Ron Klain, who has been selected to be President-elect Joe Biden’s chief of staff even as President Trump refuses to concede, was a top lawyer on former Vice President Al Gore’s recount effort.
For years, the longtime civil servant has insisted that Gore had more votes than then-Gov. George W. Bush in Florida, blasting the Supreme Court and saying he will “never be over it.”
In a July 14, 2014, tweet unearthed by conservatives on Wednesday, Vox tweeted that “68% of Americans think elections are rigged,” to which Klain replied, “That’s because they are.” The article Klain was responding to was more subtle than the tweet, saying, “A new Rasmussen poll finds that 68 percent of Americans think elections are rigged in favor of incumbents. And they’re basically right. The term ‘rigged’ might go a tad far. The problem here isn’t fraud. In elections, like in so much else, the scandal is what’s legal.”
But Klain has repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2000 election, insisting that Gore should have beaten Bush.
Early on election night in 2000, networks called Florida for Gore before polls closed in the Republican-heavy Florida panhandle. The networks withdrew those calls, with Bush leading by more than 1,700 votes the next day. Gore privately conceded to Bush but withdrew his concession as Florida conducted a mandatory statewide recount, bringing Gore closer but still leaving Bush ahead by a few hundred votes. Some counties conducted their own hand recounts, during which Bush always led and sometimes saw it grow to as many as 930 votes. After legal battles and multiple court decisions, Florida certified Bush defeated Gore by 537 votes in late November.
The Florida Supreme Court ordered more recounts in December, and the U.S. Supreme Court intervened, hearing arguments on Dec. 11 and issuing its opinion the next day. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling said the manner of the recount must be stopped on equal protection constitutional grounds. It also ruled 5-4 that there was no other lawful way for a recount to continue, and “because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet 3 U.S.C. § 5’s December 12 ‘safe-harbor’ date would be unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause, the Florida Supreme Court’s judgment ordering manual recounts is reversed.” Bush held a lead throughout.
During the recount, Democrats controversially tried to get hundreds of late-arriving military ballots tossed out. Democratic lawyer Mark Herron’s Nov. 15, 2000, memo suggested recount observers should challenge these absentee ballots. He included “definitions for points of origin and postmark that are valid for military overseas ballots” and instructions on “Protest of Overseas Absentee Ballot.”
“We thought this is manna from heaven,” Bush campaign lawyer James Baker told CNN in 2015. “How in the world can you put out a memo that the only reading of which is to suppress the votes of our military men and women?”
But Klain defended it to CNN, saying, “The idea that people were going to vote after the election and have those votes count, that’s a pretty irregular idea.”
In 2000, then-vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman told Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet The Press that he would “give the benefit of the doubt to ballots coming in from military personnel.”
Similar to what is going on now between Trump and Biden, then-President Bill Clinton denied Bush access to the presidential daily briefing intelligence until the end of November, with Bush receiving the briefing on Dec. 5, 2000. Clinton’s General Services Administration declined to cooperate fully with the Bush transition team until after Gore’s Dec. 13 concession speech.
Klain quipped on Twitter in June 2011 that “only one sitting VP since Civil War has been elected Pres: Bush 88… unless you also count Gore 2000.” And he tweeted in November 2018 that “for 18 years I’ve blasted Bush v. Gore, offered the view that Gore had more votes, and certainly more voters who thought they had voted for him,” though he stressed that “I’ve never used the word ‘stolen’.”
The New York Times reported in 2001 that “a comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.” The report concluded that the Supreme Court “did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore.”
“The first lesson from 2000 on how to handle a close election — is don’t let it be a close election. Out today, a new oral history of Bush v. Gore, from The Atlantic,” Klain tweeted in August, telling the outlet that “I am not over it. I don’t think I’ll ever be over it.”
Klain tweeted in response to a July 2017 Daily Beast article that “sadly, Hillary Clinton has serious competition from Al Gore for the ‘most screwed over’ crown.” In response to an August 2018 Atlantic article claiming that “The Confirmation Wars Are Over. Partisanship won out.” Following the nomination of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Klain said, “I think it misses the critical role that Bush v. Gore played in ‘partisanizing’ how people see the Supreme Court.”
In response to a September 2018 Washington Post op-ed titled “The Supreme Court was America’s least damaged institution — until now,” he said, “I have three words in response to this: Bush Versus Gore,” and in response to a Politico op-ed asking, “Will Democrats regret weaponizing the judiciary?”, he repeated, “Three words on ‘weaponizing the judiciary’: Bush Versus Gore.”
Klain tweeted in May 2019 that “Nominees — D and R — got confirmed easily after Bork. But since Bush v. Gore, and the unavoidable link between Court makeup and partisan outcomes, EVERY confirmation has been a battle.” In February, he insisted that “Bush v. Gore played a large part in launching our dysfunctional current politics.”
The soon-to-be chief of staff became chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Biden chaired it. In the Clinton administration, Klain oversaw judicial nominations, including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and became Gore’s chief of staff.
After Gore’s defeat, he worked as a lobbyist, including for Fannie Mae. He worked as then-Vice President Biden’s chief of staff in 2008, did more lobbying work, then became former President Barack Obama’s “Ebola Czar” in 2014. Klain was played by Kevin Spacey in the 2008 HBO movie Recount.
