republican side, and there's sort of guarded optimism on the Democratic side.</s>BORGER: Yes. And there's the sense that Desantis may not have been a fabulous candidate, whereas Gillum is of course, a very, very good candidate as we just saw. And, you know.</s>JONES: This race is so important because it really is, it's a hand- picked kind of Trump person versus a very different vision of what a Democrat can do. This is a Democrat who is willing to be progressive, he is willing to be bold. He is deaf but he is willing to be progressive. For Democrats this fight inside our party about do you go to the moderate middle or do you run on your diversity and probably on your progressive ideals, if Gillum wins, it's not just important for Florida, it's important for the Democratic Party. And I also - one other thing. A bunch of Puerto Ricans who had to leave their island because of what happened with that storm Maria are in Florida right now. They are American citizens. They can vote. And they are going to be voting for Dem.</s>SANTORUM: And a lot of folks have abandoned them are not going to be voting which is a real problem for all of the</s>COOPER: We are going to talk about Florida. We have another tape. Randi Kaye spoke with a group of women there who identify as independents to see how they see the race at this stage, what they said and how that could translates to other direction perhaps on the campaign. We will be right back.