November 22, 2000: An election that began to be stolen on Election Day itself, November 7, takes a big step closer to being stolen, with "The Brooks Brothers Riot."
The Republican nominee for President, Governor George W. Bush of Texas, lost the national popular vote to the Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore. But he appeared to have won enough Statewide popular votes to win 271 Electoral Votes to Gore's 269.
In dispute was the State of Florida, where Bush was originally certified to have won by 1,784 votes. It's important to note that the Governor of Florida was his brother, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush. Through his Secretary of State -- and, it was rumored, his mistress -- Katharine Harris, Jeb had the Florida vote fixed for his brother, including the deletion of the names of 55,000 people, nearly all black men, from the voter rolls.
In other words, if those 55,000 people were permitted to vote, even if less than half of them ended up voting at all, there was no way Gore wouldn't have gotten enough of those 55,000 votes to offset a 1,784-vote lead for "Dubya."
A clause in Florida's State Constitution mandated that, since the election was so close, a Statewide recount had to be done. The recount for Dade County, including the City of Miami, was done at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center, at 111 Northwest 1st Street in downtown Miami. (Clark was Mayor of Miami from 1967 to 1972, and again from 1993 to 1996.)
The Stephen P. Clark Government Center
The recount began, but Representative John E. Sweeney, then a freshman Congressman from New York's Capital Region, including the State capital of Albany, told an aide to "Shut it down." And so dozens of people, many of them wearing sharp suits typical of Republican staffers at the time -- hence the name of the demonstration, as Brooks Brothers is a popular store chain with them -- found their way into the building, and pounded on the doors of the room where the recount was being done, making it unsafe for the counters.
They got what they wanted. Bush's lead got down to 537 votes, when a local court ordered that the recount be stopped. In other words, some votes were never counted, not even once. The State Supreme Court ruled that the recount had to resume.
But on December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the recount had to stop. And so, Bush's 537-vote win in Florida was certified by the State of Florida, and later by Congress.
Strange: For decades, conservatives -- first in the Democratic Party, then in the 1960s they began to shift to the Republican Party -- were in favor of States' rights over civil rights. But when States' rights and civil rights came together in Florida in 2000, the conservatives wanted the State of Florida to have no rights.
Did Democratic protestors try to stop Congress from certifying this apparently stolen election, as Republican ones tried 20 years later? No. Every Democratic demonstration, including outside Bush's Inauguration as the 43rd President of the United States on January 20, 2001, was peaceful.
But the Republicans have now tried this sort of thing twice in the 21st Century. Indeed, the Brooks Brothers Riot has been called a "dress rehearsal" for the Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021.
Many of the Miami demonstrators later took jobs in the Bush Administration. One of them was Roger Stone, a self-described "GOP Hitman," with a history of Republican dirty tricks going back to his work for Richard Nixon's Committee for the Re-Election of the President, the group behind the Watergate burglary of 1972.
Nobody was ever charged with a crime in connection with the Brooks Brothers Riot -- not with election fraud, not with property damage, not with assault, not even with trespassing, of which they were all guilty.
*
November 22, 2000 was a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. As was tradition in my family, I spent Thanksgiving weekend at my grandmother's house, including the Thursday night with my parents and sister, and we sat transfixed at the TV, watching not football games -- the Detroit Lions beat the New England Patriots 34-9 at the Silverdome in suburban Pontiac, Michigan; while the Dallas Cowboys lost to the Minnesota Vikings, 27-15 at Texas Stadium in suburban Irving, Texas -- but footage of the Brooks Brothers Riot, on a seemingly endless loop, as talking heads on CNN and MSNBC tried to make sense of the most blatant election theft in American history.
Other Presidential elections have had accusations of fraud. But this was on television. Even the alleged theft of Illinois' votes by Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago in 1960 -- the overturning of which wouldn't have swung the election from John F. Kennedy to Nixon anyway -- wasn't caught by TV or film cameras. The Brooks Brothers Riot was, and the news networks were all too happy to show it over and over again, refusing to say that it was wrong.
The fact that Al Gore's rightly-won Presidency was being assassinated on November 22, the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, seemed not to have occurred to most people. Certainly, I didn't think of it at the time. With the chaos of the election, the JFK anniversary may have been mentioned less than on any November 22 since 1963.
As I said, it was a Wednesday in November, midweek for the NFL, and the off-season for baseball. There were 11 games played in the NBA that night:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Atlanta Hawks, 78-74 at the Philips Arena in Atlanta. It's now named the State Farm Arena. Allan Houston led the Knicks with 21 points, but it wasn't enough.
* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Phoenix Suns, 97-85 at the AmericaWest Arena (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix. Stephon Marbury scored 30 for the Meadowlands team, and Jason Kidd 8 for the Suns.
At the end of the 2000-01 season, they would be traded for each other, a classic "My headache for your headache" trade. Marbury did little for the Suns, while Kidd singlehandedly turned the Nets from a terrible team to back-to-back NBA Finalists.
* The Boston Celtics beat the Houston Rockets, 96-81 at the FleetCenter in Boston. (It's now the TD Garden.)
* The Charlotte Hornets beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 88-73 at the Charlotte Coliseum.
* Elsewhere in Miami that day, the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Miami Heat, 86-67 at the American Airlines Arena. (It's now the Kaseya Center.) Eighty-six to sixty-seven? I know this was a defensive era in the NBA, especially with a post-Lakers Pat Riley coaching the Heat, but it looks like votes weren't the only thing being undercounted in Miami!
* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 93-84 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.
* The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Vancouver Grizzlies, 101-100 at the Target Center in Minneapolis. This would be the Grizzlies' 6th and last season in Vancouver, as they moved to Memphis for 2001-02.
* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 112-85 at the Alamodome in San Antonio.
* The Utah Jazz beat their arch-rivals, the Denver Nuggets, 116-78 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.
* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Golden State Warriors, 111-91 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. At the time, the Warriors thought of the Lakers as their arch-rivals, but the feeling was not reciprocated. Despite the Warriors' success of the 2010s, it still isn't.
* And the Sacramento Kings beat the Chicago Bulls, 100-71 at the ARCO Arena in Sacramento. (It's now the Sleep Train Arena.)
There were 12 NHL games that night. All 3 New York Tri-State Area teams were in action, including 2 of them against each other:
* The New Jersey Devils, defending Stanley Cup Champions (and also my team, so it's my prerogative to list them first if I want to), beat the team then known as "The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim," 5-2 at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim. (The team is now the Anaheim Ducks, and the arena is the Honda Center.) The Devils got goals from Patrik Elias in the 1st period, Jay Pandolfo and Scott Gomez in the 2nd, and Jason Arnott and Pandolfo again in the 3rd.
* In an arch-rivalry game, the New York Rangers beat the New York Islanders, 4-3 at the Nassau Coliseum. Theoren Fleury got the winner for the Broadway Blueshirts, with 35 seconds left in overtime.
* The Washington Capitals beat the Vancouver Canucks, 3-2 at the MCI Center in Washington. (It's now the Capital One Arena.) Andrei Nikolishin scored the winner in overtime.
* The Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Atlanta Thrashers, 8-2 at the Ice Palace in Tampa. (It's now the Amalie Arena.)
* In an All-Canadian matchup, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Edmonton Oilers, 4-3 at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. (It's now the Scotiabank Arena.)
* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Buffalo Sabres, 3-1 at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo. (It's now the KeyBank Center.)
* The Carolina Hurricanes beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-1 at the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh. (It had previously been known as the Civic Arena.)
* In an Original Six matchup, the Boston Bruins beat the Detroit Red Wings, 5-4 at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.
* The Calgary Flames and the Minnesota Wild played to a tie, 1-1 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.
* The Dallas Stars beat the Nashville Predators, 1-0 at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in Nashville. (It's now the Bridgestone Arena.)
* The Colorado Rockies beat the Columbus Blue Jackets, 5-2 at the Pepsi Center in Denver. (It's now the Ball Arena.)
* And the San Jose Sharks beat the Chicago Blackhawks, 4-1 at the San Jose Arena. (It's now the SAP Center.)
Also, Arsenal played a UEFA Champions League Group Stage match, losing to Spartak Moscow, 4-1 at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.
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