With its timely release ahead of the presidential election, a deeper look at HBO’s excellent new doc, which asks if Democrats have learned the lessons of that stinging loss — and how different the world might have been if not for Elian Gonzalez.
Disputed ballots. Street protests. Intimidation.
Vote chaos sowed by irresponsible rhetoric and dirty tricks, with partisan election officials and the Supreme Court sealing a divisive presidential win against the popular vote.
An electric new documentary premiering tonight reminds us that the nightmare ‘perfect storm’ 2020 election scenario feared by many not only could happen — it already did.
On the 20th anniversary of President George W. Bush’s contentious victory over Al Gore, HBO’s 537 Votes dives headfirst into what was then assumed to be the nadir of US presidential election history.
The film’s name of course refers to the eventual official margin by which Bush took Florida in 2000 — and with it the decisive electoral college votes to take the Whitehouse.
It came after 36 stunning and polarizing days of uncertainty, disarray and neck-breaking reversals, as contested recounts took place across the sunshine state.
When the Supreme Court eventually ordered an end to the hand count, there were still over 10,000 ballots left to be verified in the state’s largest county, heavily Democratic Miami-Dade.
“The election was lost in many different places, but it was stolen in Miami,” one of the film’s pundits ominously says.
We will never know for certain who actually won the vote, but, with the help of some key players such as a gleeful Roger Stone, the documentary outlines how Republicans brawled to win the war.
As former CNN anchor Rick Sanchez puts it, “While Democrats are sitting around trying to figure out how to do the right thing, Republicans are figuring out how to win.”
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The documentary is part of a glut of productions being rushed out ahead of this year’s polls, including Showtime’s limited series The Comey Rule, based on former FBI director James Comey’s memoir; Totally Out of Control, documentarian Alex Gibney’s look at the Trump presidency’s pandemic response; and even Aaron Sorkin’s real-life political film The Trial of the Chicago 7, out on Netflix last week.
It may not cover a lot of new ground nor feature any headline-grabbing pundits, but 537 Votes connects the dots very expertly. And it goes further than most as it revels in distinctly Floridian shenanigans such as the Elian Gonzalez saga and the role of shady local political figures.
As it peels back the layers of the Democrats’ stinging loss, it reveals uncanny parallels with today and some urgent lessons for the left. It may also be the wildest of the new films.
Those bizarre days of hanging chads and head-scratching recount antics in late 2000 may have cemented the transition of Miami’s image as a bloody drug war zone to the butt of national jokes, the capital of “Flori-duh”. Before Florida Man, there was the Florida Recount.
That makes the subject perfect for the director-producer team of Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman. Miamians born-and-raised, they made their name with irreverent cult documentaries set in the sunshine state such as Cocaine Cowboys and Screwball.
The pair were brainstorming ideas to pitch in with the ‘get out the vote’ movement for this year’s elections when they thought of looking at the Bush-Gore trainwreck.
As traumatic and well covered as that period was for the nation, it dawned on them that an average voter today under the age of 35 may not be aware of exactly how that election was won.
“If you think your vote doesn’t count or doesn’t matter in a country that produced 105 million votes… you need to understand this story,” said Spellman, an independent who is openly anti-Trump, in a recent interview.
“Not only do you have to vote, but there is a good chance you will have to go out and fight for your vote to be counted after the election.”
But while this is a more serious topic for the filmmakers, it is still delivered with flair and humor. They teamed up with producer Adam McKay, who was behind Vice and The Big Short, for a perfect marriage in tone and style.
Wildly animated talking heads — their shock still apparent — and a wealth of wonderful archival footage, all edited energetically to a rumba soundtrack, help mine the comedy in the string of stranger-than-fiction debacles.
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The film traces the origin of Gore’s election night problems back to another unprecedented dispute that started a full year earlier: the saga of Elian Gonzalez, the ‘miracle’ Cuban child rescued off the coast of Florida after a failed boat crossing that killed his mother.
As Fidel Castro demanded the five-year-old be returned to the island to be with his father, Miami’s fiercely anti-communist Cubans — egged on by the influential local right-wing radio — passionately fought for him to remain with his extended family in the city.
Eventually President Bill Clinton’s Justice Department decided to remove him by force in an infamous raid and fly him to his father. It led to a bitter campaign among Florida’s sizeable and powerful Cuban American community to punish Gore, then vice president, at the ballot box, despite his attempts to distance himself from the decision.
It became known as the “voto castigo” — the revenge vote. “George Bush, the luckiest politician in the history of American politics, was handed this delicious plate of voters,” adds Rick Sanchez.
As Florida became the election’s final and decisive battleground, the doc makes the compelling argument that those votes were absolutely crucial. A mournful Clinton comments that they drew the “short straw” by having to deal with the Elian saga; Trump supporters may find themselves cursing the pandemic in a few weeks’ time.
Much of the second half of the film you will already know, although it is still fascinating car-crash history.
Instead of handily taking Florida like Clinton had done, on election night Gore was first “given” the state by the networks, before it was deemed too close to call. It was then declared for Bush, with Gore even conceding defeat by phone before walking that back as the margin again narrowed.
As key players on both sides relive their astonishment, archive footage shows revered anchors like Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Katie Couric with their jaws repeatedly hitting the floor.
With the recount eventually triggered, the country was plunged into a limbo of obscure technicalities, uncertain procedures and overly powerful bureaucrats. Or as comedian Jon Stewart, whose star rocketed in the coming weeks and years, put it, ‘We are living in the freak zone!’
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While the campaigns’ legal teams tangled in the courts, Republicans found an extra lane to operate in. They made the crucial decision to move aggressively onto Miami’s streets — all the way to the door of its recount room.
“If there was going to be shenanigans and mischief, it was going to be in Miami-Dade County, so it made sense to go where (the election) is likely to be stolen,” tells Bush-Cheney campaign operative Brad Blakeman.
He boasts of setting up their “war room” in a mysterious RV parked near Miami’s downtown Government Centre building. It was there that the county’s recount was taking place, at a shambolic pace, under the auspices of three bumbling bureaucrats and a Secretary of State who had been Bush’s campaign co-chair in Florida under his governor brother Jeb.
The Republican strike team manufactured savvy street protests that received wide media attention, accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election — while their campaign fought in the courts to stop votes from being counted.
Armed with material such as the unforgettable signs that turned the Gore-Lieberman ticket into ‘Sore Loserman’, an army of operatives flown in from out of state helped shape a ‘coup’ narrative that, again, resonated with the local Cuban Americans.
The operation culminated in the infamous Brooks Brothers Riot, when a well-dressed group of ‘protesters’ claiming to be locals were sent to invade the building. The chaos caused the electoral board to stop their work, with an estimated 10,750 ballots left uncounted — handing Bush victory.
As Roger Stone, introduced here as ‘Republican Dirty Trickster’, puts it, “The recount in Florida was a street brawl for the presidency of the United States.”
Meanwhile, Democrats played by the rules, banking on the strength of US democracy. “They turned out to be wusses,” as political reporter Michael Putney puts it. “They got their asses beaten by the Republicans.” The GOP guerilla operation, he adds,“was run with care and shrewdness and evil intent — and it worked.”
Although the consequences of that result clearly have gone beyond that presidential term and the United States, 537 Votes somewhat forces the issue.
Whereas the passionate environmentalist Gore would likely indeed have brought a greater focus on climate change, and possibly would have been less interventionist in the Middle East, one talking head suggests that under him even 9/11 could have been avoided.
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It is oddly refreshing to dive back into a time that may be even wilder than the current cycle.
But as Trump brings into question the credibility of this year’s ballots, tells supporters to protest results and openly talks about bringing into play the Supreme Court for the win, the similarities are striking.
Corben, the director, argues that the film proves Trump isn’t an anomaly, but a product of a Republican party that learned from that victory. “You can see all the same tactics, all the same demagoguery,” he said in an interview. “The idea that counting votes is fraud, the idea that we will accuse the other side of committing the same monstrous acts we are committing.”
Somewhat paradoxically, 537 Votes preaches that every vote counts — particularly when not every vote may be counted.
The message: vote and, particularly for Democrats, be ready to fight afterwards. But perhaps the most basic lesson is: never put yourself in a position where you need Florida to do the right thing.
MS