October 15, 2024 • 51 mins
How the largely forgotten race between Al Gore and George W. Bush roiled Florida long before anyone had ever heard of a hanging chad.
For a full list of sources, check out the Fiasco website.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin. Hey, Leon here, Before we get to this episode,
I want to let you know that you can binge
the entire season of Fiasco bush v goor right now
ad free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Sign up
for Pushkin Plus on the Fiasco Apple podcast showpage, or
(00:37):
visit Pushkin dot fm slash plus. Now onto the episode.
On Thanksgiving morning nineteen ninety nine, a Florida man from
outside Fort Lauderdale named Donado Dalrymple went on an impulse
fishing trip with his cousin. The water was choppy as
they took their motorboat out into the Atlantic Ocean in
(00:57):
search of Mahi mahi.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
My cousin he said, look for seaweed and debris, anything
floating on the ocean. And I point out with my
finger and I said, like that inner tube that's there.
He goes, Yeah, let's go around that inner tube.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Dalrymple was thirty nine years old and he wasn't much
of a fisherman. He owned a house cleaning business, which
he still does. Out on the water, he followed his
cousin's lead as they scouted for a good place to
throw out their lines. Then dal Rymple saw something.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We were about twenty five yards from the inner tube,
never that close to it, and I told my cousin,
I said, there looks like there's somebody on there, but
they look like they're dead.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
When dal Rymple got closer, he noticed a tiny hand
moving in the inner tube. His cousin jumped into the
water to investigate.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
My cousin's in the water and he's screaming, it's a baby,
and he's pushing up and I'm leaning over, almost falling
into the water. That's how rough the seas were, and
I snatched what we know today as Ellon Gonzalez.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Eleon Gonzalez was five years old. His mother had to
bring him to the United States from Cuba in a
small aluminum boat. He had just barely survived the journey.
His mother drowned along with ten other people. After dal
Rymple and his cousin brought Elean ashore, they delivered him
to the Coastguard. When it was discovered that Eleon had
(02:28):
a great uncle living in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami,
the boy was sent to stay with him and his family.
Eleon's story was seen as a miracle by some in
the local Cuban community.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
He was highlighted in the local news. This little kid survived,
the mother died, everybody died.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
This is Carlos Saladriguez, a Miami businessman who fled Cuba
in nineteen sixty one. Because of his deep ties to
the city's Cuban American community. Saladriguez was able to watch
the Elian Gonzales ordeal unfold from close range.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
There were rumors circulating around that dolphins had saved the
kid from drowning and from being eaten by charge.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
He was safe by God, but the dolphins.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Is a miracle.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
A few days after Eleon's rescue, his father back in
Cuba made it known that his son had been taken
to America without his permission.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
The father, back in their hometown of Cardinis keeps asking
his son when he's coming back, and demanding his return
by the United States.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
The custody battle instantly ballooned into a diplomatic crisis, as
Cuba's President Fidel Castro started putting pressure on the US
to send Elyon back.
Speaker 7 (03:36):
Now to the young refug j caught in the custody
dispute between the US and Cuba today.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
And that sort of became an opportunity to hidelight the
plight of the Cuban victims of the communists, and all
of that, he had all the qualities of becoming a
good political football.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
Relatives here claim Eleon's father is being pressured by the
Cuban government to ask for his son's return.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Miami Dade County was home to six hundred and fifty
thousand Cuban Americans, many of them first generation exiles. These
were people who hated Cuba's communist regime with a passion
to them. It didn't make a difference what Eleon's father
or Fidel Castro said. The boy's life would obviously be
better if he was allowed to grow up in America.
The US government did not see it that way. In
(04:25):
January of two thousand, six weeks into Elyon's stay in Miami,
the Clinton administration announced that he would have to be
sent back to Cuba.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
The US Attorney General Janet Reno says the child should
be returned to his father in Cuba as soon as possible,
especially in light of the hardships he endured coming to
this country.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
The news did not go over well in Little Havana.
Speaker 8 (04:49):
Dozens of Cuban Americans were arrested while protesting the US
government's decision to return Eleon Gonzalez to his father in Cuba.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
A standoff ensued as Eleon's Miami relatives looked for ways
to keep him in the country.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Because it was a child, he sort of brought down
the political issue and gave it a human face and
the face of a of a young child who lost
his mother. And it just became a very emotional and
deeply emotional issue, and it consumed the Quean American community
(05:24):
into that drama.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
As the custody battle over Eleon dragged on, many Cuban
Americans in Miami came to despise the Clinton administration for
its handling of the case.
Speaker 9 (05:34):
President Clinton, have you no shame.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
But in the end, it was not Bill Clinton who
had to answer for the Elyon case. It was the
guy running to replace him.
Speaker 10 (05:46):
Vice President Al Gore today formally declared himself a candidate
for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
Today I announced that I am a candidate for President
of the United States.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Al Gore was five months into his presidential bid when DONALDO.
Dalrymple and his cousin pulled Eleon Gonzales out of the water.
There are those who believe that Gore's fate was sealed
right then and there, that the Elyon controversy placed the
vice president on the path to inevitable defeat in Florida.
But as you're about to hear, the real story of
Gore's loss in two thousand was messier, richer, and harder
(06:23):
to arrange in a straight line of cause and effect.
And none of it could have happened anywhere but Florida.
I'm Leon Nafok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries. This
is fiasco Bush v.
Speaker 11 (06:37):
Gore.
Speaker 12 (06:39):
The rice with the White House is incredibly close.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
It's election like we haven't seen in decades.
Speaker 10 (06:44):
Uncharted Territorge Tonight, the outcome and history itself on Home
and the battled ground is Florida.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Episode one, Homestead. What happened in Florida before everything else
that happened in Florida. I'll just tell you now. Al
Gore lost Florida to George W. Bush by a margin
of five hundred and thirty seven votes out of nearly
six million cast. The outcome played out in slow motion
(07:16):
over thirty six days, as vote totals across the state
came under dispute, Hundreds of thousands of ballots were recounted,
and the two campaigns went to war with each other
in the courtrooms of Tallahassee. Now, many people believe, quite
reasonably that Gore lost the two thousand election because of
the way the recount played out in Florida. But the
(07:36):
roots of Gore's defeat can be traced back to the
earliest days of the campaign itself. Because what's striking when
you think back on two thousand is that, in most respects,
the fundamentals of the race were strongly in Gore's favor.
Speaker 8 (07:49):
Now, Governor Bush likes to say that we should go
back to the policies of eight years ago.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
I think that reflects perhaps a fuzzy memory.
Speaker 13 (07:58):
This is the asan al Gore's deck, as it were,
the strength of the economy.
Speaker 11 (08:02):
It's probably too late for George W.
Speaker 14 (08:04):
Bush.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
He had been vice president for nearly eight prosperous years.
The economy was booming, crime was down, the budget was balanced,
and the country was at peace. Yes, Bill Clinton's sex
scandal and impeachment created a serious challenge for Gore, but
on paper, at least, it should not have been that
hard for him to convince voters to stay with the
winning formula.
Speaker 7 (08:24):
Bill Clinton worked hard to get this economy right, and
I'm pledging to you here today, i am not gonna
let the other side wreck it and take it away
from us. We're gonna keep the prosperity going.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So what happened? What was it about Al Gore and
his candidacy and the way he ran his campaign that
made the race so incredibly close? The general election was
ten months away when the Clinton administration announced that Elian
Gonzales would have to be sent home to Cuba. The
situation placed Gore in political quicksand if he sided with
his own administration, he would surely forfeit the crucial Cuban
(09:04):
American vote in Miami to his Republican opponent. But if
he broke with the White House and pushed for l
On to stay in America, he would alienate his own party.
We'll be right back. Gore was never going to have
an easy time winning the Cuban American vote. For decades,
(09:25):
the perception had been that Democrats were soft on Castro
and soft on communism. In nineteen eighty, about eighty percent
of the Cuban American vote in Dade County went from
Ronald Reagan and in nineteen eighty eight, the same percentage
voted for George HW. Bush.
Speaker 14 (09:42):
President Bush is a beacon of hope for the millions
seeing Cuba who want liberty and democracy. President Bush has
shown his loyalty to the Q and people.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
But despite that history, al Gore had reason to be optimistic.
For one thing, he had an ally in the powerful
mayor of Miami Dade County, Alex Penelis. The rare Cuban
American politician who also a Democrat.
Speaker 15 (10:11):
Alex Panels has propelled himself to the center of South
Florida's political stage. He's making himself heard far beyond his state.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Panellus was considered a rising star in national politics. In
nineteen ninety nine, he was named America's sexiest politician by
People magazine.
Speaker 15 (10:28):
With two million constituents, he is Florida's second most powerful
politician after the governor, and some say the most influential
Hispanic politician in America.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
In addition to Penelus, Gore owe his chances in Little
Havana to Bill Clinton, who had made a steady and
concerted effort over the course of his presidency to make
inroads with the Cuban American community. Here's journalist Michael Grunwald,
who wrote about Clinton's courtship of the Cuban American elite
in his book The Swamp.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
And Bill Clinton is a political animal. You know, he's
a precinct by precinct vote counter, and he knows the demographics,
and he knows who matters in each demographic. And he
recognized that Cuban American voters who had been traditionally extremely
Republican could be made somewhat less Republican, and in Florida,
(11:19):
margins really matter.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
The charm offensive dated all the way back to Clinton's
first presidential campaign. During that spring of nineteen ninety two,
Clinton voiced his support for a hardline bill to intensify
the Cuban embargo, a bill that George H. W. Bush
initially declined to support. Then the following August, when the
Category five storm Hurricane Andrew caused twenty five billion dollars
(11:42):
in damage across South Florida, Clinton was presented with a
chance to build ties with the Cuban American power brokers
who would be steering the recovery effort. One of the
worst hit areas in Hurricane Andrew's path was a small
city in Dade County called Homestead. Before the storm, the
city's economy had revolved around the federally owned Homestead Air
Force Base.
Speaker 16 (12:03):
Homestead received the most damaged.
Speaker 17 (12:05):
Witnesses say almost every building was damaged, many destroyed.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Homestead Air Force Base was almost completely destroyed in the storm.
The base had been there since nineteen forty two and
had played an important role in military relations between Washington
and Havana. When more than a thousand prisoners of war
returned to the United States after being captured during the
failed Bay of Pigs invasion, they landed at Homestead.
Speaker 18 (12:30):
It certainly looked like a happy New Year to the
eleven hundred and thirteen captives returning from Cuba. Homestead Air
Force Base, Florida was their first taste of freedom after
being Castro's prisoners for twenty months.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
In Clinton, on a campaign swing through South Florida not
long after Hurricane Andrew visited the ruins of the Homestead
Air Force Base and made a promise that if elected president,
he would use the power of the federal government to
revitalize the area. Here's Michael Grunwald again.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
So he had a sort of kitchen cabinet of some
prominent Cuban American advisors, and they let him know early
that Homestead Air Force Base was a good issue, not
just on the merits where it seemed like the right
thing to do to rebuild a destroyed air Force base,
but that it would be a way of sort of
(13:17):
signaling culturally that he cared about South Florida generally and
the sort of Cuban American slice of South Florida specifically.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
In nineteen ninety four, a group of Cuban American investors
unveiled the proposal to convert Homestead Air Force Base into
a commercial airport. The proposal promised to turn Homestead into
a hub of international travel, but in order to get
off the ground, it needed the Clinton administration's approval.
Speaker 5 (13:43):
It was federal land, you know, as a US air
Force base, and the Pentagon was going to be running
the show in terms of what to do with this land.
It was going to be a federal process, and you know,
the White House clearly was going to play a role
in directing the Pentagon which direction it wanted to go.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
The promise of a brand new airport in Homestead gave
Clinton in an opening to forge political alliances with the
Cuban American power brokers who are pushing for it.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
One way to show some of the Cuban elites that
he was on their side was to really emphasize his
support for this airport. He knew it was something that
they wanted, and he knew that those business and political
leaders had a fair amount of influence with making actual
votes and dollars happen.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
All of this behind the scenes work paid off. In
nineteen ninety six, Clinton managed to get between thirty five
and forty four percent of Miami's Cuban American vote. This
astonishing result helped Clinton become the first Democrat to win
Florida in twenty years. As Al Gore looked ahead to
two thousand, it seemed possible that the Cuban community's goodwill
(14:54):
towards Clinton would carry over to him. But then Elian
Gonzales happened.
Speaker 19 (15:03):
We will not forget Elyon, we will not forget his mother,
and we will not live peaceably and until we see freedom.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Gore initially tried to step lightly around the Elyon issue.
I would insist, he told reporters upon due process of
law within the appropriate tribunal. On the substance, Gore was
putting distance between himself and the Clinton administration by saying
that the question of custody should not be handled by
federal immigration authorities. But as far as Bold stands go,
it left something to be desired and did not win
(15:35):
him a ton of credit. In Little Havana, George W. Bush,
on the other hand, spoke about the Elyon issue simply
and freely. The boy should just be given US citizenship,
he said, and his father should be allowed to come
to the United States and join him.
Speaker 10 (15:48):
The man ought to be brought to the United States,
given a whiff of freedom so he can see how
wonderful our country is.
Speaker 8 (15:53):
I want to say something about Cuban our hemisphere.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
As anti Castro demonstrations flared around Miami Eli, young Gonzales
settled into a strange life under the glare of international
media attention.
Speaker 10 (16:03):
Ellon today trying to roller skate outside his house in
Little Havana in its stand off with the government and
the boy's father.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
A few days after his sixth birthday, his family took
him to Disney World, where he was followed around by
a pack of reporters and sheriff's deputies while people chanted
his name.
Speaker 16 (16:20):
The case of the smiling six year old is so
entangled in American politics that even his new puppy came
from a member of Congress.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Donardo Dalrymple meanwhile made regular visits to the house where
Ellion was staying, driving there most days after work to
spend time with the boy and his family.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I just felt that I wanted to see this child again.
You know, it's not every day that you pull a
child out from the ocean, and I want to know
what was going to happen with his life.
Speaker 20 (16:51):
What your name, sir, My name is Donado dal Rymple.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Dalrymple would regularly give interviews to the reporters camped out
in front of Ellon's house.
Speaker 20 (17:00):
To see this gift of God. I believe that's what
he really is. To hang on the water for that
many days. I don't know how long it was, but
I mean, he's definitely a gift of God, and I'm
really privileged to be now to him.
Speaker 21 (17:11):
That's awesome, Thank you, that is awesome.
Speaker 22 (17:13):
What a beautiful kid.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Soon, Dalrymple became a media sensation in his own right.
Speaker 23 (17:18):
So who is Donando Dalrymple, the man widely known as
the Fisherman.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
In the Washington Post story headlined a Fisherman in his
fifteen Minutes, Dalrymple was cast as the Miami equivalent of kato' kalan,
the actor who lived in OJ Simpson's guest house and
briefly became famous after Simpson was charged with murder. In
the Post story, Dalrymple was described signing autographs and talking
about how Howard Stern had mentioned him on the radio.
(17:44):
His own cousin, the same one who helped pull elli
On out of the water, was quoted in the story
saying that Dalrymple was a desperate man looking for publicity.
Speaker 7 (17:52):
He says, you're.
Speaker 19 (17:53):
Using the child for fame and glory, and that you
believed from the start a child should be with his father.
Speaker 24 (18:00):
I like to tell my cousin I love him very
much and that it's very interesting, h how he's making
these accusations. I've never made an accusation towards him or anybody,
so I don't know where he's coming with that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Dal Rymple, who was born in Poughkeepsie, says he came
to identify with a Cuban American cause.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
They embraced me as one of their own. And I
listened to literally hundreds of stories of older men that
were in political prisons in Cuba and they came here.
And this is what made me see life a little
bit different. Is when they seen Elion, they seen themselves.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Dal Rymple absorbed a great deal from his new Cuban
American friends, including their resentment towards Clinton and their view
of al Gore as complicit in the administration's policies.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I just thought that he was one and the same
with him. They served together, and those decisions were made together.
Bill Clinton just wasn't the be all end all. I
mean he as a vice president, yet they have to
consult each other. And if al Gore thought different, he
might have stood up and said, you know, I don't
think this is right.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
That winter Gore watched that the Clinton administration became more
and more radioactive in Little Havana.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
I used to be a Democrat up to the time
of the Leon Gonzalez incident. My loyalty did not belong
in the Democratic Party. I believe that our government, the
United acting in the best interests of all Americans.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
In March, the Cuban American National Foundation announced that it
would work actively against Gore's election. Meanwhile, on the Cuban
exile radio station Radio Mambi, an influential commentator named Armando
Perez Rua, sometimes referred to as the Cuban American Rush Limbaugh,
called on his listeners to punish their enemies with their votes.
Even the mayor of Miami Dade County, Cuban American Democrat
(19:51):
Alex Panelis, took a hard line against the Clinton administration.
Speaker 9 (19:54):
And if the Justice Department's handling of this matter, if
their continued provocation leads to civil unrest and violence, we
are holding the federal government responsible and specific Lee Janet
Reno and the President of the United States.
Speaker 16 (20:13):
To some, Panella seemed to be inviting trouble when he
said local police would not participate if the government removed Elyon.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Panellis's aggressive stance was bad news for Gore, who had
been counting on the mayor's enthusiastic endorsement in his quest
to win over Cuban American voters. Penelos's support was Gore's
best chance to convince people that he was his own
man and that he shouldn't be held responsible for the
sins of the Clinton administration. On March thirtieth, two thousand,
(20:42):
Gore made a dramatic bid to distance himself from Clinton
on the Elyon issue. He did so by coming out
in favor of proposed legislation that would allow Eleon to
stay in the United States while his case was adjudicated.
Speaker 10 (20:54):
The Vice President stepped elbows deep into the Elian Gonzales
controversy quite suddenly.
Speaker 25 (20:58):
This afternoon, Vice President Gore, now running for president, said
that Congress should change the law.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
That seems to put Gore in direct conflict with his
own administration, which says the fight over Elion is an
immigration issue, not the custody battle.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Gore's move looked transparently cynical. Republicans and Democrats alike criticized
him as a craven political chameleon.
Speaker 25 (21:20):
Already some Democrats, Congresswoman Maxine Waters on our air earlier
when this news broke, said she would reconsider her support
for the Vice president.
Speaker 17 (21:28):
I was just overwhelmed, surprised, blindsided. I didn't think he
would go so far as to support right wing legislation
that would give him permanent status, Nor did I expect.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
A few days later, Gore went on The Today Show
to clarify his positions.
Speaker 25 (21:43):
Mister Vice President, good morning, Good morning, Matt, how are you.
Speaker 11 (21:46):
I'm fine.
Speaker 22 (21:47):
Thanks.
Speaker 11 (21:47):
It seems like we're about.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
But when he was pushed on what he actually believed,
Gore seemed to equivocate.
Speaker 25 (21:52):
With all due respect, you haven't answered my question.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Should he be given custody of his son if he
arrives in the United States?
Speaker 25 (21:57):
If the father says on Free Soil that he believes
that the son should go back to Cuba with him, that,
of course, is likely to be determinative and will be determinative.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
The Washington Post ran a story the next day under
the headline, Gore struggles to explain his position on Elyon.
The worst part was that Gore's break with Clinton didn't
even seem to win him any points. One month after
his last ditch effort to get on the right side
of the Elyon issue, the Chicago Tribune quoted one Miami
resident saying that she wouldn't vote Democratic if Gore came
to Florida with a Cuban flag in his hands. That
(22:33):
more or less was where things stood. As Attorney General
Janet Reno was conducting final negotiations with Eleon's Miami relatives.
The question at this point was not whether Eleon would
be sent back to his father, but how.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
And when officials here say they're determined to reunite the
father with his son, they describe Attorney General Reno as
quote leaning toward action.
Speaker 26 (22:53):
And if the Miami family resists, well, the government is
ready to plan to deal with that as well.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
On the night of April twenty second, TV crews, hoping
to be on hand for whatever was going to happen,
staked out Eleon's house from row of tents across the street.
Speaker 14 (23:07):
As a crowd of Eddie Castro hardliners maintains its vigil
outside the Miami house.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Inside, Carlo Saladriguez, the Miami businessman you heard at the
top of the show, was helping Ellion's family with the negotiations.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
You got to think of this simple house. He had
a little living room, a couple of bedrooms, and in
the back of the house was a family room in
a kitchen. That's where we were sitting. In that family room,
and in front of the house, there were hundreds of
people demonstrating and there were media station even with towers
(23:41):
built so that they could film from higher up, and
mean everything was set up for a media show.
Speaker 26 (23:47):
And so for now, much of the attention remains squarely
on that small house in the section of Miami they
call Little Havana, and the family inside that does not
seem anxious to give up that little boy.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
DONALDO. Dalrymple was at his home in Broward County when
he heard on the news that Elyon might be seized
by federal agents at any moment. It was around ten
o'clock at night, but Dalrymple got in his car and
drove the roughly thirty miles to Miami. He made his
way past the reporters and into the house where Saladriguez
and lawyers for Eleon's relatives conducted negotiations, and Eleon was
trying to fall asleep in his race car bed. At
(24:23):
five pin fifteen in the morning, three white vans carrying
a team of federal agents pulled up next to the house.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
There was a battering ram at the door, and people
were screaming. There was mayhem. There was so much confusion
going on, and I thought to myself, I'm dreaming.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Dalrymple, who had been asleep on the living room couch,
stirred awake as twenty heavily armed agents broke through the
chain link gate in the front yard, sprang teargas and
yelling for the gathered crowd to disperse. Dalrymple grabbed Eleon
and ran into a closet as agents stormed the house
and demanded to know where the boy was. When one
of the agents pointed a gun at the closet where
(25:00):
Dalrymple was holding Eleon in his arms, a news photographer
captured the moment in an instantly iconic snapshot.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And this was occurring within seconds. A woman appears in
the room and right away I handed Ellon over to
this woman and they all I heard this word I heard,
and it's clear as I'm talking to you right now.
I heard bingo and they ran out.
Speaker 10 (25:26):
They got the boy.
Speaker 13 (25:27):
They've got the boy.
Speaker 11 (25:28):
They took the boy. They're got the boy.
Speaker 13 (25:30):
Three minutes.
Speaker 26 (25:32):
In three minutes, six year old elli On Gunzanes, dressed
in a T shirt, draped in fee was gone.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Dell Rymple ran after the agents, carrying eli On to
the van parkin street.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I wanted to go in this vehicle with them to
wherever they were taking him, just so he'd have a
sense of comfort. He knew me from the ocean, he
knew me from for months playing down there with him.
You know, I was thinking in my mind, how did
this all go wrong? One minute we saved them, and
(26:05):
now they're coming in with guns to take them out.
It was just so ugly and horrible. But they wouldn't
let me in that vehicle, so I just I lingered
behind with the rest of everybody else as they sped
off down the road.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Soon, Elian Gonzalez was in a US Marshall's plane, destined
for Washington, where his father would be waiting for him.
It was just after six am. As the plane took
off from Homestead Air Force Base. One of the federal
agents keeping Elion company opened the window shade next to
him so that he could see the sunrise over Florida.
(26:47):
In the aftermath of the raid, the Cuban American community
in Miami was left reeling, and their rage at the
Clinton administration intensified. Here is Carlos Saladriguez again.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
The raid was the slap in the face. It was
sort of the hurt, the wound that took a long
time to heal. It was the snatching of this kid
from her mist that subtle became painful.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Clinton would never live it down, neither would al Gore.
The slogan that immediately took hold in Miami was we
will remember. In November, days before the election, Armando Perez Rua,
the Radio Mambi commentator, appeared with George W. Bush at
a rally in Florida and reminded the crowd to think
of Elion when they saw Gore's name on the ballot.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
He was guilty by association. I don't think there is
another instance in the history of the United States where
you can look at one single evant and see clearly
that he decided the presidency of the United States.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
The idea that the raid on Elian Gonzales cost al
Gore the two thousand election hardened into conventional wisdom November seven,
when the vice president only received about half as many
Cuban American votes in Florida as Clinton did in ninety six.
But there was a second controversy that played out in
Florida during the campaign, one that's much less well known
two decades later, but which was arguably no less decisive
(28:26):
in shaping the outcome of the race. This second controversy
was intertwined with the Elion case in tantalizing ways, and
Gore's handling of it was strikingly similar. Yet in some respects,
this one cut even deeper, both because it concerned an
issue that was uniquely close to Gore's heart and because
it lost him votes to a candidate who wasn't even
(28:47):
trying to win.
Speaker 16 (28:50):
Suddenly it's a two front war against George Bush and
a new headache, consumer advocate, Ralph Nader.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
While George W. Bush nibbled at Gore's margins on the
right and in the center, Ralph Nader, representing the Green Party,
attacked him from the left.
Speaker 21 (29:06):
Don't worry about George doy Buss. The problem is Al Gore.
We're going to pull Al Gore into progressive politics, and
he's not going to be pulled. He's going to lose,
and his Democratic Party's going to lose more and more
year after year.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Nader had been America's pre eminent consumer protection crusaders since
nineteen sixty five, when he published Unsafe at Any Speed,
an indictment of the auto industry. Later, he found success
lobbying Congress to pass the Clean Water Act, the Whistleblower
Protection Act, and the Freedom of Information Act, But despite
encouragement from his legions of fans, it was not until
(29:41):
the nineteen nineties that Nator decided to run for president.
Speaker 22 (29:43):
Because the inequities of power lead to huge inequities of wealth,
which lead to huge inequities of income, which lead to
cruelty to the children in our country and their parents who.
Speaker 11 (29:57):
Care got a decent paying job.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Nader's goal in two thousand was to win just five
percent of the vote nationwide. That was the threshold for
securing public funding for the green Park in future elections.
But Nader's visibility throughout the race belied his modest ambitions.
By presenting himself as a fresh alternative to a corrupt
and self perpetuating two party system, he attracted the support
(30:22):
of young people, disaffected Democrats, and celebrities like Bill Murray,
Susan Sarandon, Anita Franco and Eddie Vedder.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
All these other.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Rallies that Ralph's done with ten thousand people that hasn't
got any attention.
Speaker 18 (30:34):
It's going to stop tonight because they can't ignore this.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
May I love my commenture because my.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Computer While Bush and Gore held fundraising dinners for millionaires.
Nator sold cheap tickets to massive rallies at venues like
Madison Square Garden, and promoted the idea that Gore and Bush,
for all their supposed differences, were actually cut from the
same corporatist cloth.
Speaker 11 (31:03):
Third world country.
Speaker 22 (31:04):
Strike a harder bargain with these multinational corporations than we do.
Speaker 11 (31:10):
You're gonna put a stuff to this once and for all.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
With at.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Gore supporter saw Nader as a unique danger, a candidate
who could siphon just enough votes from the Democratic ticket
and key swing states that Bush could win them in
a squeaker Nader rejected this argument at the time, and
he still does.
Speaker 13 (31:29):
Ralph Nader, the spoiler in two thousand, has no nuanced
the way that media covers these things, and they get
away with it by using the words spoiler.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
This is Ralph Nader speaking to me about his role
in the two thousand election.
Speaker 13 (31:44):
It was not an exciting election. You had boring candidates.
Al Gore is very boring candidate. George W. Bush was
a boring candidate. Somebody counted once that Bush and Gore
agreed with each other over twenty times in one presidential debate.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Nator had known Gore for decades, and back in the
seventies and eighties he had considered him an ally, but
the Al Gore running for president in two thousand did
not strike Nader as a man who deserved theive vote well.
Speaker 13 (32:11):
Because he was a front runner, he was too cautious,
and because he was too cautious, he didn't take pioneering stands,
and when napoles started closing in on him, he couldn't
make himself into the original Al Gore. He didn't know
who he was at any given time.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
This was a common knock on Gore that he was
a shape shifter who didn't have a core identity and
took all his cues from polsters and political advisors. Early
in the campaign, he came in for criticism and ridicule
for hiring the feminist writer Naomi Wolf to serve as
an image consultant for fifteen thousand dollars a month. Even
a lot of Democrats saw Gore as inauthentic, tepid, and gauzy.
(32:52):
Here's Joan Walsh, who served as news editor at Salon
during the two thousand election and wrote what is arguably
the definitive analysis of Gore's political defects.
Speaker 12 (33:01):
During the campaign, he would kind of pick up on
issues and drop them. He really couldn't find a theme,
a defining set of themes and stick to them, and
all of these things I think kind of came together
to create this image of a guy who didn't know
what he stood for.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Walsher members coming across an old photograph of Gore dressed
up for Halloween as Frankenstein's Monster, it just was.
Speaker 12 (33:27):
Like, dude, don't do this, because this image of this
guy who's been stitched together and you know, parts that
don't fit and clothes that don't fit in bolts, and
you know, some of it was just the stiffness of
his persona, but also this sense that he had literally
been stitched together.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
For a small but significant subset of the Florida electorate.
There was no better example of Gore's ideological wishy washiness
than his stance on a fairly obscure issue dating back
to the nineteen ninety two campaign. That issue was the
proposed redevelopment of Homestead Air Force Base. Homestead, as your recall,
(34:05):
was the city in Miami Dade County that was destroyed
by Hurricane Andrew. On the campaign that year, Bill Clinton
vowed to help rebuild the base and revive the local economy,
a commitment that endeared him to a group of Cuban
American power brokers in Miami who wanted to replace Homestead
Air Force Base with a new international airport. Here again
is reporter Michael Grunwald.
Speaker 5 (34:25):
This was an incredibly lucrative opportunity. This was going to
be a massive construction project. The idea was that it
was going to revitalize this area that was pretty downtrodden
even when the air base was functioning, and was in
real trouble now that the air base had been ripped
to shreds.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Among the most enthusiastic backers of the airport plan was
the Mayor of Miami Dade County, Alex Penelis.
Speaker 23 (34:47):
Homestead Air Force Base has become all things to all people.
Miami Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas, as well as South
Miami Dade's political and business interests, support a commercial airport,
toutas bringing in thirty eight thousand jobs and a billion
dollars to the economy.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
There was a problem, though, Homestead was situated in between
two protected nature preserves Biscayne National Park to the east
and the Everglades National Park to the west. To environmentalists
in Florida, the idea of building an airport so close
to these precious lands was obscene.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
When Harry Truman established Everglades part and his speech was
about how this is going to be a place of solitude,
a place where Americans can come and appreciate the quiet
of nature. It's this kind of lonely quiet place is
part of what makes the Everglades the Everglades. I think
the idea that right on its doorstep there was going
(35:45):
to be this massive commercial airport seemed like it would
really take away from the uniqueness of the Everglades.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
All through the nineties, as the airport plan slowly advanced
through layers of local and federal bureaucracy, environmentalists in Florida
fought it however they could.
Speaker 23 (36:04):
The Sierra Club is launching a new campaign against the development.
Today's full page newspaper add his own the opening salvo,
and it is promising a protracted court battle if necessary.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Environmentalists in Florida had every reason to expect that during
the two thousand campaign, al Gore would come out against
the Homestead Airport plan. Even putting aside his overall record
on the environment, Gore had been a driving force behind
major legislation to fund Evergwaye's restoration. And yet whenever Gore
was asked about Homestead on the campaign trail, he seemed
(36:36):
only to hem in haw. Instead of just saying that
the airport was a terrible idea, Gore would have his
spokesman issue wan statements about how it wasn't appropriate for
him to weigh in. The air Force was still conducting
an environmental impact study, and the Vice President did not
want to pre judge the project until the results were in.
At one point, Gore took the incendiary position that continued
(36:57):
discussion was needed of how a balanced solution can be
found that can help the community without hurting the environment.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
Gore had a choice to make, and he decided to
avoid the choice. It was waffle City.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
What was going on. Gore was the most prominent environmentalist
in American politics, the guy who, back in nineteen eighty one,
had held the first ever Congressional hearings on global warming.
As Vice President, Gore had traveled to Kyoto to help
negotiate a transformative international treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Gore had never been shy about his passion for the environment,
(37:33):
not even when his political rivals made fun of him,
as President George H. W. Bush did in nineteen ninety
two when he coined a special nickname for his opponent's
running mate.
Speaker 27 (37:42):
If you listen to Governor Clinton and ozone Man, if
you listen to them, you know why I call him
ozone Man. This guy is so far off, and the
environmental extreme will be up to our neck in owls
and out of work for every American.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
This guy's crazy.
Speaker 11 (38:00):
Is way out, far out man.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Given this history, environmentalists in Florida were infuriated by Gore's
refusal to come out against the Homestead Airport plan. One
activist told The Washington Monthly that gore silence on the
issue called into question whether he himself knew what his
campaign stood for. In a column for The Miami Herald,
Florida novelist Karl Hyason wrote that Gore, who claims the
(38:25):
greenest pro environmental credentials of all the presidential candidates, is
showing a flash of yellow by deciding to wimp out
and keep quiet on South Florida's most controversial environmental issue.
Speaker 5 (38:35):
The Gore people could not believe they were even having
this conversation.
Speaker 13 (38:39):
You know.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
Their attitude was, where else are environmentalists going to go?
You know, he's Al Gore, leave us alone, and the
environmentalist did not agree to do that.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Three weeks before the election, the Gore campaign sought to
quell the growing mutiny in South Florida by sending a
pair of Gore's advisors, Mitchell Berger and Katie McGuinty, to
meet with environmentalist groups at the South Miami headquarters of
the Tropical Audubon Society. During this tense meeting, McGuinty and
Berger tried to convince the assembled group that Gore was
on their side.
Speaker 28 (39:13):
Here's Berger I remember saying to them, this man went
to Kyoto and his risk, sacrificing his entire career for
what he believes.
Speaker 29 (39:26):
And this man, I know.
Speaker 30 (39:29):
For a fact, orchestrated the purchase of forty thousand acres
in the middle of the Everglades and fought everyone in
the administration to do that.
Speaker 5 (39:41):
They were just making the case. You know, Al Gore
is one of you. He has spent his entire career
fighting for places like the Everglades and specifically the Everglades.
Why are you torturing him over this issue that is
going to potentially cost him the election.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
The anti airport activists were not impressed. Take our friendship
back to the vice president. One of them said to mcguinteenberger,
only a true friend will tell you what you don't
want to hear. You are going to lose this election
because of Homestead. If gordonn't condemned the airport plan, the
activist said, a lot of environmentalists were going to vote
for Ralph Nader. The environmental controversy around the Homestead Airport
(40:37):
was a perfect issue for Ralph Nader. It was a coherent,
little emblem of everything that was wrong with Al Gore.
During the final days of the election, Nader embraced Homestead
with Gusto while campaigning in Florida.
Speaker 13 (40:50):
I was at the Radison Center in South Florida, and
it was packed, and all they wanted to talk about
was the fungus attack that was destroying the citrus trees
and the Homestead Air Force Base. And again and again
the questions were, why doesn't Gore come out of it.
(41:11):
A woman came up to me and kept saying he
would get so many votes if you would just put
out a statement, even now, this late in the game,
and I too raised the question, why isn't Gore opposing it?
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Nader believed that the answer was purely political. Gore was
afraid of alienating the Cuban American leaders who had been
pushing the airport project since Hurricane Andrew. The person Gore
was most concerned with appeasing, Nator thought was Alex Penellis. Now,
the game theory here is a little tricky to parts,
but the idea was that Gore, having lost Cuban Americans
(41:47):
because of the Elon raid, was trying to salvage whatever
support he could by playing nice with penelas Al.
Speaker 5 (41:53):
Gore was clearly concerned about the Cuban vote, but after
Eleon one environmentalist told him, look, it doesn't matter if
you come out tomorrow for landing the one hundred and
first airborne in Havana. You've lost the Cuban vote. You
are screwed with the Cuban vote. You have got to
tend to your base, and you are losing your base
because of Homestead Air Force Base.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Mitchell Berger, Gore's friend and advisor, told me unequivocally that
when it came to Homestead, Gore was not acting out
of political calculation. The actual reason for his reticence was
much more mundane. Burger said, he really did just want
to wait until the Air Force finished its study, because
if he interfered beforehand, the developers would have standing to sue.
This was not a reflection of Gore's cowardice or cynicism,
(42:38):
but rather his commitment to process.
Speaker 29 (42:41):
Gore said, I cannot prejudge this publicly by law, and
that is what the boy scout did. He said, until
it is re reviewed, I cannot prejudge it, and that's
technically correctly true under the law. Notwithstanding what he said,
(43:03):
no one heard it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Whatever the merits of his position, Gore's refusal to take
a stand on Homestead fit easily into a storyline that
his opponents on both the right and the left had
been tapping into all through the election. That he didn't
know who he was, that he wasn't willing or able
to say what he really thought, that even on the environment,
he was driven to equivocate in the same way Gore's
(43:25):
avowal of due process in the Ellon case had fallen
on deaf ears in Little Havanah. Gore's strict adherence to
procedure in the Homestead controversy read to his critics as
a cop out, and that provided an opening for Ralph Nader.
Speaker 29 (43:39):
Nader amplified the narrative, and Nader was happy to use
his ego to say this is why Gore is no
different than anyone else.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
It's worth noting that if Nader was right about al
Gore's motivations on Homestead, if he really did hold his
tongue because he was trying to placate Alex Panellis and
make up for Elion, the plan didn't work at all.
Starting in the fall of two thousand, Panellis declined to
speak out in Gore's favor even once, and three weeks
before the election, he left town for trip to Spain.
Speaker 29 (44:12):
Alex Penellis, instead of endorsing Gore, left town deliberately left
him at the podium in front of the Cuban community.
Anyone who says that that didn't hurt Gore more than
anything in Florida doesn't understand in my view of Florida politics.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Penellis, who declined to be interviewed for this podcast, became
something of a pariah within the Democratic Party after the
two thousand election. When he ran for a Florida Senate
seat in two thousand and four, al Gore issued a
statement calling him the single most treacherous and dishonest person
he dealt with during the entire campaign. As for the
Homestead Airport, it was never built, labeling the project inappropriate,
(44:58):
the Air Force killed it just days before Bush took office.
All these years later, it's impossible to know how many
votes Gore lost by refusing to speak out against the
Homestead Airport, but there are those who believe confidently that
it cost him the election. Among them is Ralph Nader,
who received ninety seven thousand votes in Florida in two
(45:18):
thousand and who is bold enough in our conversation to
draw a causal link between Gore's stance on Homestead and
the invasion of Iraq.
Speaker 13 (45:26):
The tragedy is in the fate of human affairs. One
can have a direct link between the loss of the
votes on the Homestead issue and a million dead iraqis
that's the way the winner take all system works. But who,
of course, could have predicted that.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
It's easy to spot mistakes when you look back at history.
When you know how everything started and what it took
for it to end, it doesn't require a lot of
imagination to say, ah, if they'd done ex instead of why,
it would have all turned out differently. Regardless of whether
you think al Gore should have won the election, there
are lots of hinge points like that in the story
of how he ended up losing. If only Gore had
(46:13):
broken more sharply with the Clinton administration on Elian Gonzales,
maybe he wouldn't have lost as many Cuban Americans to Bush.
If only he had condemned the Homestead Airport plan, maybe
he wouldn't have lost as many Florida environmentalists to Nadir. Remember,
this election was ultimately decided by just five hundred and
thirty seven votes, with a margin that then it's not
(46:34):
a stretch to say that one tiny decision out of
god knows how many actually was responsible for the outcome.
And if our goal with this first episode of Fiasco
was to explore why the two thousand election was so close,
we could have focused on so many other things besides
Elyon and Homestead, so many little subplots that moved the
vote one way or another, we could have talked about
(46:56):
how George W. Bush benefited from the fact that his
brother Jeb was the governor of Florida, Or if we
wanted to come at it from the other direction and
explore how Gore came within spitting distance of victory, we
could have talked about Jeb's effort to end affirmative action
in Florida and how that helped Gore by inspiring a
massive voter registration movement among black voters. The point is
(47:17):
the two thousand election was close for about a million
different reasons, and because it was so close, because so
many of the subplots were plausibly decisive, every little detail
looks incredibly high stakes in retrospect. This six part podcast
will tell the story of how the two thousand election
turned out the way it did, and what it was
like during those five shaky weeks after election Day, when
(47:39):
no one in the country knew who the next president
was going to be, and every little zig and zag
looked like it might decide the result. The process of
breaking the two thousand stalemate was, by turns chaotic and deadening.
More than anything, it was a collective act of frantic
improvisation conducted by a throne together cast of bureaucrats, partisans,
(48:00):
and white collar gladiators. Along the way, all kinds of
boundaries were scrambled, between lawyers and politicians, between truth and narrative,
between hypocrisy and hustle. At around midnight and November seventh,
(48:22):
seven hours before poles were set to open, Al Gore
was in Miami Beach leading one last rally. Gore may
have lost Alex Panelis and the rest of the Cuban
American community. He may have lost the environmentalists, but here
he was flanked by John bon Jovi, Stevie Wonder, and
Ben Affleck. Despite Elyon, despite Homestead, Gore's numbers in Florida
(48:45):
had him running dead, even with Bush, who was seventy
three degrees in the middle of the night, and Gore's
crowd was energized. Addressing his supporters, Gore tried to articulate
what was at stake in the two thousand election. He
spoke clearly and emphatically in a way that had often
eluded him during the campaign.
Speaker 8 (49:06):
We in this nation have the ability in this US
election to make the United States of America what America
is intended to be. I asked for your help and
your vote, because I want to fight for you.
Speaker 11 (49:21):
God, bless you, Florida, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
It was about to be over no matter what. In
twenty four hours, the campaign would be done and the
country would have a new president elect. Well probably, as
Gore's top strategist saw it, there was a conceivable scenario
that would take the game into overtime. Based on all
the available data, it seemed possible that Gore would win
(49:51):
the electoral College, but Bush would win the popular vote.
The Gore team was worried if that happened, how is
the vice president going to convince the American people that
his victory was legitimate? On the next episode of Fiasco,
(50:12):
how election analysts working with America's top news networks got
the two thousand election wrong, not once, but twice in
a single night.
Speaker 12 (50:20):
As much as we honestly believe that you don't want elections,
so you have all the numbers, in some ways you
can win or lose an election based on what.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
The TVs say. For a list of books, articles, and
documentaries that we relied on in our research, click the
link in the show notes. Fiasco is a production of
Prolog projects, and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show
is produced by Andrew Parsons, Madeline kaplan Ula Kalpa and
me Leon Nafock. Our script editor was Daniel Riley. Our
(50:50):
editorial consultant was Camilla Hammer, and we received additional editorial
support from Lisa Chase. Our music and score are by
Nick Silvester of god Mode, with additional music from Alexis Quadrado.
Our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is
by Teddy Blanks at Chips and Why. Audio mixed by
rob Byer, Michael Raphael and Johnny Vince Evans. A final
(51:13):
Final V two special thanks to Luminary. Thanks to c SPAN,
NBC News Archive, and CNN for the archival material you
heard in today's show. Additional thanks to Laura Castro de Cortes,
Tasha Cole, Oliver Bernstein, Monica Meyer, c R. Rooters, and
Matt Mullenwag of WordPress dot com for letting us have
(51:34):
the prolog project's domain name. Thanks for listening.
Pushkin. Hey, Leon here, Before we get to this episode,
I want to let you know that you can binge
the entire season of Fiasco bush v goor right now
ad free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Sign up
for Pushkin Plus on the Fiasco Apple podcast showpage, or
(00:37):
visit Pushkin dot fm slash plus. Now onto the episode.
On Thanksgiving morning nineteen ninety nine, a Florida man from
outside Fort Lauderdale named Donado Dalrymple went on an impulse
fishing trip with his cousin. The water was choppy as
they took their motorboat out into the Atlantic Ocean in
(00:57):
search of Mahi mahi.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
My cousin he said, look for seaweed and debris, anything
floating on the ocean. And I point out with my
finger and I said, like that inner tube that's there.
He goes, Yeah, let's go around that inner tube.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Dalrymple was thirty nine years old and he wasn't much
of a fisherman. He owned a house cleaning business, which
he still does. Out on the water, he followed his
cousin's lead as they scouted for a good place to
throw out their lines. Then dal Rymple saw something.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We were about twenty five yards from the inner tube,
never that close to it, and I told my cousin,
I said, there looks like there's somebody on there, but
they look like they're dead.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
When dal Rymple got closer, he noticed a tiny hand
moving in the inner tube. His cousin jumped into the
water to investigate.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
My cousin's in the water and he's screaming, it's a baby,
and he's pushing up and I'm leaning over, almost falling
into the water. That's how rough the seas were, and
I snatched what we know today as Ellon Gonzalez.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Eleon Gonzalez was five years old. His mother had to
bring him to the United States from Cuba in a
small aluminum boat. He had just barely survived the journey.
His mother drowned along with ten other people. After dal
Rymple and his cousin brought Elean ashore, they delivered him
to the Coastguard. When it was discovered that Eleon had
(02:28):
a great uncle living in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami,
the boy was sent to stay with him and his family.
Eleon's story was seen as a miracle by some in
the local Cuban community.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
He was highlighted in the local news. This little kid survived,
the mother died, everybody died.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
This is Carlos Saladriguez, a Miami businessman who fled Cuba
in nineteen sixty one. Because of his deep ties to
the city's Cuban American community. Saladriguez was able to watch
the Elian Gonzales ordeal unfold from close range.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
There were rumors circulating around that dolphins had saved the
kid from drowning and from being eaten by charge.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
He was safe by God, but the dolphins.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Is a miracle.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
A few days after Eleon's rescue, his father back in
Cuba made it known that his son had been taken
to America without his permission.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
The father, back in their hometown of Cardinis keeps asking
his son when he's coming back, and demanding his return
by the United States.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
The custody battle instantly ballooned into a diplomatic crisis, as
Cuba's President Fidel Castro started putting pressure on the US
to send Elyon back.
Speaker 7 (03:36):
Now to the young refug j caught in the custody
dispute between the US and Cuba today.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
And that sort of became an opportunity to hidelight the
plight of the Cuban victims of the communists, and all
of that, he had all the qualities of becoming a
good political football.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
Relatives here claim Eleon's father is being pressured by the
Cuban government to ask for his son's return.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Miami Dade County was home to six hundred and fifty
thousand Cuban Americans, many of them first generation exiles. These
were people who hated Cuba's communist regime with a passion
to them. It didn't make a difference what Eleon's father
or Fidel Castro said. The boy's life would obviously be
better if he was allowed to grow up in America.
The US government did not see it that way. In
(04:25):
January of two thousand, six weeks into Elyon's stay in Miami,
the Clinton administration announced that he would have to be
sent back to Cuba.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
The US Attorney General Janet Reno says the child should
be returned to his father in Cuba as soon as possible,
especially in light of the hardships he endured coming to
this country.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
The news did not go over well in Little Havana.
Speaker 8 (04:49):
Dozens of Cuban Americans were arrested while protesting the US
government's decision to return Eleon Gonzalez to his father in Cuba.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
A standoff ensued as Eleon's Miami relatives looked for ways
to keep him in the country.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Because it was a child, he sort of brought down
the political issue and gave it a human face and
the face of a of a young child who lost
his mother. And it just became a very emotional and
deeply emotional issue, and it consumed the Quean American community
(05:24):
into that drama.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
As the custody battle over Eleon dragged on, many Cuban
Americans in Miami came to despise the Clinton administration for
its handling of the case.
Speaker 9 (05:34):
President Clinton, have you no shame.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
But in the end, it was not Bill Clinton who
had to answer for the Elyon case. It was the
guy running to replace him.
Speaker 10 (05:46):
Vice President Al Gore today formally declared himself a candidate
for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
Today I announced that I am a candidate for President
of the United States.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Al Gore was five months into his presidential bid when DONALDO.
Dalrymple and his cousin pulled Eleon Gonzales out of the water.
There are those who believe that Gore's fate was sealed
right then and there, that the Elyon controversy placed the
vice president on the path to inevitable defeat in Florida.
But as you're about to hear, the real story of
Gore's loss in two thousand was messier, richer, and harder
(06:23):
to arrange in a straight line of cause and effect.
And none of it could have happened anywhere but Florida.
I'm Leon Nafok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries. This
is fiasco Bush v.
Speaker 11 (06:37):
Gore.
Speaker 12 (06:39):
The rice with the White House is incredibly close.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
It's election like we haven't seen in decades.
Speaker 10 (06:44):
Uncharted Territorge Tonight, the outcome and history itself on Home
and the battled ground is Florida.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Episode one, Homestead. What happened in Florida before everything else
that happened in Florida. I'll just tell you now. Al
Gore lost Florida to George W. Bush by a margin
of five hundred and thirty seven votes out of nearly
six million cast. The outcome played out in slow motion
(07:16):
over thirty six days, as vote totals across the state
came under dispute, Hundreds of thousands of ballots were recounted,
and the two campaigns went to war with each other
in the courtrooms of Tallahassee. Now, many people believe, quite
reasonably that Gore lost the two thousand election because of
the way the recount played out in Florida. But the
(07:36):
roots of Gore's defeat can be traced back to the
earliest days of the campaign itself. Because what's striking when
you think back on two thousand is that, in most respects,
the fundamentals of the race were strongly in Gore's favor.
Speaker 8 (07:49):
Now, Governor Bush likes to say that we should go
back to the policies of eight years ago.
Speaker 7 (07:55):
I think that reflects perhaps a fuzzy memory.
Speaker 13 (07:58):
This is the asan al Gore's deck, as it were,
the strength of the economy.
Speaker 11 (08:02):
It's probably too late for George W.
Speaker 14 (08:04):
Bush.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
He had been vice president for nearly eight prosperous years.
The economy was booming, crime was down, the budget was balanced,
and the country was at peace. Yes, Bill Clinton's sex
scandal and impeachment created a serious challenge for Gore, but
on paper, at least, it should not have been that
hard for him to convince voters to stay with the
winning formula.
Speaker 7 (08:24):
Bill Clinton worked hard to get this economy right, and
I'm pledging to you here today, i am not gonna
let the other side wreck it and take it away
from us. We're gonna keep the prosperity going.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So what happened? What was it about Al Gore and
his candidacy and the way he ran his campaign that
made the race so incredibly close? The general election was
ten months away when the Clinton administration announced that Elian
Gonzales would have to be sent home to Cuba. The
situation placed Gore in political quicksand if he sided with
his own administration, he would surely forfeit the crucial Cuban
(09:04):
American vote in Miami to his Republican opponent. But if
he broke with the White House and pushed for l
On to stay in America, he would alienate his own party.
We'll be right back. Gore was never going to have
an easy time winning the Cuban American vote. For decades,
(09:25):
the perception had been that Democrats were soft on Castro
and soft on communism. In nineteen eighty, about eighty percent
of the Cuban American vote in Dade County went from
Ronald Reagan and in nineteen eighty eight, the same percentage
voted for George HW. Bush.
Speaker 14 (09:42):
President Bush is a beacon of hope for the millions
seeing Cuba who want liberty and democracy. President Bush has
shown his loyalty to the Q and people.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
But despite that history, al Gore had reason to be optimistic.
For one thing, he had an ally in the powerful
mayor of Miami Dade County, Alex Penelis. The rare Cuban
American politician who also a Democrat.
Speaker 15 (10:11):
Alex Panels has propelled himself to the center of South
Florida's political stage. He's making himself heard far beyond his state.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Panellus was considered a rising star in national politics. In
nineteen ninety nine, he was named America's sexiest politician by
People magazine.
Speaker 15 (10:28):
With two million constituents, he is Florida's second most powerful
politician after the governor, and some say the most influential
Hispanic politician in America.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
In addition to Penelus, Gore owe his chances in Little
Havana to Bill Clinton, who had made a steady and
concerted effort over the course of his presidency to make
inroads with the Cuban American community. Here's journalist Michael Grunwald,
who wrote about Clinton's courtship of the Cuban American elite
in his book The Swamp.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
And Bill Clinton is a political animal. You know, he's
a precinct by precinct vote counter, and he knows the demographics,
and he knows who matters in each demographic. And he
recognized that Cuban American voters who had been traditionally extremely
Republican could be made somewhat less Republican, and in Florida,
(11:19):
margins really matter.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
The charm offensive dated all the way back to Clinton's
first presidential campaign. During that spring of nineteen ninety two,
Clinton voiced his support for a hardline bill to intensify
the Cuban embargo, a bill that George H. W. Bush
initially declined to support. Then the following August, when the
Category five storm Hurricane Andrew caused twenty five billion dollars
(11:42):
in damage across South Florida, Clinton was presented with a
chance to build ties with the Cuban American power brokers
who would be steering the recovery effort. One of the
worst hit areas in Hurricane Andrew's path was a small
city in Dade County called Homestead. Before the storm, the
city's economy had revolved around the federally owned Homestead Air
Force Base.
Speaker 16 (12:03):
Homestead received the most damaged.
Speaker 17 (12:05):
Witnesses say almost every building was damaged, many destroyed.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Homestead Air Force Base was almost completely destroyed in the storm.
The base had been there since nineteen forty two and
had played an important role in military relations between Washington
and Havana. When more than a thousand prisoners of war
returned to the United States after being captured during the
failed Bay of Pigs invasion, they landed at Homestead.
Speaker 18 (12:30):
It certainly looked like a happy New Year to the
eleven hundred and thirteen captives returning from Cuba. Homestead Air
Force Base, Florida was their first taste of freedom after
being Castro's prisoners for twenty months.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
In Clinton, on a campaign swing through South Florida not
long after Hurricane Andrew visited the ruins of the Homestead
Air Force Base and made a promise that if elected president,
he would use the power of the federal government to
revitalize the area. Here's Michael Grunwald again.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
So he had a sort of kitchen cabinet of some
prominent Cuban American advisors, and they let him know early
that Homestead Air Force Base was a good issue, not
just on the merits where it seemed like the right
thing to do to rebuild a destroyed air Force base,
but that it would be a way of sort of
(13:17):
signaling culturally that he cared about South Florida generally and
the sort of Cuban American slice of South Florida specifically.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
In nineteen ninety four, a group of Cuban American investors
unveiled the proposal to convert Homestead Air Force Base into
a commercial airport. The proposal promised to turn Homestead into
a hub of international travel, but in order to get
off the ground, it needed the Clinton administration's approval.
Speaker 5 (13:43):
It was federal land, you know, as a US air
Force base, and the Pentagon was going to be running
the show in terms of what to do with this land.
It was going to be a federal process, and you know,
the White House clearly was going to play a role
in directing the Pentagon which direction it wanted to go.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
The promise of a brand new airport in Homestead gave
Clinton in an opening to forge political alliances with the
Cuban American power brokers who are pushing for it.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
One way to show some of the Cuban elites that
he was on their side was to really emphasize his
support for this airport. He knew it was something that
they wanted, and he knew that those business and political
leaders had a fair amount of influence with making actual
votes and dollars happen.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
All of this behind the scenes work paid off. In
nineteen ninety six, Clinton managed to get between thirty five
and forty four percent of Miami's Cuban American vote. This
astonishing result helped Clinton become the first Democrat to win
Florida in twenty years. As Al Gore looked ahead to
two thousand, it seemed possible that the Cuban community's goodwill
(14:54):
towards Clinton would carry over to him. But then Elian
Gonzales happened.
Speaker 19 (15:03):
We will not forget Elyon, we will not forget his mother,
and we will not live peaceably and until we see freedom.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Gore initially tried to step lightly around the Elyon issue.
I would insist, he told reporters upon due process of
law within the appropriate tribunal. On the substance, Gore was
putting distance between himself and the Clinton administration by saying
that the question of custody should not be handled by
federal immigration authorities. But as far as Bold stands go,
it left something to be desired and did not win
(15:35):
him a ton of credit. In Little Havana, George W. Bush,
on the other hand, spoke about the Elyon issue simply
and freely. The boy should just be given US citizenship,
he said, and his father should be allowed to come
to the United States and join him.
Speaker 10 (15:48):
The man ought to be brought to the United States,
given a whiff of freedom so he can see how
wonderful our country is.
Speaker 8 (15:53):
I want to say something about Cuban our hemisphere.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
As anti Castro demonstrations flared around Miami Eli, young Gonzales
settled into a strange life under the glare of international
media attention.
Speaker 10 (16:03):
Ellon today trying to roller skate outside his house in
Little Havana in its stand off with the government and
the boy's father.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
A few days after his sixth birthday, his family took
him to Disney World, where he was followed around by
a pack of reporters and sheriff's deputies while people chanted
his name.
Speaker 16 (16:20):
The case of the smiling six year old is so
entangled in American politics that even his new puppy came
from a member of Congress.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Donardo Dalrymple meanwhile made regular visits to the house where
Ellion was staying, driving there most days after work to
spend time with the boy and his family.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I just felt that I wanted to see this child again.
You know, it's not every day that you pull a
child out from the ocean, and I want to know
what was going to happen with his life.
Speaker 20 (16:51):
What your name, sir, My name is Donado dal Rymple.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Dalrymple would regularly give interviews to the reporters camped out
in front of Ellon's house.
Speaker 20 (17:00):
To see this gift of God. I believe that's what
he really is. To hang on the water for that
many days. I don't know how long it was, but
I mean, he's definitely a gift of God, and I'm
really privileged to be now to him.
Speaker 21 (17:11):
That's awesome, Thank you, that is awesome.
Speaker 22 (17:13):
What a beautiful kid.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Soon, Dalrymple became a media sensation in his own right.
Speaker 23 (17:18):
So who is Donando Dalrymple, the man widely known as
the Fisherman.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
In the Washington Post story headlined a Fisherman in his
fifteen Minutes, Dalrymple was cast as the Miami equivalent of kato' kalan,
the actor who lived in OJ Simpson's guest house and
briefly became famous after Simpson was charged with murder. In
the Post story, Dalrymple was described signing autographs and talking
about how Howard Stern had mentioned him on the radio.
(17:44):
His own cousin, the same one who helped pull elli
On out of the water, was quoted in the story
saying that Dalrymple was a desperate man looking for publicity.
Speaker 7 (17:52):
He says, you're.
Speaker 19 (17:53):
Using the child for fame and glory, and that you
believed from the start a child should be with his father.
Speaker 24 (18:00):
I like to tell my cousin I love him very
much and that it's very interesting, h how he's making
these accusations. I've never made an accusation towards him or anybody,
so I don't know where he's coming with that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Dal Rymple, who was born in Poughkeepsie, says he came
to identify with a Cuban American cause.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
They embraced me as one of their own. And I
listened to literally hundreds of stories of older men that
were in political prisons in Cuba and they came here.
And this is what made me see life a little
bit different. Is when they seen Elion, they seen themselves.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Dal Rymple absorbed a great deal from his new Cuban
American friends, including their resentment towards Clinton and their view
of al Gore as complicit in the administration's policies.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I just thought that he was one and the same
with him. They served together, and those decisions were made together.
Bill Clinton just wasn't the be all end all. I
mean he as a vice president, yet they have to
consult each other. And if al Gore thought different, he
might have stood up and said, you know, I don't
think this is right.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
That winter Gore watched that the Clinton administration became more
and more radioactive in Little Havana.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
I used to be a Democrat up to the time
of the Leon Gonzalez incident. My loyalty did not belong
in the Democratic Party. I believe that our government, the
United acting in the best interests of all Americans.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
In March, the Cuban American National Foundation announced that it
would work actively against Gore's election. Meanwhile, on the Cuban
exile radio station Radio Mambi, an influential commentator named Armando
Perez Rua, sometimes referred to as the Cuban American Rush Limbaugh,
called on his listeners to punish their enemies with their votes.
Even the mayor of Miami Dade County, Cuban American Democrat
(19:51):
Alex Panelis, took a hard line against the Clinton administration.
Speaker 9 (19:54):
And if the Justice Department's handling of this matter, if
their continued provocation leads to civil unrest and violence, we
are holding the federal government responsible and specific Lee Janet
Reno and the President of the United States.
Speaker 16 (20:13):
To some, Panella seemed to be inviting trouble when he
said local police would not participate if the government removed Elyon.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Panellis's aggressive stance was bad news for Gore, who had
been counting on the mayor's enthusiastic endorsement in his quest
to win over Cuban American voters. Penelos's support was Gore's
best chance to convince people that he was his own
man and that he shouldn't be held responsible for the
sins of the Clinton administration. On March thirtieth, two thousand,
(20:42):
Gore made a dramatic bid to distance himself from Clinton
on the Elyon issue. He did so by coming out
in favor of proposed legislation that would allow Eleon to
stay in the United States while his case was adjudicated.
Speaker 10 (20:54):
The Vice President stepped elbows deep into the Elian Gonzales
controversy quite suddenly.
Speaker 25 (20:58):
This afternoon, Vice President Gore, now running for president, said
that Congress should change the law.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
That seems to put Gore in direct conflict with his
own administration, which says the fight over Elion is an
immigration issue, not the custody battle.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Gore's move looked transparently cynical. Republicans and Democrats alike criticized
him as a craven political chameleon.
Speaker 25 (21:20):
Already some Democrats, Congresswoman Maxine Waters on our air earlier
when this news broke, said she would reconsider her support
for the Vice president.
Speaker 17 (21:28):
I was just overwhelmed, surprised, blindsided. I didn't think he
would go so far as to support right wing legislation
that would give him permanent status, Nor did I expect.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
A few days later, Gore went on The Today Show
to clarify his positions.
Speaker 25 (21:43):
Mister Vice President, good morning, Good morning, Matt, how are you.
Speaker 11 (21:46):
I'm fine.
Speaker 22 (21:47):
Thanks.
Speaker 11 (21:47):
It seems like we're about.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
But when he was pushed on what he actually believed,
Gore seemed to equivocate.
Speaker 25 (21:52):
With all due respect, you haven't answered my question.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Should he be given custody of his son if he
arrives in the United States?
Speaker 25 (21:57):
If the father says on Free Soil that he believes
that the son should go back to Cuba with him, that,
of course, is likely to be determinative and will be determinative.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
The Washington Post ran a story the next day under
the headline, Gore struggles to explain his position on Elyon.
The worst part was that Gore's break with Clinton didn't
even seem to win him any points. One month after
his last ditch effort to get on the right side
of the Elyon issue, the Chicago Tribune quoted one Miami
resident saying that she wouldn't vote Democratic if Gore came
to Florida with a Cuban flag in his hands. That
(22:33):
more or less was where things stood. As Attorney General
Janet Reno was conducting final negotiations with Eleon's Miami relatives.
The question at this point was not whether Eleon would
be sent back to his father, but how.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
And when officials here say they're determined to reunite the
father with his son, they describe Attorney General Reno as
quote leaning toward action.
Speaker 26 (22:53):
And if the Miami family resists, well, the government is
ready to plan to deal with that as well.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
On the night of April twenty second, TV crews, hoping
to be on hand for whatever was going to happen,
staked out Eleon's house from row of tents across the street.
Speaker 14 (23:07):
As a crowd of Eddie Castro hardliners maintains its vigil
outside the Miami house.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Inside, Carlo Saladriguez, the Miami businessman you heard at the
top of the show, was helping Ellion's family with the negotiations.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
You got to think of this simple house. He had
a little living room, a couple of bedrooms, and in
the back of the house was a family room in
a kitchen. That's where we were sitting. In that family room,
and in front of the house, there were hundreds of
people demonstrating and there were media station even with towers
(23:41):
built so that they could film from higher up, and
mean everything was set up for a media show.
Speaker 26 (23:47):
And so for now, much of the attention remains squarely
on that small house in the section of Miami they
call Little Havana, and the family inside that does not
seem anxious to give up that little boy.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
DONALDO. Dalrymple was at his home in Broward County when
he heard on the news that Elyon might be seized
by federal agents at any moment. It was around ten
o'clock at night, but Dalrymple got in his car and
drove the roughly thirty miles to Miami. He made his
way past the reporters and into the house where Saladriguez
and lawyers for Eleon's relatives conducted negotiations, and Eleon was
trying to fall asleep in his race car bed. At
(24:23):
five pin fifteen in the morning, three white vans carrying
a team of federal agents pulled up next to the house.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
There was a battering ram at the door, and people
were screaming. There was mayhem. There was so much confusion
going on, and I thought to myself, I'm dreaming.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Dalrymple, who had been asleep on the living room couch,
stirred awake as twenty heavily armed agents broke through the
chain link gate in the front yard, sprang teargas and
yelling for the gathered crowd to disperse. Dalrymple grabbed Eleon
and ran into a closet as agents stormed the house
and demanded to know where the boy was. When one
of the agents pointed a gun at the closet where
(25:00):
Dalrymple was holding Eleon in his arms, a news photographer
captured the moment in an instantly iconic snapshot.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And this was occurring within seconds. A woman appears in
the room and right away I handed Ellon over to
this woman and they all I heard this word I heard,
and it's clear as I'm talking to you right now.
I heard bingo and they ran out.
Speaker 10 (25:26):
They got the boy.
Speaker 13 (25:27):
They've got the boy.
Speaker 11 (25:28):
They took the boy. They're got the boy.
Speaker 13 (25:30):
Three minutes.
Speaker 26 (25:32):
In three minutes, six year old elli On Gunzanes, dressed
in a T shirt, draped in fee was gone.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Dell Rymple ran after the agents, carrying eli On to
the van parkin street.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I wanted to go in this vehicle with them to
wherever they were taking him, just so he'd have a
sense of comfort. He knew me from the ocean, he
knew me from for months playing down there with him.
You know, I was thinking in my mind, how did
this all go wrong? One minute we saved them, and
(26:05):
now they're coming in with guns to take them out.
It was just so ugly and horrible. But they wouldn't
let me in that vehicle, so I just I lingered
behind with the rest of everybody else as they sped
off down the road.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Soon, Elian Gonzalez was in a US Marshall's plane, destined
for Washington, where his father would be waiting for him.
It was just after six am. As the plane took
off from Homestead Air Force Base. One of the federal
agents keeping Elion company opened the window shade next to
him so that he could see the sunrise over Florida.
(26:47):
In the aftermath of the raid, the Cuban American community
in Miami was left reeling, and their rage at the
Clinton administration intensified. Here is Carlos Saladriguez again.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
The raid was the slap in the face. It was
sort of the hurt, the wound that took a long
time to heal. It was the snatching of this kid
from her mist that subtle became painful.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Clinton would never live it down, neither would al Gore.
The slogan that immediately took hold in Miami was we
will remember. In November, days before the election, Armando Perez Rua,
the Radio Mambi commentator, appeared with George W. Bush at
a rally in Florida and reminded the crowd to think
of Elion when they saw Gore's name on the ballot.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
He was guilty by association. I don't think there is
another instance in the history of the United States where
you can look at one single evant and see clearly
that he decided the presidency of the United States.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
The idea that the raid on Elian Gonzales cost al
Gore the two thousand election hardened into conventional wisdom November seven,
when the vice president only received about half as many
Cuban American votes in Florida as Clinton did in ninety six.
But there was a second controversy that played out in
Florida during the campaign, one that's much less well known
two decades later, but which was arguably no less decisive
(28:26):
in shaping the outcome of the race. This second controversy
was intertwined with the Elion case in tantalizing ways, and
Gore's handling of it was strikingly similar. Yet in some respects,
this one cut even deeper, both because it concerned an
issue that was uniquely close to Gore's heart and because
it lost him votes to a candidate who wasn't even
(28:47):
trying to win.
Speaker 16 (28:50):
Suddenly it's a two front war against George Bush and
a new headache, consumer advocate, Ralph Nader.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
While George W. Bush nibbled at Gore's margins on the
right and in the center, Ralph Nader, representing the Green Party,
attacked him from the left.
Speaker 21 (29:06):
Don't worry about George doy Buss. The problem is Al Gore.
We're going to pull Al Gore into progressive politics, and
he's not going to be pulled. He's going to lose,
and his Democratic Party's going to lose more and more
year after year.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Nader had been America's pre eminent consumer protection crusaders since
nineteen sixty five, when he published Unsafe at Any Speed,
an indictment of the auto industry. Later, he found success
lobbying Congress to pass the Clean Water Act, the Whistleblower
Protection Act, and the Freedom of Information Act, But despite
encouragement from his legions of fans, it was not until
(29:41):
the nineteen nineties that Nator decided to run for president.
Speaker 22 (29:43):
Because the inequities of power lead to huge inequities of wealth,
which lead to huge inequities of income, which lead to
cruelty to the children in our country and their parents who.
Speaker 11 (29:57):
Care got a decent paying job.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Nader's goal in two thousand was to win just five
percent of the vote nationwide. That was the threshold for
securing public funding for the green Park in future elections.
But Nader's visibility throughout the race belied his modest ambitions.
By presenting himself as a fresh alternative to a corrupt
and self perpetuating two party system, he attracted the support
(30:22):
of young people, disaffected Democrats, and celebrities like Bill Murray,
Susan Sarandon, Anita Franco and Eddie Vedder.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
All these other.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Rallies that Ralph's done with ten thousand people that hasn't
got any attention.
Speaker 18 (30:34):
It's going to stop tonight because they can't ignore this.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
May I love my commenture because my.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Computer While Bush and Gore held fundraising dinners for millionaires.
Nator sold cheap tickets to massive rallies at venues like
Madison Square Garden, and promoted the idea that Gore and Bush,
for all their supposed differences, were actually cut from the
same corporatist cloth.
Speaker 11 (31:03):
Third world country.
Speaker 22 (31:04):
Strike a harder bargain with these multinational corporations than we do.
Speaker 11 (31:10):
You're gonna put a stuff to this once and for all.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
With at.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Gore supporter saw Nader as a unique danger, a candidate
who could siphon just enough votes from the Democratic ticket
and key swing states that Bush could win them in
a squeaker Nader rejected this argument at the time, and
he still does.
Speaker 13 (31:29):
Ralph Nader, the spoiler in two thousand, has no nuanced
the way that media covers these things, and they get
away with it by using the words spoiler.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
This is Ralph Nader speaking to me about his role
in the two thousand election.
Speaker 13 (31:44):
It was not an exciting election. You had boring candidates.
Al Gore is very boring candidate. George W. Bush was
a boring candidate. Somebody counted once that Bush and Gore
agreed with each other over twenty times in one presidential debate.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Nator had known Gore for decades, and back in the
seventies and eighties he had considered him an ally, but
the Al Gore running for president in two thousand did
not strike Nader as a man who deserved theive vote well.
Speaker 13 (32:11):
Because he was a front runner, he was too cautious,
and because he was too cautious, he didn't take pioneering stands,
and when napoles started closing in on him, he couldn't
make himself into the original Al Gore. He didn't know
who he was at any given time.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
This was a common knock on Gore that he was
a shape shifter who didn't have a core identity and
took all his cues from polsters and political advisors. Early
in the campaign, he came in for criticism and ridicule
for hiring the feminist writer Naomi Wolf to serve as
an image consultant for fifteen thousand dollars a month. Even
a lot of Democrats saw Gore as inauthentic, tepid, and gauzy.
(32:52):
Here's Joan Walsh, who served as news editor at Salon
during the two thousand election and wrote what is arguably
the definitive analysis of Gore's political defects.
Speaker 12 (33:01):
During the campaign, he would kind of pick up on
issues and drop them. He really couldn't find a theme,
a defining set of themes and stick to them, and
all of these things I think kind of came together
to create this image of a guy who didn't know
what he stood for.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Walsher members coming across an old photograph of Gore dressed
up for Halloween as Frankenstein's Monster, it just was.
Speaker 12 (33:27):
Like, dude, don't do this, because this image of this
guy who's been stitched together and you know, parts that
don't fit and clothes that don't fit in bolts, and
you know, some of it was just the stiffness of
his persona, but also this sense that he had literally
been stitched together.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
For a small but significant subset of the Florida electorate.
There was no better example of Gore's ideological wishy washiness
than his stance on a fairly obscure issue dating back
to the nineteen ninety two campaign. That issue was the
proposed redevelopment of Homestead Air Force Base. Homestead, as your recall,
(34:05):
was the city in Miami Dade County that was destroyed
by Hurricane Andrew. On the campaign that year, Bill Clinton
vowed to help rebuild the base and revive the local economy,
a commitment that endeared him to a group of Cuban
American power brokers in Miami who wanted to replace Homestead
Air Force Base with a new international airport. Here again
is reporter Michael Grunwald.
Speaker 5 (34:25):
This was an incredibly lucrative opportunity. This was going to
be a massive construction project. The idea was that it
was going to revitalize this area that was pretty downtrodden
even when the air base was functioning, and was in
real trouble now that the air base had been ripped
to shreds.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Among the most enthusiastic backers of the airport plan was
the Mayor of Miami Dade County, Alex Penelis.
Speaker 23 (34:47):
Homestead Air Force Base has become all things to all people.
Miami Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas, as well as South
Miami Dade's political and business interests, support a commercial airport,
toutas bringing in thirty eight thousand jobs and a billion
dollars to the economy.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
There was a problem, though, Homestead was situated in between
two protected nature preserves Biscayne National Park to the east
and the Everglades National Park to the west. To environmentalists
in Florida, the idea of building an airport so close
to these precious lands was obscene.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
When Harry Truman established Everglades part and his speech was
about how this is going to be a place of solitude,
a place where Americans can come and appreciate the quiet
of nature. It's this kind of lonely quiet place is
part of what makes the Everglades the Everglades. I think
the idea that right on its doorstep there was going
(35:45):
to be this massive commercial airport seemed like it would
really take away from the uniqueness of the Everglades.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
All through the nineties, as the airport plan slowly advanced
through layers of local and federal bureaucracy, environmentalists in Florida
fought it however they could.
Speaker 23 (36:04):
The Sierra Club is launching a new campaign against the development.
Today's full page newspaper add his own the opening salvo,
and it is promising a protracted court battle if necessary.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Environmentalists in Florida had every reason to expect that during
the two thousand campaign, al Gore would come out against
the Homestead Airport plan. Even putting aside his overall record
on the environment, Gore had been a driving force behind
major legislation to fund Evergwaye's restoration. And yet whenever Gore
was asked about Homestead on the campaign trail, he seemed
(36:36):
only to hem in haw. Instead of just saying that
the airport was a terrible idea, Gore would have his
spokesman issue wan statements about how it wasn't appropriate for
him to weigh in. The air Force was still conducting
an environmental impact study, and the Vice President did not
want to pre judge the project until the results were in.
At one point, Gore took the incendiary position that continued
(36:57):
discussion was needed of how a balanced solution can be
found that can help the community without hurting the environment.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
Gore had a choice to make, and he decided to
avoid the choice. It was waffle City.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
What was going on. Gore was the most prominent environmentalist
in American politics, the guy who, back in nineteen eighty one,
had held the first ever Congressional hearings on global warming.
As Vice President, Gore had traveled to Kyoto to help
negotiate a transformative international treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Gore had never been shy about his passion for the environment,
(37:33):
not even when his political rivals made fun of him,
as President George H. W. Bush did in nineteen ninety
two when he coined a special nickname for his opponent's
running mate.
Speaker 27 (37:42):
If you listen to Governor Clinton and ozone Man, if
you listen to them, you know why I call him
ozone Man. This guy is so far off, and the
environmental extreme will be up to our neck in owls
and out of work for every American.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
This guy's crazy.
Speaker 11 (38:00):
Is way out, far out man.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Given this history, environmentalists in Florida were infuriated by Gore's
refusal to come out against the Homestead Airport plan. One
activist told The Washington Monthly that gore silence on the
issue called into question whether he himself knew what his
campaign stood for. In a column for The Miami Herald,
Florida novelist Karl Hyason wrote that Gore, who claims the
(38:25):
greenest pro environmental credentials of all the presidential candidates, is
showing a flash of yellow by deciding to wimp out
and keep quiet on South Florida's most controversial environmental issue.
Speaker 5 (38:35):
The Gore people could not believe they were even having
this conversation.
Speaker 13 (38:39):
You know.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
Their attitude was, where else are environmentalists going to go?
You know, he's Al Gore, leave us alone, and the
environmentalist did not agree to do that.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Three weeks before the election, the Gore campaign sought to
quell the growing mutiny in South Florida by sending a
pair of Gore's advisors, Mitchell Berger and Katie McGuinty, to
meet with environmentalist groups at the South Miami headquarters of
the Tropical Audubon Society. During this tense meeting, McGuinty and
Berger tried to convince the assembled group that Gore was
on their side.
Speaker 28 (39:13):
Here's Berger I remember saying to them, this man went
to Kyoto and his risk, sacrificing his entire career for
what he believes.
Speaker 29 (39:26):
And this man, I know.
Speaker 30 (39:29):
For a fact, orchestrated the purchase of forty thousand acres
in the middle of the Everglades and fought everyone in
the administration to do that.
Speaker 5 (39:41):
They were just making the case. You know, Al Gore
is one of you. He has spent his entire career
fighting for places like the Everglades and specifically the Everglades.
Why are you torturing him over this issue that is
going to potentially cost him the election.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
The anti airport activists were not impressed. Take our friendship
back to the vice president. One of them said to mcguinteenberger,
only a true friend will tell you what you don't
want to hear. You are going to lose this election
because of Homestead. If gordonn't condemned the airport plan, the
activist said, a lot of environmentalists were going to vote
for Ralph Nader. The environmental controversy around the Homestead Airport
(40:37):
was a perfect issue for Ralph Nader. It was a coherent,
little emblem of everything that was wrong with Al Gore.
During the final days of the election, Nader embraced Homestead
with Gusto while campaigning in Florida.
Speaker 13 (40:50):
I was at the Radison Center in South Florida, and
it was packed, and all they wanted to talk about
was the fungus attack that was destroying the citrus trees
and the Homestead Air Force Base. And again and again
the questions were, why doesn't Gore come out of it.
(41:11):
A woman came up to me and kept saying he
would get so many votes if you would just put
out a statement, even now, this late in the game,
and I too raised the question, why isn't Gore opposing it?
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Nader believed that the answer was purely political. Gore was
afraid of alienating the Cuban American leaders who had been
pushing the airport project since Hurricane Andrew. The person Gore
was most concerned with appeasing, Nator thought was Alex Penellis. Now,
the game theory here is a little tricky to parts,
but the idea was that Gore, having lost Cuban Americans
(41:47):
because of the Elon raid, was trying to salvage whatever
support he could by playing nice with penelas Al.
Speaker 5 (41:53):
Gore was clearly concerned about the Cuban vote, but after
Eleon one environmentalist told him, look, it doesn't matter if
you come out tomorrow for landing the one hundred and
first airborne in Havana. You've lost the Cuban vote. You
are screwed with the Cuban vote. You have got to
tend to your base, and you are losing your base
because of Homestead Air Force Base.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Mitchell Berger, Gore's friend and advisor, told me unequivocally that
when it came to Homestead, Gore was not acting out
of political calculation. The actual reason for his reticence was
much more mundane. Burger said, he really did just want
to wait until the Air Force finished its study, because
if he interfered beforehand, the developers would have standing to sue.
This was not a reflection of Gore's cowardice or cynicism,
(42:38):
but rather his commitment to process.
Speaker 29 (42:41):
Gore said, I cannot prejudge this publicly by law, and
that is what the boy scout did. He said, until
it is re reviewed, I cannot prejudge it, and that's
technically correctly true under the law. Notwithstanding what he said,
(43:03):
no one heard it.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Whatever the merits of his position, Gore's refusal to take
a stand on Homestead fit easily into a storyline that
his opponents on both the right and the left had
been tapping into all through the election. That he didn't
know who he was, that he wasn't willing or able
to say what he really thought, that even on the environment,
he was driven to equivocate in the same way Gore's
(43:25):
avowal of due process in the Ellon case had fallen
on deaf ears in Little Havanah. Gore's strict adherence to
procedure in the Homestead controversy read to his critics as
a cop out, and that provided an opening for Ralph Nader.
Speaker 29 (43:39):
Nader amplified the narrative, and Nader was happy to use
his ego to say this is why Gore is no
different than anyone else.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
It's worth noting that if Nader was right about al
Gore's motivations on Homestead, if he really did hold his
tongue because he was trying to placate Alex Panellis and
make up for Elion, the plan didn't work at all.
Starting in the fall of two thousand, Panellis declined to
speak out in Gore's favor even once, and three weeks
before the election, he left town for trip to Spain.
Speaker 29 (44:12):
Alex Penellis, instead of endorsing Gore, left town deliberately left
him at the podium in front of the Cuban community.
Anyone who says that that didn't hurt Gore more than
anything in Florida doesn't understand in my view of Florida politics.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Penellis, who declined to be interviewed for this podcast, became
something of a pariah within the Democratic Party after the
two thousand election. When he ran for a Florida Senate
seat in two thousand and four, al Gore issued a
statement calling him the single most treacherous and dishonest person
he dealt with during the entire campaign. As for the
Homestead Airport, it was never built, labeling the project inappropriate,
(44:58):
the Air Force killed it just days before Bush took office.
All these years later, it's impossible to know how many
votes Gore lost by refusing to speak out against the
Homestead Airport, but there are those who believe confidently that
it cost him the election. Among them is Ralph Nader,
who received ninety seven thousand votes in Florida in two
(45:18):
thousand and who is bold enough in our conversation to
draw a causal link between Gore's stance on Homestead and
the invasion of Iraq.
Speaker 13 (45:26):
The tragedy is in the fate of human affairs. One
can have a direct link between the loss of the
votes on the Homestead issue and a million dead iraqis
that's the way the winner take all system works. But who,
of course, could have predicted that.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
It's easy to spot mistakes when you look back at history.
When you know how everything started and what it took
for it to end, it doesn't require a lot of
imagination to say, ah, if they'd done ex instead of why,
it would have all turned out differently. Regardless of whether
you think al Gore should have won the election, there
are lots of hinge points like that in the story
of how he ended up losing. If only Gore had
(46:13):
broken more sharply with the Clinton administration on Elian Gonzales,
maybe he wouldn't have lost as many Cuban Americans to Bush.
If only he had condemned the Homestead Airport plan, maybe
he wouldn't have lost as many Florida environmentalists to Nadir. Remember,
this election was ultimately decided by just five hundred and
thirty seven votes, with a margin that then it's not
(46:34):
a stretch to say that one tiny decision out of
god knows how many actually was responsible for the outcome.
And if our goal with this first episode of Fiasco
was to explore why the two thousand election was so close,
we could have focused on so many other things besides
Elyon and Homestead, so many little subplots that moved the
vote one way or another, we could have talked about
(46:56):
how George W. Bush benefited from the fact that his
brother Jeb was the governor of Florida, Or if we
wanted to come at it from the other direction and
explore how Gore came within spitting distance of victory, we
could have talked about Jeb's effort to end affirmative action
in Florida and how that helped Gore by inspiring a
massive voter registration movement among black voters. The point is
(47:17):
the two thousand election was close for about a million
different reasons, and because it was so close, because so
many of the subplots were plausibly decisive, every little detail
looks incredibly high stakes in retrospect. This six part podcast
will tell the story of how the two thousand election
turned out the way it did, and what it was
like during those five shaky weeks after election Day, when
(47:39):
no one in the country knew who the next president
was going to be, and every little zig and zag
looked like it might decide the result. The process of
breaking the two thousand stalemate was, by turns chaotic and deadening.
More than anything, it was a collective act of frantic
improvisation conducted by a throne together cast of bureaucrats, partisans,
(48:00):
and white collar gladiators. Along the way, all kinds of
boundaries were scrambled, between lawyers and politicians, between truth and narrative,
between hypocrisy and hustle. At around midnight and November seventh,
(48:22):
seven hours before poles were set to open, Al Gore
was in Miami Beach leading one last rally. Gore may
have lost Alex Panelis and the rest of the Cuban
American community. He may have lost the environmentalists, but here
he was flanked by John bon Jovi, Stevie Wonder, and
Ben Affleck. Despite Elyon, despite Homestead, Gore's numbers in Florida
(48:45):
had him running dead, even with Bush, who was seventy
three degrees in the middle of the night, and Gore's
crowd was energized. Addressing his supporters, Gore tried to articulate
what was at stake in the two thousand election. He
spoke clearly and emphatically in a way that had often
eluded him during the campaign.
Speaker 8 (49:06):
We in this nation have the ability in this US
election to make the United States of America what America
is intended to be. I asked for your help and
your vote, because I want to fight for you.
Speaker 11 (49:21):
God, bless you, Florida, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
It was about to be over no matter what. In
twenty four hours, the campaign would be done and the
country would have a new president elect. Well probably, as
Gore's top strategist saw it, there was a conceivable scenario
that would take the game into overtime. Based on all
the available data, it seemed possible that Gore would win
(49:51):
the electoral College, but Bush would win the popular vote.
The Gore team was worried if that happened, how is
the vice president going to convince the American people that
his victory was legitimate? On the next episode of Fiasco,
(50:12):
how election analysts working with America's top news networks got
the two thousand election wrong, not once, but twice in
a single night.
Speaker 12 (50:20):
As much as we honestly believe that you don't want elections,
so you have all the numbers, in some ways you
can win or lose an election based on what.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
The TVs say. For a list of books, articles, and
documentaries that we relied on in our research, click the
link in the show notes. Fiasco is a production of
Prolog projects, and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show
is produced by Andrew Parsons, Madeline kaplan Ula Kalpa and
me Leon Nafock. Our script editor was Daniel Riley. Our
(50:50):
editorial consultant was Camilla Hammer, and we received additional editorial
support from Lisa Chase. Our music and score are by
Nick Silvester of god Mode, with additional music from Alexis Quadrado.
Our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is
by Teddy Blanks at Chips and Why. Audio mixed by
rob Byer, Michael Raphael and Johnny Vince Evans. A final
(51:13):
Final V two special thanks to Luminary. Thanks to c SPAN,
NBC News Archive, and CNN for the archival material you
heard in today's show. Additional thanks to Laura Castro de Cortes,
Tasha Cole, Oliver Bernstein, Monica Meyer, c R. Rooters, and
Matt Mullenwag of WordPress dot com for letting us have
(51:34):
the prolog project's domain name. Thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.