Down & Dirty (68 page)

But Terrell’s the wrong guy to bring this up with. “I recommended Fred to Baker in the beginning,” he says.“There’s not going
to be a problem with Fred.” Terrell wants to make sure that everyone gets along, that there are no egos or turf wars or any
of the hideous side of man that he saw in the
Pennzoil
case. This, he believes, is one of his primary functions. “I want to make the teams work,” Terrell tells Ginsberg.

Ginsberg smiles.

Bartlit and Beck have asked for a separate place to work, so they’re not even in the Bush Building; they’ve been given some
office space at Gray, Harris & Robinson. Go over there and make sure everything’s going OK, Terrell is told.

Terrell and Bristow arrive at Gray, Harris & Robinson and immediately ask for Bartlit, who welcomes them warmly. Terrell tells
Bartlit that he was the one who recommended him. Beck remains pretty quiet, as if he’s trying to figure out who these two
Texans are, what their role is going to be.

They don’t know what will be in the Gore contest, Bartlit and Beck explain, but they’re focusing on Miami and Palm Beach,
figuring those are safe bets. They’re trying to get their hands around what happened there; they haven’t yet met with any
experts, but they’ve been talking to and meeting with various GOP observers from those counties, and they’ve accrued some
raw facts, which they’re organizing and discussing.

Bartlit gives Terrell and Bristow a brief presentation on the timelines in the two counties. He seems to really know what
happened in Palm Beach; his grasp on Miami-Dade seems less firm.

“Tell me about the dimples,” Terrell says to Beck.

Beck launches into the theory he’s been working on about dimples, about the inherent bogusness of the Gore assault, that the
only way Gore could win is if they convinced canvassing boards in Democratic counties to count marks as votes.

Terrell is floored. For someone who didn’t have any idea what a “contest” was when Bartlit called him on Thanksgiving to bring
him down to Florida, Beck knows his shit. The all-nighters he’s been pulling since he arrived on Friday are paying off.

Forget Ginsberg’s warning: Terrell and Bristow like what they see. Bartlit’s a hardass, but he seems to be a good guy, just
like Terrell remembers him. And Beck’s one sharp, fucking cookie.

So Terrell goes back to Baker and Ginsberg with nothing but enthusiasm.“This is going to be great,” he says.“This is going
to be a real trial! I feel good about it.”

But Baker and Ginsberg remain worried. Boies took down
Microsoft,
for Godsakes.

“I can beat Boies,” Terrell says. He did so before in
Pennzoil
. “I can. I can beat David. You guys need to understand that he’s mortal. He’s like lightning in a bottle, and it’s very important
to keep him in the bottle.”

Okay, Baker and Ginsberg say. How are the responsibilities being divided over there? “Who’s going to do what?” he’s asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Terrell says. “But have you met Phil Beck?”

Frist

Gilmore

Hunter

Asa Hutchinson

Lugar (coming to Tallahassee in afternoon)

Kingston

Pataki

Portman

Racicot (coming to Tallahassee in afternoon)

Democrats in Palm Beach

Markey, Deutsch, Sharpton, Rep. Sherrod Brown (former OH Sec. of State)

In Florida:

Senator Dole

Lynn Martin

In West Palm Beach at 1
P.M
., the raison d’être of Burton’s fancy shirt and tie is made clearer when he strides before the assemblage of cameras and
announces that the canvassing board is faxing Harris a request for a deadline extension from 5
P.M
. Sunday to 9
A.M
. Monday. After all, Burton’s letter states, the task of reviewing each of the ballots has “creat(ed) an extraordinary and
unprecedented challenge for the canvassing board.”

“We know you are interested in counting all votes as accurately as possible,” Burton’s letter reads, noting that he and his
colleagues are “committed
to reviewing each and every one of these ‘questionable’ ballots as quickly as humanly possible, including working through
this evening.

“We do not believe this extension would prejudice the State in any way, in light of the Florida Supreme Court’s opinion,”
Burton continues, referring to the court’s judgment that the Monday-morning deadline could stand if Harris didn’t want to
open her office on Sunday.

After sending the letter asking for the extension, at about 4
P.M
.,Burton calls Clay Roberts to plead his case.“We’re getting ready to send you a letter right now,” Roberts tells him. “What’s
it say?” Burton asks. “We’re not giving you an extension,” Roberts says.

Burton asks for mercy. “You know, we’re about two hours away from this, maybe an hour away,” Burton says. “People have been
busting their asses here for twenty hours a day. Please. Just two more hours.”

“Hold on,” Roberts says. Burton hears him talking to someone in the background. Roberts eventually gets back on the line.
“We’ll let you know,” he says.

Five or ten minutes later, the fax comes from Harris’s office: NO SALE.

According to the rejection letter, Harris claims she doesn’t have the legal discretion to allow such an extension “in accordance
with the explicit terms of the decision of the Florida Supreme Court.” So, at 4:30
P.M
., after two weeks of twenty-hour days, Burton announces that the hand recount will not be completed by the 5
P.M
. deadline. The board only has 800 to 1,000 ballots left to hand-recount—out of a total of 461,988—but he says that such a
task will take another two hours or so. Since they only have half an hour left, he calls it quits.

“So the secretary of state has decided to shut us down with approximately two hours and a half left to go,” Burton says, a
bitter edge to his voice. “Unfortunately, at this time we have no other choice but to shut down. The supervisor of elections”—LePore—“has
to hurriedly gather all the paperwork and prepare all the returns we have. We certainly don’t want to get any in at 5:01.”

Scarcely five minutes later, Burton comes back into the hearing room, here at the Palm Beach Emergency Operations Center,
and in a symbol of the mercurial nature of this ever-evolving second-by-second story, says that they’ll continue with the
last few hours of work after the deadline passes.

“We are going to send a report to the secretary of state as to the returns that we have,” Burton says.“And this board has
decided that we are going to remain here and finish the recount. And we are going to send whatever
figures we have to the secretary of state, and it will be up to her whether or not she decides to accept those.”

Tucker Eskew tells them that they should just all pack it in, but Bolton and Wallace decide to stay. Wallace notes the board’s
hard work, objects to its self-extension of the deadline, and graciously says that his team will remain to observe for the
rest of the process.

Before he recommences with the hand recount of the remaining 1,000 or so disputed Palm Beach County ballots—knowing full well
that Harris may not accept late updates to the already updated vote tallies—Burton approaches the media to offer us his thoughts.

How many new votes are there? What will the new numbers that they’ve faxed to Harris—the totals from the first machine recount
plus the new ones absent approximately fifty precincts—reveal?

“Maybe a couple hundred votes,” he says.

For Gore?

He nods.

Why are they continuing the counting, despite the fact that Harris has made it crystal clear that she won’t accept these new
numbers?

“Why not?” he says, casually. “We all want to finish the job.”

Does he blame the fact that this has taken longer than he thought it might on the GOP lawyers objecting?

“We agree, we disagree, we agree to disagree,” he says. “Both sides were extremely cooperative.” He says that spending Wednesday
in LaBarga’s courtroom was time wasted, especially considering the fact that LaBarga ultimately gave the board no guidance
on which chad were kosher. “We spent all day in court, when we could’ve been working,” he says.

A reporter asks him a leading question about Harris, trying to get him to slam her.

“Next question,” he says.

Was there a moment when he realized that they weren’t going to make the deadline? asks a reporter, seeking drama.

No, Burton says.“As the afternoon went on, we realized we weren’t going to make it.”

Why did he ask Harris for an extension?

“Given what this experience has been, I was hopeful they’d say,‘Fine,’” he says, pointing out how hard they’ve all worked.
He says that his Democratic critics, who say that the board has been using excessively strict dimple standards, are wrong.
“You simply can’t count every dimple on a ballot,” he says. “We didn’t count every ding on a ballot card.” On the other
hand, he adds, “we certainly came across an awful lot of ballots that were not counted by the machine.”

Any ramifications from it all, other than who will be president?

“I’m sure every state’s going to revisit its election laws,” he says.

And then he leaves and goes back to work.

Inside, the three keep counting, under the watchful eyes of high-profile supporters of Gov. George W. Bush, like Republicans
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Governor Janklow, Gov. Jim Gilmore of Virginia—the latter of whom is being escorted around
by Phil Muster, who just a day or so ago was telling me he was just a “volunteer” handing out T-shirts at the protest outside
the Broward County courthouse.

Muster doesn’t seem to care that he might be recognized, which again raises the question: why do the Bushies refuse to tell
the truth about their role here? They’re certainly legally allowed to hand out free T-shirts, or to protest peacefully.

Deutsch walks in and sits across the aisle from Hutchison, Janklow, and Gilmore. No pleasantries are exchanged. No friendly
acknowledging glances. Rep. Ed Markey also wanders in. Then he wanders out. Soon Rep. Corinne Brown, D-Fla., joins Deutsch.

“Hey hey! Ho ho! Al Gore has got to go!” chant the pro-Bush protesters outside the Emergency Operations Center.

“Thou shalt not steal,” reads one sign. “Who let the chads out? Who? Who? Gore Did!” reads another.

A smattering of pro-Gore protesters is here as well. “Bush hates all minorities,” reads a sign from their number.

Subtle.

“One-ninety-three-C,” Burton says inside.

“Who’s got one-ninety-three-C?” Roberts asks.

As I walk from my car to the Emergency Operations Center, I pass a woman who has camped out on the sidewalk, waving a Bush-Cheney
sign for the motorists who pass by. I ask her how she’s doing.

“Good,” she says. “Who are you with?”

“Salon.com,” I reply.

“Oh,” she says. “You’re one of
those
.”