Could Turnout Turn Jeb Out?

Quincy, Florida

On the grounds outside the Gadsden County Courthouse, not far from the monument honoring Confederate soldiers, is a sign that recalls how the Florida Panhandle county has "provided Governors, Supreme Court Justices and numerous other high state officials." Erected years ago, the marker fails to note the region's most recent contribution to American political lore: Gadsden County can justifiably claim to have played a critical role in determining the result of the 2000 presidential election. The feat was not accomplished by counting ballots marked by an unprecedented outpouring of voters but rather by discarding 1,951 votes--12 percent of all those cast in this majority African-American and overwhelmingly Democratic county. A ballot design so flawed that it made Palm Beach County's butterfly ballot look like a model of precision led to the disfranchisement in Gadsden County of almost four times the number of votes that Al Gore needed to beat George W. Bush in Florida and win the presidency.

That pile of discarded ballots formed a heartbreaking footnote to the great lost political story of Florida in 2000: A record turnout of new voters, many of them African-Americans from Miami's Liberty City to rural counties on the Panhandle, radically altered the political landscape in a state that was supposed to be securely Republican. News organizations that could not see beyond dimpled chads, and a Gore legal team that failed to recognize where and how most Democratic votes were lost, generally missed that story. But it is well remembered by folks in Democratic strongholds like Gadsden County--where an upsurge in African-American electoral activism has begun to upset what the Miami Herald referred to as a white-run, "virtual apartheid" political system that prevailed into the 1990s. Their determination to turn voters out--and to get their votes counted this time--could decide the outcome of this year's highest-profile gubernatorial contest: First Brother Jeb Bush's run for a second term against Democratic challenger Bill McBride. "In 2000, a lot of people voted for the first time, and their votes were thrown out, not just here in Gadsden County but all over Florida," says Gadsden County teacher Brenda Holt, a McBride supporter who traces her activism to 2000. "Maybe some people thought the problems would make people give up on voting, but I don't think so. I think we're coming back again, and this time, all of our votes are going to count."

If, on November 5, Holt's predictions come true, it will be a proper conclusion to one of the most remarkable stories of the 2000 campaign. In the fall of that year, a loose coalition of African-American voters, trade unionists, college-town liberals, working women and seniors upset the Bush family's Florida franchise to make a safely Republican state suddenly competitive. Grassroots organizing and get-out-the-vote efforts pushed the turnout up from just 49 percent in 1998, the year in which Jeb Bush was elected, to 70 percent in 2000. A disproportionate number of the new voters were members of minority groups angered by Jeb Bush's attack on affirmative action: African-American voter registration jumped 9 percent in the months prior to the 2000 election, compared with a 1 percent increase in white voter registration. On November 7, 2000, this coalition-without-a-name brought to the polls enough Democratic voters to secure the state for Gore. But getting enough voters to the polls did not guarantee victory. Confusing ballot designs like the one that disqualified Gadsden County voters and tens of thousands of others across the state, election rules dating to segregation days, antiquated equipment, open intimidation, the heavy hands of Jeb Bush's political and legal teams, and, when all else failed, the intervention of the US Supreme Court denied enough Gore ballots to give the state's twenty-five electoral college votes to George W. Bush.

"The grassroots work of people who were mad about Jeb Bush's policies in Florida--and worried that his brother would do the same things nationally--is what made Gore viable in Florida," says Doug Martin, communications director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees council that represents Florida public employees. "Our people are still pissed. And we learned something in 2000: If we can just get the votes counted, there are enough of us to beat the Bushes."

This year's Florida ballots will feature key players from the 2000 debacle. Former Secretary of State Katherine Harris and former State House Speaker Tom Feeney, who tried to have the legislature declare George W. Bush the winner, are positioned to win open Congressional seats. So too is State Senator Kendrick Meek, a Miami Democrat who battled to get Miami-Dade County ballots counted. And Palm Beach County Commissioner Carol Roberts, who was ready to go to jail if that was what it took to get her county's presidential votes counted, is challenging Republican Representative Clay Shaw. But no figure from 2000 features so prominently as Jeb Bush. And the First Brother is running scared. At the start of the year, polls had Bush leading McBride by thirty-one points. But a late-September Mason-Dixon Florida poll had Bush pacing McBride by a within-the-margin-of-error difference of 49-43. (One percent backed gay-rights activist Bob Kunst, who complains that Democrats have not been aggressive enough in taking on Bush; 7 percent remain undecided.)

Electing McBride is a goal, says Florida AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Dwayne Sealy, but unseating Bush is a mission. "If Jeb Bush loses here, that sends a signal all over the country that people are waking up to what these Bush brothers are up to." Both men, he notes, back tax cuts for corporations and the rich while seeking to undermine public education and services with voucher and privatization schemes. Both have politicized government institutions, policy-making and judicial appointments. Both have strained relations with minority communities. "I think Jeb's messed up worse than his brother. The state's economy is a disaster, the schools are in crisis, our social-service programs are in crisis. After four years of Jeb, we've gone from a $3 billion surplus to where the state is broke," said Sealy. Referring to breakdowns in voting and vote counting in fourteen counties during the September primary, he added, "To top it all off, after Bush said everything was fixed, this state couldn't even organize an election."

Until recently, only die-hard Democrats talked seriously about the prospect that Bush could lose. With 100 percent name recognition, campaign resources in excess of $30 million and a home-state political network built up over almost two decades of work on behalf of his father, his brother and himself, Jeb Bush was supposed to be unbeatable. Even when former Attorney General Janet Reno entered the Democratic primary contest to oppose Bush, Republicans remained optimistic. Reno had high name recognition and bases of support, but she also carried high negatives. So enthusiastic was the Bush camp about facing Reno that Republicans bought television ads attacking her chief primary opponent, McBride. Starting as a virtual unknown, McBride elbowed his way into the race with personal wealth, connections forged as the managing partner of Florida's largest law firm and a savvy understanding of the Democratic passion for beating Jeb Bush. Though early polls had McBride trailing Reno by twenty-eight points, the teachers' union, the state AFL-CIO and key Democrats endorsed him. It wasn't really a matter of issue differences; McBride's tepid liberalism pretty much paralleled Reno's. Rather, the rationale was summed up by Congresswoman Corrine Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat, who said before the primary, "I think McBride is the only candidate who can beat Bush in November." McBride argued that, as a competent guy with little baggage, he was an ideal alternative to an incumbent who has not worn well.

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