Al Gore to Florida voters: "Your vote really, really, really counts a lot"
Former Vice President Al Gore came to Florida to make the case that every vote matters on Election Day—citing his own experience in the state in 2000 as proof of how just a few battleground-state voters can turn the tide of an election.
“Your vote really, really, really counts a lot,” Gore said at Miami-Dade College in his first campaign-trail appearance for Clinton. “You can consider me as an Exhibit A.”
Back during the 2000 presidential election, Florida was the state that determined Gore’s loss to George W. Bush. A massive 36-day recount in the state found Bush was the winner there by 537 votes, handing him the electoral votes he needed to win the White House.
“I don’t want you to be in a position years from now where you welcome Hillary Clinton and say, ‘Actually you did win it just wasn’t close enough to make sure that all the votes were counted,’ or whatever,” he said. “Elections have consequences. Your vote counts. Your vote has consequences.”
As Gore spoke about his 2000 Florida loss, supporters in the audience chanted, “You won! You won!”
The bulk of Gore’s speech to approximately 1,600 people in Miami focused on the dangers of climate change—and his suggestion that Clinton, not GOP nominee Donald Trump, is the only candidate on the ballot who will do anything about the problem.
As Clinton looks to increase her support among millennial voters, climate change is a top issue among the demographic. Bringing out Gore, who is a longtime public advocate for climate change action, underscored how important young voters are to her campaign—he joins former Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in pitching Clinton to millennials on the campaign trail.
“When it comes to the most urgent issue facing our country and the world, the choice in this election is extremely clear: Hillary Clinton will make solving the climate crisis a top national priority,” Gore said. “Her opponent, based on the ideas that he has presented, would take us toward a climate catastrophe.”
Gore spoke about natural disasters, like Hurricane Matthew and the speed with which it intensified, as proof that carbon emissions are affecting more than just the temperature.
“This is not normal,” he said. “It is becoming the new normal, which is now a set of conditions that we have created with all of this manmade global warming pollution.”
Florida, Gore said, is especially susceptible to the effects of climate change—not just because of hurricanes like Matthew, but because rising sea levels threaten both coasts of the state.
“The future of Miami and cities up and down the West Coast and East Coast of Florida are on the ballot as well,” he said. “Indeed, the entire state of Florida and its future are on this ballot.”
The former vice president said Clinton will build on the climate successes of the Obama administration, including the landmark Paris Agreement slated to go into effect early next month.
“The question in this election is which of these candidates is going to continue the progress and actually increase the rate of progress,” he said. “With Hillary Clinton we’ll build on the progress made under President Obama with the Paris Agreement.”
In introducing Gore, Clinton praised him as “one of the world’s foremost leaders on climate change.”
“I can’t wait to have Al Gore advising me when I am the president,” she said.