Down & Dirty (49 page)

Outside, the Elián connection is complete. We already have Gutierrez. And Coffey. And Cuban-Americans angry at the Clinton-Gore
administration, and chaos in Miami, Al Gore not sure what to do or what to say, courts and lawsuits.

And now we have “the fisherman.”

Donato Dalrymple got his fifteen minutes a year ago, when—out in the Atlantic on his cousin’s boat—his cousin dove into the
sea and rescued poor Elián. The media called him “the fisherman,” even though he’s a house-cleaner and that was his first
time out in the boat. His cousin would later say that Dalrymple overinflated his role in the rescue. But he was there—holding
Elián in his arms, hiding in the closet—on that fateful April morning when the INS stormed into the Little Havana home, forever
harming Gore’s chances for significant support in Miami-Dade’s Cubano precincts.

So what the hell’s he doing here, outside the Emergency Operations Center?

“I was a victim of this administration,” Dalrymple says. “And I just came here to check it out. Before the election is actually
stolen, or someone concedes, I just wanted to come and see. I’m just like any other citizen here.”

You here because the media’s here?

“I’m not here for the cameras,” Dalrymple insists. “I just came here to support George Bush.”

On Wednesday, November 8, Gore fund-raiser Peter Knight convened a bunch of the fat cats who were in Nashville for the election
and secured $3 million in pledges to the Gore recount fund. On Sunday, November 14, Don Evans sent out an emergency e-mail
to Bush supporters, asking each to kick in $5,000 to the Bush-Cheney recount fund.

By now, the money to the Bush and Gore recount committees has started to really pour in. Twice as much for Bush as for Gore,
of course—about $7.5 million. The same people and network that made the Bush campaign the most cash-rich presidential campaign
in history, to the tune of $100 million, kick in $7.4 million. To his credit, Bush has limited donations
to $5,000 and is listing the names of his contributors on the Web—people like former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach
and Kenneth Lay, chairman of Enron, a Houston-based Texas energy company that has been over the years Bush’s largest benefactor.
American Airlines CEO Donald Carty, Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks, and MBNA chairman Alfred Lerner all give $5,000. With Boies
fighting for Gore, Republican donors affiliated with Microsoft have twice the reason to kick in bucks; and Microsoft lobbyist
Jack Abramoff; Charles Simonyi, chief programmer of Word and Excel; Bryan Woodruff, a software design engineer; and several
others have all donated.

Knight’s been able to bring in $3.5 million. Infoseek founder Steve Kirsch kicks in $500,000; Stephen Bing, a Hollywood writer
(
Married… with Children
) and producer (Stallone’s
Get Carter
) gives $200,000; Slim-Fast founder S. Daniel Abraham $100,000; actress Jane Fonda $100,000; the political action committee
of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle $5,000;
Las Vegas Sun
editor/president Brian Greenspun gives $5,000. New Jersey senator-elect Jon Corzine just bought himself a senate seat with
$60 million of his own money; he kicks in $25,000. New York songwriter Denise Rich, who’s trying to get her slimy, sleazy,
fugitive tax-evading ex-husband a pardon, donates $25,000.

By now, civil rights attorney Henry Latimer
^*
—a former Broward circuit judge and the first black partner at the Fort Lauderdale law firm Fine Jacobson Schwartz Nash Block
& England—has been designated the Gore team’s go-to guy on all the complaints about voting irregularities in the minority
community. He reaches out to members of the civil rights community throughout the state, tells them to let him know of anything—anything—at
all. He works with the NAACP, talks to the organization’s representatives in Washington, D.C., and in Florida.

He hears of things that disturb him. Black voters shut out at one precinct because the polls were closed, but two white voters
are allowed to stroll in and cast their votes. Hundreds of voters, the majority of whom seem to be black or Hispanic, who
should have been on the voting rolls but weren’t for
some reason. Other instances, where black voters were asked for two forms of picture ID. Voters complaining about cops oddly
swarming about polling places. But what can be done about any of this? Latimer wonders. A lot of the stuff is just anecdotal.
And you can’t go to court on every complaint. The Gorebies are sensitive to the perception that they’re running to court every
time there’s the most minute incident.

He is bothered a great deal by the fact that there was so much ballot spoilage in black precincts. Latimer doesn’t hold Jeb
or Harris responsible—not in the direct, conspiratorial sense, anyway. But what happened on Election Day is generally reflective
of the community at large, and most people are prone to overlook the rights of minorities, Latimer thinks. It’s no surprise
that black precincts have worse machines, poorly trained elections clerks.

“Gee whiz,” Latimer thinks, recalling his youth in Miami in the 1950s and ’60s, marching for civil rights. “All these years,
and I don’t know if
my
vote counted.”

Racism is different now than in his youth. No, they don’t have Sheriff Bull Connor standing out there with bulldogs, keeping
blacks from the polls by force. No, it’s benign neglect these days, he thinks. Still, what can be done legally? The best thing
now might be to focus on how to change this situation in the future.

Sunday, Bruce Rogow flies up to Tallahassee. When he arrives at the Double-tree Hotel, right there in the lobby, David Boies
is being interviewed by
60 Minutes
.

“This is not where I’d be the day before a case before the Supreme Court of Florida,” Rogow thinks.

Rogow’s no foe of media attention, but he wonders if Boies is playing too many roles on the Gore team. He’s not sure that
you can keep yourself on the kind of track that you need to be on to plot the strategy when you’re also being asked to be
the spokesperson. When you’re the lawyer, you’re the lawyer, he thinks.

Boies continues with the interview.

L
ast Tuesday, the Rodgers brothers drove about seven hundred miles south to Tallahassee to protest Al Gore stealing the election.

“I’m here because I’m angry,” Fred Rodgers, sixty, tells me.

It’s Monday, November 20, almost two weeks since the election, and I’m up early (for me, anyway; it’s 8:15
A.M
.), standing outside the state supreme court, so as to ensure a seat by the time of the historic oral argument, scheduled
for 2
P.M
. I’m about eighth in line. They said 148 members of the public are allowed to watch the proceedings, first come, first served.
Some members of the media got tickets through a lottery, but there are only so many seats.

Not everybody is here to see; some are here to be seen. Like Fred, of course.

Fred’s a retired reliability engineer from Newburgh, Indiana, “a statistician,” he says, “and I’m angry that they’re doing
a hand recount. Machines are designed to have test programs. Test diagnostics make sure the machine is performing properly.
When Palm Beach County came up with over eight hundred votes added for Al Gore in the second recount, I can tell you it should
not have had another recount, they should have looked for fraud.”

Fred is walking up and down the street, holding a sign that says, “The Hand Recount is a Farce.” On the other side it says,
“Selective Recount Unfair.” His sixty-five-year-old older brother, Ron, has a sign, too: “Al, if every vote counts, why not
the military?” on one side, and “Al Gore: Commander-in-Thief” on the other. The one belonging to brother Jim, fifty-eight,
says, “Hand Recount—a License to Steal” and “Gore/Daley/Boies ‘Liars, Cheaters, and Thieves, Oh, My.’”

“We’re just three grandpas from the heart of America,” explains Fred.

This has been a big Rodgers family project. The letters on the sign have been painstakingly etched out in pencil first, and
carefully colored in with black ink. The signs, in fact, are ever-changing, consisting as they do of two pieces of poster
board attached with those fastener paperclip things. Every few hours, Fred Rodgers wanders off and returns with a whole new
sign.

Originally this was going to be just a two-day protest. On Friday, they shuffled back into Fred’s 1995 Chrysler New Yorker,
the one with a hundred thousand miles on it, and drove the seven hundred or so miles back to Mount Carmel, Illinois, where
Ron and Jim live, so as to see Ron’s grandson play football in the state semifinals.

It was a crappy day; halfway to Atlanta, they heard that the state supreme court had put a stay on Harris’s certification.
Then, later that night, the Mount Carmel Aces got their butts handed to them by the Harrisburg Dogs. So on Sunday, the Rodgers
brothers got back in the car and came back here. They’re staying at the local Motel 6.

I get back in line. A Florida Coastal Law School student named Trevor Mask, twenty-five, number seven in line, has been saving
my place; Delta Airlines flight attendant Alyson Wood, thirty, is behind me. Both are native to Tallahassee, though neither
lives here anymore. Both voted for Bush and came to see a bit of history.

Down the street,“Angelina the Polka Queen”—crown on her head, clad in a red dress and sequined shoes, playing an accordion—and
her partner “King Ira”—crown atop his blond wig, red sequined jacket, strumming on the old banjo—are singing against the proceedings.
“George W. B. / Please put the world back in order for me,” they sing. “I don’t like liberals creating such confusion. / Just
want all folks to respect the Constitution.” They’re from Gainesville, they say in between spats of mugging for various TV
cameras.

“We’re here to debut the queen’s new song,” says Ira Philpot.

“We got some great Christmas songs, too!” Angelina Woodhull chirps.

It’s 9:30
A.M
. now, and the line has grown to about fifty. Across the street, eight TV networks have set up tents. One of the several officers
from the sheriff’s office keeps approaching Alyson and whispering in her ear.