Gaza's Impact on the Election May Play Out Like This Issue from 2000
Gaza/Israel Protesters and the Palestinian Vote May do to Michigan in 2024 what Elian Gonzalez did in Florida in 2000.
In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that both parties are targeting 6% of voters in six swing states. This is an incredibly narrow slice of the electorate to appeal to, and sadly it’s also likely that it is indeed the group of voters most likely to make the difference in the election. However, despite what the strategists think, most of these voters are likely to be undecideds or fencesitters right up until the last weeks of the election. Considering there are still six long months (this will feel like an eternity) between now and the election in November, there are still plenty of intervening issues to arise that can sway the election.
In 2016, everyone thought that the “Access Hollywood” tape was the death knell for the Trump campaign and that it’s revelation in September was going to be the determinative factor in the election. Turns out in Mid-October the opening of an FBI investigation by Jim Comey into Hillary Clinton’s server and e-mails seems to have been the event that pushed the needle barely enough for Trump to eke out a victory.
But there is an even bigger example of intervening issues impacting the elections, particularly when it is not an October surprise. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Elian Gonzalez ordeal. When the votes were cast and counted, the margin of victory for Bush was a mere 537 votes in Florida, the deciding state in the 2000 election. Attention was focused on all the ways people voted; the Butterfly Ballot, the disenfranchising of votes, the hanging chad, and all sorts of other anomalies in Florida that made the post-election count a nightmare and ultimately decided in the Supreme Court. But it was a little six year old boy from Cuba, whose story would motivate Republican voters and ally many of Miami’s Latin community against the Clinton/Gore Administration that very likely cost Gore enough votes to win the election outright.
The Elian Gonzalez Story
On November 21, 1999, González, his mother Elizabeth Brotons Rodríguez, and twelve others left Cuba on a small aluminum boat with a faulty engine; González's mother and ten others died in the crossing. During a storm Elian was placed in an inner tube for safety, and he said afterwards that he fell asleep and that when he woke up he never saw his mother again. González and the other two survivors floated at sea until they were rescued by two fishermen, who handed them over to the United States Coast Guard.
Once he had been treated at a local hospital, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) provided Elián with a temporary deferral regarding his inspection, and further released Elián to his great-uncle on his mother’s side, Lázaro González, who lived with his family in Miami's Little Havana. However, there was one issue that nobody had considered; Elian’s father in Cuba wanted him returned to him. And so began a contentious and bitter custody battle that played out between hostile country governments.
Within the Little Havana community, among the extremely anti-Castro Cuban population, this became a motivating and organizing issue. Throughout early 2000, calls came out for the Clinton administration to tell Castro that they would not be returning the boy. The standard for refugees fleeing Cuba was that the United States did not deport any Cuban refugee back to Cuba and to grant them asylum. The family in Florida advocated this was what should be done with Elian. However, this is also a basic child custody issue; as the boy’s father, he had the highest priority in determining what was best for his son, and the father wanted him back in Cuba. Diplomatic and court cases sprang up and led to litigation. The boy became a pawn in a much larger chessgame.
It was also noted that Florida was a swing state in the coming election. It had been close for both of Clinton’s wins in 1992 and 1996, but had seen a Republican bump in both 1994 and 1998 in off years. In 1998, George W. Bush’s brother, Jeb, had been elected Governor of the state, and he was in close connection with the campaign regarding delivering the state to his brother. The Elian Gonzalez case was going to be a major campaign issue.
In March, the Florida relatives lost their petition for asylum speaking on Elian’s behalf and the court ordered he be returned to his father. They appealed. While the appeal was pending, Elian was lavished with trips to Disney World and other Florida tourist sites, and there was a media push showing him having fun. He made a video where he said he wanted to stay in the United States, though it was easily determined he had been coached on what to say. Anti-Castro Cuban political interests made it a key point to propagandize around the boy. The story became one of a refugee fleeing communism, fighting to stay in this country against the bureaucratic, evil Gore administration (though he was only VP).1 Attempts were made to grant the boy’s father asylum as well, to no avail; he wanted to live and raise Elian in Cuba.
But to Janet Reno2 and the Department of Justice, this was an easy case. It was a matter of State and Immigration, and if the boy’s father wanted him back, he had to go back.3 After several attempts to mediate a solution, on April 22, a raid to get Elian Gonzalez took place at the home where he had been staying. The house was approached, and after several knocks on the door, they entered the home. Elian was found held by a relative hiding in a closet. The picture at the top of this page, taken by an AP photographer who was allowed to stay at the home through the whole ordeal, won the Pulitzer Prize.
Four hours later, Gonzalez was reunited with his father and several days later pictures were shown of him reunited with his classmates in Cuba. A young healthy boy happy to be back home. To him, he didn’t realize the greater context he was playing in the news and in the election; he was just a kid in an odd situation. The relatives in Miami, however, remained bitter and openly accused the government of kidnapping and the agents who seized Elian as “assassins.” The political organization and campaigning against the Gore campaign by the family in Miami and the Little Havana community continued through the summer and fall of 2000.
How It Impacted the Election
In a race decided by only 537 votes in Florida, George W. Bush received 80% of the Cuban-American vote in Florida; that was 50,000 more votes than Bob Dole received in the previous 1996 election. Considering how small some of the votes the Gore and Bush teams were fighting over in the recounts and subsequent court litigations, the 50,000 votes represented here amounted to a much larger amount. In short, this one issue, centered on an isolated incident, and which was the proper outcome based on the law, became a dispositive issue determining the election.
So what issues could play a similar role in the 2024 elections? The most noteworthy one right now is the war in Gaza/Israel. It has the potential to peel away enough democratic voters in enough swing areas, particularly Michigan, to cause serious harm to Joe Biden. That one issue alone is big enough to cost him Michigan, which he absolutely needs to win in November. It highlights a weakness for him among the more idealistic, younger voters, who now seem intent on protesting at the DNC in Chicago, just like they did in 1968. Whatever images and soundbytes come out of that could be amplified in the weeks following the convention.
For Trump, it may just be decisions peripheral to his court cases, and what ends up being revealed and disclosed as a result. With litigation, new disclosures and previously unknown facts can suddenly become major news stories. People within the Trump White House, who have largely remained silent or have not really been forthcoming about much may suddenly see depositions and affidavits reveal their thoughts and perceptions of dealing with President Trump become public.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
As for what happened to Elian, that 6 year old boy, get ready to feel old. Today, he is a 30 year old man, still living in Cuba. Once returned to Cuba he was propagandized and promoted by the authorities and became close to Fidel Castro himself. The two shared communications regularly and at his high school graduation, Elian read a letter sent directly from Castro to share with his class. He grew up within the clubs and organizations promoting the communist party and was seen as a future leader of the country.
In 2020, he announced that he and his fiance were going to have a baby girl.
In 2023, he was nominated to represent his hometown of Cardenas in the National Assembly and was unopposed. He was sworn in in April, 2023.
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
Let’s give it to Elian. Here we’ve spent so much time talking ABOUT him, I doubt anyone can remember ever having actually heard him talk.
LIKE WHAT YOU SEE? MAKE SURE TO SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE!!!
Footnotes and Fun Stuff
Imagine that. Republicans advocating in favor of a refugee seeking asylum.
Interesting side note to this, is that before becoming Attorney General, Janet Reno was the D.A. of Miami/Dade County, where the Gonzalez ordeal played out.
In June, 2000, long after Elian was back in Cuba and the case moot, the Court of Appeals declared that Elian Gonazalez was too young to declare asylum and that the administration was correct in returning the boy to his father in Cuba.