Down & Dirty (13 page)

Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., shows up and backs LePore. “In fairness to the Democratic supervisor of elections, there’s fifty
folks in Century Village who like that brand of politics,” Foley says about Buchanan.

Yeah, but 3,407? A full 20 percent of his state total right here in Palm Beach? Broward’s about 50 percent bigger than Palm
Beach, and Buchanan only got 789 votes there. Miami-Dade’s
twice
as big as Palm Beach, and Buchanan only garnered 561 votes there. Moreover, it seems odd that 19,120 ballots indicate more
than one choice for president—an overvote. This is more than 4 percent of the 462,000 ballots cast in Palm Beach County. Were
these voters confused by the butterfly ballot? In the U.S. Senate race, which didn’t have the same ballot configuration, there
were only 3,783 overvotes.

LePore hears that Haitian-American groups are complaining that ballots weren’t written in Creole in areas where a significant
percentage of voters needed them. This pisses her off; in the summer she’d told all three major local Haitian-American groups
that she would provide such ballots if they did the translating for her, but not one of them bothered to take her up on the
offer. Not one even called her! She’d tried! She would go into black
churches in Belle Glade where they’d tell her she was the only official to ever visit them in person! She’s not insensitive
to black Americans, for Godsakes!

She hears that a lawsuit is coming her way. She talks to Bob Montgomery, an attorney arranged through county attorney Leon
St. John. He tells her to avoid the press.

One reporter manages to catch her eye, asks if she’s having an OK day. “Trying to,” she says.

From this moment on, the Bushies have decided on one message: Bush won, and everything that happens from this point on is
crazy, illegitimate Gore-propelled nonsense.

With Cheney by his side, Bush strides to the governor’s mansion patio. Not far from a pond and a small fountain sits a lectern,
which he approaches. Bush seems tired. “This morning brings news from Florida that the final vote count there shows that Secretary
Cheney and I have carried the state of Florida,” Bush reads from a prepared statement. “And if that result is confirmed in
an automatic recount, as we expect it will be, then we have won the election.”

Bush takes one question, and then he and Cheney walk off, ignoring others as reporters shout them out. He and Cheney make
a beeline for the mansion, stopping briefly to pose for photographers; Cheney waves, Bush gives a thumbs-up.

Another photo op is arranged in the dining room. With place settings, grilled cheese sandwiches, fruit, and cold squash soup
before them, Bush sits at the end of the table, Laura to his left, Lynne Cheney to his right, Dick Cheney across the table.

“I’m upbeat,” Bush says when asked how he feels.

“My soup is getting cold,” Bush says after a few questions, trying to get the reporters away.

The soup, of course, is supposed to be cold. It’s cold squash soup.

Warren Christopher walks into the Gore-Lieberman suite at the Loews Hotel. Lieberman looks at him with a twinkle in his eye.

“Look what you’ve gotten me into now,” Lieberman says.

They go around the room, talking about what to do next. “I think we should be aggressive in asserting our position,” Christopher
says. “But we’ve got to temper what we do with the realization that the nation is focused on us and is expecting us to act
responsibly.”

There are a few communications issues going on. Daley doesn’t want Chris Lehane, Gore’s sharp-tongued campaign spokesman,
to be representing the cause. He doesn’t like his style—doesn’t really like
him
—preferring communications director Mark Fabiani. Gore, too, wants Fabiani. But even before the election, anticipating a whole
different post-election legal dispute, Fabiani wrote Gore a memo arguing that any post-campaign battle should not have campaign
faces. In that memo—written in case Gore won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote—Fabiani argued that neither he nor
Lehane would be appropriate for such a situation.

A first draft of Fabiani’s memo read:

Successful management of the post-election period will require immediate and substantial enhancements to the current Gore
team. It is important that we all recognize that the Gore team, as currently constituted, will not be well equipped to successfully
manage this post-election period. This is true because the post-election period will require a different mix of skills than
currently exists on the Gore team and because current members of the Gore campaign team will either be completely unavailable
or physically and mentally exhausted after November 7th.

Post-election planning should focus on the following scenarios:

A clear popular vote and Electoral College victory for Gore.

A clear popular vote and Electoral College loss for Gore.

A clear Electoral College victory and popular vote loss for Gore.

A disputed Electoral College victory and popular vote loss for Gore.

If Gore wins, he will not benefit from any traditional honeymoon period.

If Gore wins only a narrow popular vote plurality and an Electoral College majority, Gore will immediately come under heavy
scrutiny by both the media and the political opposition. How Gore
deals with this scrutiny could determine the course of his presidency.

If Gore wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote, the period after the election will determine whether his presidency
is seen as legitimate.

If Gore’s Electoral College victory is disputed, the post-election period will determine whether Gore’s young presidency even
survives until Inauguration Day.

There are other factors, too. Fabiani doesn’t think the recount effort can afford to have him traveling and out of pocket
for so long. Plus, frankly, he’s longing for his family and La Jolla, where he thought he’d be heading by now. The last place
he wants to go right now is Tallahassee. But he has an idea. Fabiani’s deputy, Douglas Hattaway, is very low-key and calm.
Given that this is going to be a battle against the public’s patience, Hattaway—a Tallahassee boy—might be a good idea.

Soon, Fabiani calls Hattaway into his office.

“Want to go to Florida?” Fabiani asks, almost like an afterthought.

There’s a pause.

“Sure,” Hattaway says.

“OK,” Fabiani says, relieved. “You’re going to go down with Christopher and Daley. It’s leaving at four.”

That’s in an hour.

The small team actually leaves Tennessee closer to 5
P.M
. central, shuttled on a Lear Jet and armed with a few documents. There’s one about the disproportionate number of votes Buchanan
got in Palm Beach County, a three- to four-page memo on butterfly ballots, a one-pager on Florida recount law, and something
about the Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris—who was apparently one of Bush’s campaign co-chairs and now holds a
tremendous amount of power.

Daley and Christopher sit in the back, talking quietly, reviewing documents. Up front sit Hattaway, Daley aide Graham Streett,
and Hattaway’s assistant, Terrell McSweeney.

“Daley isn’t into all these ‘irregularity’ things,” Streett says, referring to the arguments many in the Gore camp want to
make about the reports—all merely anecdotal, at this point—they’ve heard about, say, blacks being stopped at polls, harassed,
and intimidated by cops. “He thinks we should be cautious talking about the irregularities.”

Streett’s right. Daley’s been around politics since birth, so he knows a few hard and fast facts about this kind of thing,
and it’s made him pessimistic about it all. First off, Daley thinks, it’s very, very rare that an election is turned over
unless it’s because of some bizarre accident or mistake, some number that was recorded incorrectly, some ballots that an angry
elections judge took home. That kind of thing is usually sorted out within twenty-four hours. But barring some legitimate
explanation like that, the longer it goes—whether it’s a race for state rep or mosquito abatement district, it is very tough
to turn an election over. The system is set up that way. Then there’s the matter of all these rumors. Not that Daley is flip
about it, but every election has allegations of roadblocks and people being arrested and yada yada yada. This stuff won’t
play in Peoria.

That isn’t surprising, of course, Hattaway thinks. Daley frequently weighs the PR implications of every decision. Some of
the Gore folks back in Nashville seemed a bit breathless in their allegations about various conspiracies, particularly ones
that the Gore team doesn’t plan on addressing.

Christopher wants to know about the butterfly ballot.

“What do we know about this?” he asks. “It’s very interesting.”

Christopher notices figures transposed on the butterfly ballot chart and points it out to Hattaway, who is immediately impressed
with the sharpness and studiousness of the old bird.

The plane starts to bounce around in turbulence, and soon thunder and lightning surround the plane. Streett, Hattaway, and
McSweeney roll their eyes at one another, concerned but almost slightly amused at the chaos into which they’ve been thrust.

At the Loews Hotel Wednesday night, Whouley’s eating dinner with John Giesser, his deputy at the DNC, when Al Gore’s son-in-law,
Drew Schiff, walks in and asks him to come upstairs, to be with the old man, the man who calls Whouley his “brain.”

Whouley gets up and follows Schiff to the elevator.

Whouley’s old school, the kind of guy who speaks about his underlings with both an earthiness and a passion for their skill.
He would describe an employee of his political-consulting firm, Dewey Square, as “a disheveled, schlumpy, fucking guy, but
a great election law lawyer.” Whouley’s not a big man, but he talks tough, and he means it.

The Dorchester boy started in politics while still at Boston College, running a ward in a race against the incumbent mayor
Kevin White. Whouley did a good job: his guy lost by only 50 votes in his ward, enough to recommend
Whouley to a young lieutenant governor candidate named John Kerry in 1982.

He did Kerry’s Senate race in 1984, slowly working his way up in Massachusetts politics: a mayor’s race (W), a congressional
seat (L), a state auditor’s race (W). The latter put him in charge of a great patronage job, director of human resource management.
In 1987, he was twenty-nine, earning $54,000 a year, with his own parking space on Beacon Hill and a bunch of his old pals
from the neighborhood under him.

A year later, the governor, Mike Dukakis, was the Democratic nominee for president, and Whouley slated Illinois for him, worked
for him in Iowa in the last month before the caucus. He met a couple guys named Clinton and Gore when he ran Louisiana for
the Duke a bit later, and the two Southern Democrats came in to work on the Massachusetts governor’s hapless campaign.

Clinton didn’t remember him when Whouley introduced the Arkansas governor at the Florida straw poll in October 1991, but Whouley
made Clinton the front-runner with the skills he’d picked up along the way.