Down & Dirty (71 page)

Then the press is shepherded—like pigs into a slaughterhouse, one reporter gripes—to a small room, where Gore and Lieberman
just happen to be having the casual conference call with Gephardt and Daschle.

Just a few guys rappin’, you know, no big deal.

“We were just given a new tally this morning that says that if we counted all the votes that have already been counted in
some of the recount, we’d actually be ahead by nine votes, so we’re encouraged by that,” Daschle tells Gore. “I think there’s
overwhelming support for your effort and a realization that if we completed the count, there is little doubt that you’d be
ahead. So we wanted to come down and be as emphatic as we can that we support you and your effort, and we support this full
and fair recount.”

The 9-vote figure that Daschle cites is actually outdated. It comes from subtracting a few clumps of votes (51 from Nassau;
a new number they’re asserting came from the late Palm Beach County tally, 215 net Gore votes; 157 from the uncompleted Miami-Dade
undervote exploration; plus 123 “Thanksgiving stuffing” votes) from the certified 537-vote difference.

But by now the “Thanksgiving stuffing” has been excluded. “We made the decision this morning not to do the overseas ballots,”
Bash tells me, saying the team wanted “a clean, crisp contest action that just dealt with counting errors.” They are, however,
hoping for a reexamination of 3,000-some Palm Beach ballots that the Boston Boys think Burton ruled against unfairly, and
for a look at all of the 10,750 Miami-Dade undervotes.

So that 9-vote nonsense is, like, so two hours ago. But someone forgot to tell Daschle.

“Al and Joe,” Gephardt says casually on the conference call, “let me just add, that [as] Joe knows, we’ve been having many
conference calls with the House Democrats. And they have been entirely supportive and continue to be entirely supportive of
going ahead with this contest for the purpose of finding out how everybody voted in this election. Our members feel very strongly
that this needs to be done.”

Daschle chimes back in with one of the lamest endorsements I’ve ever heard.

“Our colleagues were impressed with your offer to count all of the counties and to live with the results of that effort,”
the soft-spoken minority leader says to Gore. “And to have that concept endorsed by the [Florida] Supreme Court also, I think,
impressed a lot of our colleagues. As I’ve talked to a number of people, I think the fact that you’ve repeated it now a couple
of times is also, I think, an encouraging sign that you’re willing to live with the results, and so are we….We just want to
applaud your efforts and thank you for carrying on as you have so far.”

From Washington, the vice president’s voice buzzes in. “Thank you both for your friendship and for your participation in this,”
Gore intones in his typical attempt at sincerity. (If you think Gore’s bad on TV, you should hear him on speakerphone.) “You
and I believe very strongly that every vote has to be counted,” Gore says. “We hear statements on the other side quite frequently
to the effect that we had a count and a recount and another recount—but that’s really beside the point.

“What we’re talking about is many thousands of votes that have never been counted at all,” Gore says, apparently referring
to both the late Palm Beach County numbers, and the 9,000 or so ballots in Miami-Dade County that were rejected by the machines
and haven’t been hand-counted.“The integrity of our democracy depends upon the consent of the governed, freely expressed,
in an election where every vote is counted.

“I appreciate all the hard work that you guys are doing,” Gore adds.“And Joe is right here with me.”

Then Lieberman briefly peeps up. “Very briefly, thank you, both of you are leaders,” he says. “You have been steadfast and
direct in the most encouraging way. Thank you for taking the time to go to Florida.”

As if the world needs another display of Democratic Kumbaya, minutes later, at 2:20
P.M
., the Gore team arranges a conference call for reporters to talk to the two congressional leaders. At this point, Daschle
has clearly been told that the 9-vote margin was no longer operable, because he’s dropped it. “We think that there may be
a hundred votes that separate the two candidates,” Daschle now says. He notes that all the uncounted ballots and such will
be available for review under the Freedom of Information Act, and surely someone will review them. “There
will
be an accurate count,” he noted, calling it “tragic” that the world might learn of this accurate number three or four months
hence.“That’s in large part our message today,” he says.

Now
this
is an interesting argument, maybe the first one I’ve heard from the Gorebies for quite some time. Oddly, this tack—perhaps
Gore’s most compelling argument for continuing the recount—originally comes from conservative activist Larry Klayman. On November
22, Klayman, head of the conservative organization Judicial Watch, secured the right under Florida’s sunshine law to inspect
the Palm Beach County ballots. Klayman has been using his ballot access to allege malfeasance by what he deems are Gore-supporting
ballot counters. “If Klayman can do that,” Klain realizes, “then of course the media will.” And sooner or later, the reasoning
goes, it will be known who actually garnered more votes in Florida on November 7, officially or unofficially. The
New York Times
will have its tally, Klain reasons, as will the
Wall Street Journal,
Fox News Channel, NBC, CBS, CNN, ad infinitum. So with this as a given, Klain’s question is: Should the ballots be counted
by judges now, before America officially has a forty-third president? Or should it be the
New York Times
and ABC News a few weeks after Gov. George W. Bush is sworn in?

And, assuming that Gore is shown to be the actual winner—which the Bush team clearly worries about, otherwise it wouldn’t
be doing everything it can to stop the recounting—one has to wonder what kind of mandate will that leave Bush? Under this
scenario, he could be revealed to be not only the popular vote loser by more than 500,000 votes, but not even the legitimate
winner of Florida, except by a host of superior legal and political maneuvering.

Of course, Gore might not actually have all that many votes among the 10,750 undervotes of Miami-Dade. And there are 175,000
undervotes and overvotes statewide, which might end up indicating an even larger Bush
margin of victory than his current 537-vote landslide. No one knows. But amid all of these unknowns, one thing is pretty clear:
Americans will eventually know who actually won Florida. It’s just a matter of timing.

Klain will tell Tribe about this argument, and it will make its way into Thursday’s
SCOTUS
brief. But still, the Gorbies never make a move to have all 175,000 unread ballots examined.

Gephardt is asked: What about poll numbers that show that Americans want this thing to be over?

Gephardt says that their feelings are “based on the supposition that what the secretary of state said was accurate. When people
find out… that this thing is really a fifty- or hundred-vote difference,” they’ll change their minds.

But Gephardt and Daschle soon take leave of Tallahassee. And then two Bush allies make appearances—two men who at no other
time in this nation’s history would seem more powerful than either the United States Congress’ House or Senate minority leader.
But they sure are BMOCs about Tallahassee today.

The first is state senate president John McKay—a Republican from Bradenton, just north of Sarasota—presenting a “friend of
the court” brief to help Bush’s case before the
SCOTUS
. “Today the Florida legislature has filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stay part of the [Florida] Supreme
Court ruling,” McKay says.“We firmly and unequivocably believe that the Florida Supreme Court overstepped its proper boundaries
in an arbitrary manner, because this matter is purely a legislative responsibility.”

McKay’s known about town as pragmatic, sensitive to the winds of public opinion, savvy enough to bounce from scandal back
to power in the blink of an eye. During a messy divorce in 1997, McKay’s ex accused him not only of battering her but of having
an affair with a phone company lobbyist who was behind a bill McKay, then chairman of the senate Budget Committee, was shepherding
through the senate. He resigned from the Ways and Means Committee, but bounced back soon enough, rising quickly once again
to helm the whole joint as president of the senate.

At 3
P.M
. or so, across the capitol rotunda, Florida house speaker Tom Feeney announces plans for a special committee that will meet
Tuesday morning to examine the legislature’s role in selecting the state’s electors.“The Joint Legislative Oversight Committee
on Electoral Certification, Accuracy and Fairness” was formed by Feeney and McKay to“address voting irregularities,” which
one might assume would include voter irregularities that Democratic voters experienced as well as complaints voiced by Republicans.

But one would be wrong.

Feeney’s a firebrand, mild in demeanor but extreme in thought. As Jeb’s running mate in ’94, the Christian Coalition Legislator
of the Year was made a campaign liability by Florida Democrats. Every hard-right move he ever made was trotted out: a call
for the state to secede if the national debt were to exceed $6 trillion; support for a move to teach students that American
culture is superior; the drafting of a bill requiring hospitals to send the state age and race records of any woman who obtains
an abortion. Chiles called Feeney “spooky,”“sort of the David Duke of Florida politics.”

Tom Feeney remembers how he was treated.

Appearing jointly with Feeney, state house Democratic leader Lois Frankel expresses concern about the committee, the brief
McKay filed earlier, and the cost of the three attorneys Feeney has retained. These attorneys are: Elhauge and Fried for the
state house, and Roger Magnuson, who will advise the senate. Magnuson has written extensively against gay rights, and is dean
of Oak Brook College of Law in Fresno, California, an unaccredited school that declares in its mission statement that its
purpose is to “establish the Biblical foundations of truth, righteousness, justice, mercy, equity, integrity, and the fear
of God in legal education and in the professional arenas of law and government policy.”

Personally, Frankel likes Feeney, gets along with him just fine, but she is amazed by the brazenness of what she sees as an
obvious Bush power play. Feeney and McKay, she thinks, are clearly coordinating with the Bushies so as to set up a safety
net just in case Gore wins the contest provision and ultimately any recount. And she’s right; McKay has talked with Jeb about
calling a special joint committee of the legislature to do so. This week, Jeb will call the formation of the committee an
“act of courage.”

While Ginsberg was originally cagey when Rubottom called him to coordinate, there has since been tremendous communication
between the two camps. Rubottom has been talking to Terwilliger; Jimenez has been coordinating with Ginsberg, Jeb, and a whole
bunch of folks in the state house; state GOP chair Cardenas and Jeb have been calling the legislature’s GOP leaders, checking
in, seeing what’s going on and how they can help.

Before the legislature even drafts a bill, Rubottom walks over to the Bush Building with Jeb’s counsel, Charles Canady, to
talk it over with Terwilliger and others on the Bush team. No one wants this to be the way that Bush gets the White House—through
a partisan maneuver and a bill signed by Jeb—but they’re sure not going to rule it out.

But all the while, the Bushies are doing everything they can to make it
seem like they’re not having anything to do with the legislature’s decision. On December 7, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett will
lie, “The Florida legislature made this decision on its own. It’s a separately elected body. We have not participated in their
making their decision.”

The state house minority leader sees this all going on, hears Bartlett’s lie, and can’t believe it. It’s no secret that the
Republicans in Tallahassee are cutthroat—leaning on businesses and corporations to stop donating money to Democrats, even
leaning on one to cancel a reception for new Democratic legislators. But Frankel sees two reasons for Feeney and McKay’s moves.
Yes, they’re setting up another safety net for Bush, but she also thinks that the moves of Feeney and McKay are intended to
add to the “circus atmosphere” of it all, creating a chaotic situation, so that the country will eventually say “enough is
enough.”

Still, Frankel thinks, whaddaya gonna do? The Democrats are powerless. When she suggests names of specific Democrats to sit
on the special joint committee, Feeney ignores her. Instead, he picks soft-spoken state senator Ken Gottlieb and two Democrats
with constituencies that make assertiveness on this issue tough: the mild state representative Annie Betancourt, who represents
a Cuban-American area of Miami, and conservative Dwight Stansel, who represents northern Florida areas that were totally Bush
country.