From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans: Florida and Its Politics since 1940

8. The Presidential Election of 2000: What Happened in Florida?

190 8 The Presidential Election of 2000 What Happened in Florida? From the onset of the presidential campaign of 2000, two things were obvious: the election would be very close, and Florida would be at its epicenter. In a campaign between two of the nation’s preeminent political families, Al Gore and George Bush, both were confident they would capture Florida and the presidency. Depending on how one counted the ballots in Florida, both were right.1 Republicans were convinced that Bush would carry the state and with it the general election. After all, his brother Jeb had captured the governorship decisively in 1998, and state Republicans had been victorious in the majority of local and statewide races since 1996. But polls suggested throughout the campaign that Florida was a toss-up. Tim Russert, NBC’s national political commentator, predicted the night The Presidential Election of 2000: What Happened in Florida? · 191 before the election that the outcome would be determined by: “Florida, Florida, and Florida.”2 What accounted for the closeness of the 2000 presidential election in Florida, when Republicans had dominated local and statewide races in the previous four years? The most obvious answers were the substantial number of registered Democrats in Florida, the popularity of the outgoing Clinton administration among certain segments of the state’s population, and the presence of Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Jewish candidate for vice president, on the Democratic ticket. Despite substantial Republican gains in Florida, Democrats still enjoyed a 450,000-plus lead in the number of registered voters in 2000, and although many Democrats had voted Republican in state and local contests, no one could be sure they would do the same in a presidential contest, especially when the outgoing administration enjoyed broad support in the heavily populated areas of southeast Florida. Moreover, the national Democratic Party recognized the structural weaknesses of the state party in Florida and, rather than rely on local party officials, sent many of its top people to organize the Gore campaign in Florida. With the additional assistance and advice of Senator Bob Graham and his aides, the Gore campaign was well prepared for the obstacles they faced in Florida. Aiding Gore as well were news reports and comments from Bush insiders that George W. Bush, like his father before him, was weighing plans to offer a private investment alternative to Social Security. The plan was sufficiently vague that Bush was hesitant to describe it during the campaign except to note that it would be for future generations . Gore seized on the issue and warned seniors nationwide and in Florida that Bush’s election would threaten their benefits. Gore’s strategy mimicked Lawton Chiles’s successful attack against Jeb Bush in 1994 for his alleged plans to overhaul Medicare. “The Bush plan would turn Social Security into a grab bag where everyone is out for himself,” Gore warned supporters and seniors in south Florida. Gore also helped himself considerably by selecting Lieberman to be on the presidential ticket. Lieberman became Gore’s strategic weapon in mobilizing Jewish voters in southeast Florida and in getting substantial financial contributions to support the campaign.3 192 · From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans A series of other developments of no small significance occurred in Florida prior to this campaign and served to place the state front and center in this election. The migration of 6 million new residents into the state during the previous two decades had created a Florida that looked like the rest of the nation as a whole—with sizable populations of southerners, northerners, midwesterners, blacks, whites, Hispanics, various other ethnic groups, and, last but not least, retirees. The writer Michael Paterniti observed that Florida offered “a close reflection of the nation’s ethnic breakdown. Where 75 percent of Americans today are white, in Florida 78 percent are white. Where nearly 13 percent are Hispanic, in Florida 17 percent are. And where 12 percent are black, in Florida 14 percent are.”4 Additionally, like the nation as a whole, Florida was closely divided between Democrats and Republicans, with Democrats more frequently casting ballots for Republicans in the past decade than Republican voters did for Democrats. Because Florida Republicans had risen to challenge Democrats for political control in the state so recently, the vast majority of Republican voters tended to remain loyal to the party and to its candidates. This trend was...