MIAMI _ Hillary Clinton brought Al Gore to Miami on Tuesday to underscore her message that she will fight climate change, unlike Donald Trump, who has said he's "not a big believer."
"We cannot risk putting a climate denier in the White House," she declared.
Clinton mentioned increased damage from last week's Hurricane Matthew due to higher sea levels. But it was former Vice President Gore, ever the academic, climate change science evangelist, who scored the Miami disaster trifecta. He tied global warming to Matthew _ "from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in just 36 hours, that's extremely unusual" _ and to the faster spread of the Zika virus.
"Mother Nature is giving us a very clear and powerful message," he said.
What seemed to amuse the crowd most at Miami Dade College's Kendall Campus, however, was Gore's painful recollection of the 2000 presidential election in Florida.
""Your vote really, really, really counts," the former nominee said. "You can consider me as an Exhibit A for that."
Some in the audience of 1,600 _ the older ones, Gore joked _ groaned. He lost the state, and the race, by just 537 votes.
"You won! You won!" people chanted.
Said Gore: "I don't want you to be in a position years from now where you welcome Hillary Clinton and say, 'Actually, you did win.'"
By the end of the rally, the supporters in attendance had heard him repeat himself so frequently that they recited in unison: "Every vote counts."
Several hecklers interrupted Clinton, accusing her husband, former President Bill Clinton, of being a "rapist." They were escorted out of the arena. One wore a Trump T-shirt. Another carried a printout of Bill Clinton's face with the word "RAPE."
"My friends, please," Hillary Clinton said calmly, continuing as the crowd drowned out the demonstrators, "let's focus about what's really important in this election."
Unlike previous campaign rallies, Clinton's event felt especially infused with Miami references. She mentioned high-tide flooding on the streets of Miami Beach _ which is inevitably invoked on all matters climate change _ but also on the streets of Miami's Shorecrest neighborhood. Gore also name-dropped Fort Lauderdale and Delray Beach.
The college venue drew fans of Clinton's primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who made climate change a central plank of his campaign platform.
University of Miami student Rachel Siegel said she backed Sanders in March, but now "it is my duty as a Democrat to support Hillary."
"It baffles me there are still women who support this man after he said those words," she said, referring to a tape released Friday showing Trump making vulgar comments about grabbing women sexually. "I can't mentally comprehend that."
"I'm kind of nervous _ I don't want Donald Trump in office," said Viviara Wallace, a 19-year-old Miami Dade College student. "He is a liar. He is not a very solid man. He is very emotional. I don't trust anybody who gets mad on Twitter and goes on a Twitter rampage."
At least one person attended because of Gore: Marian Azeem-Angel, a no-party-affiliated 18-year-old Miami Dade College student studying environmental science.
"He is the one I'm most excited about," she said. When Azeem-Angel heard Gore was coming, she confessed, "I got heart palpitations."
"Environmental topics a lot of people feel are out of reach, but he can help educate people _ you don't need to be extremely knowledgeable on the subject to get involved," she said.
Trump, she said, is "someone who says global warming is a hoax, that it's not happening, is just in denial. There is no much science. We need to start facing it and dealing with it."
