Down & Dirty

by Jake Tapper

  About ten minutes later, another aide, Greg Simon, says: “It’s down to five hundred votes in Florida.”

  Lieberman tells Gore not to concede.

  At 3:15 A.M., Daley calls his counterpart in Bush’s camp, Don Evans, to tell him about their concerns. “You need to give us a little more time,” Daley says to Evans. “You need to let us work this out.”

  Bush is not happy. Ellis has told him that Florida is, again, too close to call.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Bush says.

  After calling back to Tallahassee, Jeb says the same thing. “I’m not seeing the same thing they’re seeing in the numbers,” Jeb says.

  When Gore calls him a few minutes later, Bush doesn’t let on that he knows that Florida is still in play. From this moment on, Bush and his team will propagate a myth, repeating it over and over to the American people: he won, definitively, at the moment that his cousin called the election for him for Fox News Channel.

  “Circumstances have changed dramatically since I first called you,” Gore says to Bush. “The state of Florida is too close to call.”

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Bush asks pointedly.“Let me make sure that I understand. You’re calling back to retract that concession?”

  “You don’t have to be snippy about it,” Gore responds.

  Gore tries to explain: Florida is too close to call. If Bush wins it, Gore will concede again. But the reality is different than the networks have reported it.

  Bush tells Gore that the networks are right. Jeb’s right here, he says.

  “Your little brother doesn’t get to make that call,” Gore says.

  “Well, Mr. Vice President, you do what you have to do,” Bush says. “Thanks for calling.”

  “You’re welcome!” Gore says.

  Inside the holding room at the War Memorial, Gore hangs up.

  His staff cheers.

  Except for Bill Daley, that is, his campaign chairman. He’s holding his bald head in his hands.

  In the holding room, Daley took Gore aside and apologized for not having served him well, for having taken the TV networks’ word for it. Gore brushed it off, don’t worry about it, he said. But now Daley’s fretting again that Gore may have done the wrong thing in retracting his concession. “What if we find out within the next few hours that what had caused us to hesitate was some mistake, some problem with the secretary of state’s office?” he worries. “Then all of a sudden it’s Wednesday morning, and we should have pretty obviously conceded the night before.” He’s trying to get a handle on the chaos; he doesn’t want Gore to look like a jerk.

  In Austin, Bush calls John Ellis. “Gore unconceded,” he tells him.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ellis says.

  In Austin, the rain is unrelenting.

  In Tallahassee, Jeb Bush’s acting chief counsel, Frank Jimenez, is watching CNN at Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan’s home. At 3:50 A.M., Ed Kast, the assistant director for the state division of elections, does a phone interview with CNN anchors Judy Woodruff and Bernard Shaw and analysts Jeff Greenfield and Bill Schneider.

  “OK, Mr. Kast,” Greenfield says, “I just want to review the bidding because we may be talking about the outcome of the presidential election here. Right now, Governor Bush is leading Vice President Gore by we think—it’s thirteen hundred ten votes if Judy’s math is right. You’ve got, roughly based on the past, a couple of thousand overseas absentee ballots,… I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but is it a fair statement that we do not yet know who has won the state of Florida?”

  “We’ve got George Bush ahead,” Kast says. “But it’s not—those are preliminary and unofficial figures. They’re not by any means official.”

  Jimenez places a call to Kast’s boss, Clay Roberts.

  “How long would it take to conduct a recount, Mr. Kast?” Woodruff asks.

  “If we’re thrown into a recount, or if there is a recount, they’ll start that just as soon as we notify them, which will probably be first thing tomorrow morning,” Kast says.

  The anchors ask Kast how long that would take. But while they’re talking, Clay Roberts tells Kast to get off the phone.

  “Wouldn’t there still be a ten-day separation?” Shaw asks.

  Pause.

  “Did we lose Ed Kast?” Shaw asks.

  “We may have,” Woodruff says.

  “He certainly was a lot of information,” Shaw says.

  Exactly the problem. Jimenez and Roberts do not want an elections officer going on TV and saying that Bush is actually not yet the official winner of Florida.

  Bush attorney Ben Ginsberg, former counsel for the Republican National Committee, is in the streets to rejoice. With the rest of the crowd, the bald, bespectacled, neon-orange-bearded attorney waits and waits for Gore to concede and Bush to take the stage.

  He waits. And waits.

  It doesn’t seem quite right, he thinks. Something’s off. On the jumbotron TVs set up for the crowds, CNN’s Candy Crowley reports that Gore has retracted his concession.

  Ginsberg’s cell phone goes off. It’s Rove’s assistant.

  “You better get back here,” she tells him.

  Back at HQ, Ginsberg’s sitting at a desk when Don Evans, Bush’s oil-slick good-ol’-boy campaign chair saunters by.

  “Think it’s a recount?” he asks Ginsberg.

  “Yep,” Ginsberg says.

  “Better start gettin’ people to fly,” Evans says.

  Others are already on it. Ken Mehlman, thirty-four, the national field director for the Bush campaign, was standing—waiting—on Congress Street when he soon enough realized something was up. He hightailed it back to HQ and, working with Tony Feather, figured out who needed to get to Florida ASAP. They decided on Brian Noyes, the regional political director whose territory included the Sunshine State; Coddy Johnson, a regional political director who had the central states; policy guy Joel Kaplan; Kristin Silverberg, and attorneys Kevin Murphy and Kevin Martin. All are notified: go back to your apartments and get maybe two days’ worth of clothes. They have a 6 A.M. charter flight to Miami.

  In Nashville, Daley calls an executive at CBS, tells him to take back the premature call that Bush won. Feldman calls the political director at ABC, tells him the same thing. NBC soon declares Florida “too close to call.” On CNN, the check mark remains by Bush’s name. But not for long. At 4:05 A.M., CNN removes the check mark from Bush’s name. The electoral count becomes: Gore 249, Bush 246.

  Within the hour, Daley and Evans make their respective announcements to their respective perplexed crowds.

  Daley says that he’s “been in politics for a very long time, but I’ve never seen a night like this.” The networks called the election, Daley said, but “it now appears that their call was premature…. Until the result is official, our campaign continues,” he says to cheers in Nashville. Daley says that Gore and Lieberman are ready to concede—but only after the Florida tally is official.

  In Austin, Evans addresses the sopping-wet crowd. “We hope and we believe we have elected the next president of the United States,” Evans says. “They’re still counting, and I’m confident when it’s all said and done, we will prevail.” He leaves the podium and returns to the shelter of the campaign HQ.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice says from the loudspeaker. “Thank you for coming. That concludes the program.”

  If only.

  3

  “Do you remember us hitting anything?”

  In the wee hours of the morning, as Tuesday morphs into Wednesday, the Election Night that will never end gains power. Outside Florida, political and legal soldiers are being recruited for the tumultuous thirty-six days that will follow, while within the Sunshine State itself, chaos, confusion, and conspiracy take hold.

  Strange things are afoot in Volusia County, for instance.

  In one precinct, Socialist Workers presidential candidate James Harris racks up 9,888 votes. The fact that Harris
has only received 19,507 nationwide, and that the precinct only has around 350 voters, seems to cast doubt about his new 10,000-vote stronghold in one tiny Volusia County precinct.

  More significant, in the city of DeLand, Volusia County elections workers have realized a big glitch in the computer programming that transmits results via modem from precinct 216 to the elections superviser’s office. Gore had 16,000 votes that just vanished in the night. The problem has since been discovered and ironed out, but Democrats are all fired up. What else, they wonder, could have gone wrong?

  At around 3:45 A.M., an elections worker named Deborah Allen, forty-seven, and her younger brother Mark Bornmann walk out of the elections supervisor’s office to go home. Bornmann, forty-three, a volunteer who has spent the last three hours in the elections office napping, is carrying his sister’s bags: a briefcase and a small bag containing casual clothing she’d been wearing at her day job, as well as some toiletries.

  After Allen and Bornmann leave, operatives from both the Democratic and Republican parties freak out, wondering if she’s heisting some ballots, telling the deputy sheriff on the scene to apprehend her. Supervisor of Elections Deanie Lowe is sure that everything’s kosher but feels compelled to make sure nonetheless.

  Other sheriff’s deputies are notified. A “bolo” (be on the lookout) is put out on the two. On International Speedway Boulevard, a cop recognizes Allen’s brown Wagoneer as she and her brother make their way back home to Ormond Beach.

  They’re stopped and told they have to come back to DeLand. They won’t tell her where she’s going or why she’s being asked to turn around and drive back to DeLand escorted by two sheriff’s cars.

  “Do you remember us hitting anything?” Allen worriedly asks her brother. She’s in a panic. She’s afraid that in the elections office parking lot maybe she collided with someone, maybe someone’s dead.

  At around 4:20 A.M., Allen and Bornmann arrive under police escort back at the elections supervisor’s office. The contents of the bags are poured out onto the pavement near the parking lot and photographed.

  No ballots.

  In the wake of this mess, the Volusia County office of elections is sealed, surrounded by yellow police tape and armed deputies.

  In Nashville, meanwhile, Gore asks Daley to phone up former secretary of state Warren Christopher, to recruit him for the recount effort. In addition to being an attorney with O’Melveny & Myers, a diplomat, and a respected Democrat party elder, Christopher is in many ways responsible for helping Gore segue from senator to vice president, having helmed then-governor Clinton’s 1992 search for a running mate. In 2000, Gore called upon Christopher to help find him a Gore of his own, a process that ended up in the selection of Lieberman.

  At 3:30 A.M. Pacific time, Christopher’s wife is shaken from her sleep when the phone rings.

  “It’s Bill Daley,” she says.

  Christopher takes the call. It’s brief.

  “The election’s so close in Florida there’s going to be an automatic recount,” Daley says. Gore wants Christopher and him to run it.

  The seventy-five-year-old springs out of bed. A 6 A.M. Pacific time flight to Nashville is arranged. He shaves, showers, and packs. On the morning shows, the Gore campaign is able to announce the selection of their éminence grise to project that the recount will be a dignified and orderly event.

  In Gore-Lieberman HQ in Nashville, things are not so dignified or orderly. It’s downright scrappy.

  Most of the crew has spent the night waiting outside the Nashville War Memorial in the rain on an emotional roller coaster: overjoyed when Gore was awarded Florida, then despondent when it was taken from him, then mortified—almost in mourning—when it was given to Bush. After the networks took Florida away from the GOP governor, they were overjoyed again, chanting the Gore mantra “Stay and fight!”

  Soaking wet and totally confused, the young Democrats gather in HQ after Daley has bid them adieu for the night. Gore strategist Tad Devine gathers the crew around and gives them a pep talk. They said Al Gore was dead in the water in New Hampshire, Devine says, referring to pre-primary polls that showed former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley with a sizable lead in the state Gore eventually won. “But we stayed and fought!” Devine says, and Gore won New Hampshire. They said Al Gore was going to get demolished by George Bush, Devine says. But we stayed and fought, and it looks like Al Gore’s going to win the popular vote.

  “I don’t know what the outcome of this election will be,” Devine says. “But I feel an obligation to go down there and figure it out, and stay and fight!” The exasperated Democratic masses cheer. There’s an automatic recount in Florida, Devine says, and Gore needs guys on the ground to make sure it all goes right.

  Donnie Fowler, deputy field director, jumps on a desk and starts shouting out names like he’s in the army. “Backus, Jenny!” he says. “Bash, Jeremy!” He runs through several dozen. “You got an hour. Go home and pack. Bring about three days’ clothing.” A charter plane is shipping them all down to Florida at 6 A.M.

  Someone chips in that he did the Virginia recount in 1998, and it took three weeks.

  Everybody groans. Three weeks! That’s forever!

  Lieberman’s campaign plane—nicknamed “El Al Gore” or “Air Force Jew” by Nashville staffers—is snagged. By 5:30 A.M., sixty to seventy staffers have been shuttled to the airport and loaded up onto the plane, which Gore campaign lawyer Jack Young has dubbed “Recount One.”

  Jill Alper briefs the young campaign staffers on what’s going on, tells them to take off their campaign paraphernalia. As they all drink coffee and OJ, Young and Joe Sandler, general counsel of the DNC since 1993, brief them on the recount process.

  Weeks before the election, Whouley asked Sandler and Young to prepare an immense notebook containing the recount procedures of twenty states. Some states were dropped as they got closer to Election Day and poll numbers went outside the margin of error, but it’s a pretty comprehensive volume, and it looks like a stroke of genius now. They thought they’d need it for Missouri. Earlier in the night, when Iowa looked too close to call, they pulled the book out. They looked to the binder again for information about Oregon, Washington, New Mexico. And, finally, Florida.

  In August 1994, Young and two Democratic attorney colleagues—Chris Sautter and Tim Downs—self-published The Recount Primer, a forty-three-page booklet that deals with almost every issue the team will encounter—and the country will learn about—in the next thirty-six days. In the primer, they laid out the purpose of a recount for “partisan representatives”: “a) preserving a margin of victory, b) identifying election night mistakes which will turn a narrow loss into a win, or c) creating doubt as to the outcome sufficient to require a new election.” They will contrast these goals with those of election officials, who “are concerned with accuracy, not outcome.”

  In the front of the plane sits Ron Klain, the guy who’s going to run the legal effort. He’s snoozing.

  Klain was Gore’s chubby, assertive chief of staff at the White House before Gore’s second campaign manager, Machiavellian former House Democratic whip Tony Coehlo, froze him out of Gore’s inner circle in May 1999. Coehlo had decided to run the operation out of Nashville and didn’t want Klain throwing in his two cents from the Old Executive Office Building in D.C., nor did Coehlo want Klain leaving the OEOB to play a role in the campaign, frankly. Klain thought he was unnecessarily cruel. By August 1999, Klain had announced that he was leaving. To spend time with his family, of course.

  Despite years of loyal service to Gore, that was it, no postcards, no letters; he could barely even get through to Gore anymore. Gore looked away, as if Klain had never existed.

  It was a very painful year. He’d tried to keep a sense of humor about it. His new office at the D.C. office of O’Melveny & Myers featured cue cards from a monologue from the Tonight show with Jay Leno, autographed by the host himself:

  AND ANOTHER BIG SHAKE-UP IN THE AL GORE CAMPAIGN…. IT S
EEMS HIS LONG TIME CHIEF OF STAFF HAS QUIT….

  THEY SAID TODAY ON THE NEWS THIS IS THE BIGGEST SETBACK FOR THE GORE CAMPAIGN… WELL… SINCE AL GORE.

  It had seemed like a big fall for wunderkind Klain. The Hoosier had come to D.C. in ’79 to go to Georgetown, and he immediately began interning for Indiana Democratic senator Birch Bayh. After Harvard Law, Klain clerked for U.S. Supreme Court justice Byron White, served as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, domestic policy adviser to Clinton in ’92, associate counsel to the president, chief of staff to Attorney General Janet Reno, and, as of November 1995, top aide to Gore.

  Superconnected. On March 19, 1993, Justice White called him at the White House and asked him to hand-deliver his resignation letter to Clinton. Clinton asked him to lead the team to pick a replacement. One of Klain’s first calls was to the Senate Judiciary chairman, Delaware Democratic senator Joe Biden. He knew them all.

  He was moving, always moving, working his ass off, downing Cokes and M&M’s while his wife raised their three kids. In 1994, Time magazine had named him one of America’s fifty “most promising leaders” under age forty. Now what?

  To Gore, people are expendable. Klain was just one of several dissed in the Coehlo era—Jack Quinn and dying media man Bob Squier were two notable others. And as Gore tore through campaign managers like the rest of us go through a box of Kleenex, Coehlo was soon shoved aside as well. It helped that he had been sick, a better excuse than that “spend time with my family” bullshit, and in June 2000, when Commerce Secretary Daley was brought in to get the campaign functioning better, Klain was no longer persona non grata. He was, again, persona grata—though slightly demoted. That summer and fall, Klain ran the campaign’s war-room effort, getting out instant response to Bush attacks against Gore’s policies and character.

  Now, however, Klain has an opportunity to be in charge again, to run things for Gore, to get him elected president.