Andrew Gillum comes out as bisexual after hotel room incident

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Andrew Gillum, Florida’s Democratic nominee for governor in 2018, told a television interviewer he is bisexual, responding to rumors swirling since March after he was found intoxicated and unconscious in a hotel room with two men, including one who works as a male escort.

“I don’t identify as gay but I do identify as bisexual,” Gillum told Tamron Hall on her syndicated talk show, which aired Monday. “And that is something that I have never shared publicly before.”

The former Tallahassee mayor, 41, appeared on the show with his wife, R. Jai. They have three young children. He did not return a call Monday from The Associated Press seeking comment.

He told Hall he began drinking heavily and secretly shortly after narrowly losing the election to Republican Ron DeSantis, even substituting whiskey for his morning coffee, as a way to deal with his depression. He told Hall that he wasn’t sure he wanted to live anymore after a photo got out of him in a Miami Beach hotel room unconscious, nude and lying in a pool of his own vomit.

“I didn’t know that picture was out there,” said Gillum, who was an upset winner in the Florida 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary and was the first African American to be nominated for the office by either major party. He said he first saw the photo after he checked himself into rehabilitation the weekend after the incident and he cried daily.

“I cried because I was sad to see myself in that place,” he said of the photo. “I cried because I didn’t recognize that person. I cried because I didn’t know it could get that bad.”

R. Jai Gillum said her husband told her before they were married 11 years ago that he was bisexual and she is upset that it is now public knowledge, telling Hall, “I don’t think it is anyone’s business.”