Down & Dirty

by Jake Tapper

  At around 8:30 A.M., Klain, Sandler, Young, DNC spokeswoman Jenny Backus, and a few others get off the plane in Tallahassee; it will also stop in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. As Backus is interviewed by a local TV station—in a town like Tallahassee, it’s kind of hard to miss a plane with “Gore-Lieberman” painted on its side—another plane lands. It belongs to Gov. Jeb Bush. He talks to the camera after Backus concludes.

  At dawn, a plane leaves Austin packed with lawyers and political operatives, flying due east. There’s Ben Ginsberg, of course, as well as other Bush-Cheney campaign lawyers, like Joel Kaplan and Ted Cruz.

  Ginsberg’s the expert; he’s been through tons of recounts before. In fact, Ginsberg’s life has been changed by recounts. It’s something he’ll tell junior lawyers repeatedly over the next thirty-six days: “Recounts change lives. I can’t tell you how this one will change your life, but it will.”

  Ginsberg’s career trajectory had always been shaped by serendipity. He was raised by liberal Jewish Democrats on Philadelphia’s Main Line, but his politics were shaped as a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, where Ginsberg saw what he felt was the great fallacy of Great Society–style paternal liberalism in the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, or CETA, which tried to help gang members by giving them jobs. It didn’t accomplish anything, Ginsberg thought. It just threw money at the problem.

  As editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian, he became a reporter—at the Philadelphia Bulletin, the Boston Globe, the Berkshire Eagle in Western Massachusetts, the Riverside (California) Press-Enterprise. Whenever he could, he’d ask to cover CETA, because he knew there would be good stories there.

  In Riverside in the late ’70s, in what was then the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country, Ginsberg covered the housing-and-development boom and was shocked to discover how much he didn’t know. So he applied to Georgetown Law and started in ’79. In the meantime, flaky Jerry Brown was elected governor of California in ’78, which convinced Ginsberg for the first time to register as a Republican.

  In 1982, thirty-one-year-old Ben Ginsberg was just a “grunt associate” at the D.C. law firm Baker & Hostetler when the Republicans on the House Administration Committee hired the firm to find precedents on recounts. No one had bothered to look into it at all, and the committee wanted to have the information ready, if needed. Ginsberg did the work.

  Just two years later came “the bloody eighth.” In November 1984, in Indiana’s 8th congressional district, one-term Democratic congressman Frank McCloskey was unseated by Republican Rick McIntyre by 34 votes out of 233,500 cast. McCloskey lost the recount as well. But the U.S. House was in Democratic hands, 252 to 182, and led by Speaker Tip O’Neill, D-Mass., the House conducted its own recount—which had Democrat McCloskey winning by four votes, 116,645 to 116,641. Though just a kid of thirty-three, Ginsberg had been flown to Indiana for the recount, and the whole experience radicalized him. It was a stolen election, he thought, it was not an honest process.

  Ginsberg was hired as counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee in June of ’85, and as such was flown into Minnesota in ’86 to supervise another recount. There he met up with aides to Republican Minnesota senator Rudy Boschwitz, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who brought him in as counsel to that shop in ’87. Through that office, Ginsberg observed another Florida recount, that between Republican businessman Connie Mack and Democratic representative Buddy MacKay—the race Theresa LePore had in mind when designing the butterfly ballot.

  After talking with Bush campaign chair Don Evans, plans are made to phone up George Terwilliger at White & Case, as well as other high-profile GOP barristers—most notably Ted Olson and Michael Carvin. From time served in Indiana and Minnesota, Ginsberg knows that the team needs red-meat local boys. So he calls Jeb’s counsel, Frank Jimenez.

  “We need Florida lawyers,” Ginsberg tells him. “We need a statewide firm. We need litigators.”

  Jimenez has one recommendation: Barry Richard, from the Tallahassee branch of Greenberg Traurig.

  Richard’s a Democrat—a former state rep from Miami Beach, whose dad was mayor there back in the 1950s—but he’s nonpartisan in his legal work. He represented Jeb Bush in his ’98 gubernatorial bid, as well as in a case this year brought by Democrats who objected to an absentee-ballot mailing—“From the Desk of Gov. Jeb Bush”—sent out to Republicans and using, improperly, the Dems alleged, a symbol that resembled the state seal. The mailing was eventually canceled, though the suit was thrown out of court before Election Day by circuit court judge Terry Lewis. But Richard has represented Democrats, having served as campaign counsel just the past year for Insurance Commissioner Barry Nelson, a Democrat, in his successful Senate race.

  I’m interested, Richard says when Jimenez calls, but I’m flying off to Miami to visit my eighty-eight-year-old dad, who’s ill. I’ll be back in Tallahassee Thursday, Richard says. I’ll meet up with you guys then.

  In a downtown Miami office building, Murray Greenberg—a twenty-eight-year veteran of the Miami-Dade County attorney’s office—calls Supervisor of Elections David Leahy. He can’t contain himself.

  “This is the best election we’ve ever had!” Greenberg, a short, sweet, longtime Miamian, gushes to Leahy, a twenty-year county vet himself. The county had close to 90 percent voter turnout, there were no close races in the county mandating a recount, no problems getting returns in, no allegations of lost ballot boxes. Since Bush’s statewide margin of victory had been so slim, they had to conduct a mandatory machine recount like every other county, of course. But that day’s machine recount results in less than a 100-vote difference from their original score, well within the norm.

  “It just went off without a hitch!” Greenberg gleefully concludes.

  In Fort Lauderdale, about half a dozen Democrats exit “Recount One,” including Gore deputy field director Donnie Fowler and Jeremy Bash, who worked on military and foreign affairs issues for Klain in the Nashville war room.

  Field operatives meet them and hand them keys to their own cruising vessels, courtesy of Alamo Rent-a-Car. Bash and Fowler shoot north on I-95 to meet with the Palm Beach Democratic chairman, Monte Friedkin.

  Friedkin seems obnoxious and rude, a brash New Yorker who’s under the impression that he’s quite impressive. Bash and Fowler ask about the butterfly ballot, and Friedkin immediately starts tearing into Theresa LePore. “She’s a fool!” he says. LePore’s perfectly nice, Friedkin allows, “but an idiot!”

  Bash, Friedkin, and Fowler head to Delray Beach, where the machine recount has commenced for some of the county’s ballots. Democrat and Republican observers are shooting the shit good-naturedly. The floor is covered in the punched-out bits of cardboard from the ballot, called chad. * Bash and Fowler, under instructions from Gore lawyers Young and Sandler, are there just to observe. Not to argue, not to talk, just to check out what’s being done, gathering information.

  They soon hit the Delray Beach Democratic Party headquarters, at a strip mall, where half a dozen or so lawyers are taking affidavits from maybe thirty Palm Beach voters who are complaining about problems with the butterfly ballot. There are three or four notary publics certifying the statements. Inside, the phones are ringing incessantly, voters wanting to tell their tales of woe. The Democratic operatives take a hard line: I’m sorry, miss, there’s nothing I can do for you unless you come down to headquarters and fill out an affidavit.

  Lina Petty, an operative in charge of the affidavit database, keeps her ears perked for attractive stories to tell. Republicans and young people are in demand. At that point the Democrats don’t want a parade of old Yiddish Bubbies running around on TV complaining. Democrats want to show that this wasn’t just old lefty Democrats who had a problem with the butterfly ballot.

  Elsewhere, phone calls are going out. Democrats are recording—and in some cases hepping up—complaints. “I understand you were called yesterday by the Florida Democratic Party,” reads one
phone-bank script. “I am following up on that call on behalf of the Gore-Lieberman campaign. Would you be willing to answer a few questions?” There’s a line for name, address, phone number, county, age, race, voting precinct, polling place, time arrived at polling place, weather conditions. Then: “Did you intend to vote for Gore/Lieberman but think you voted for someone else?

  “If so, describe why you think you voted for someone other than Gore/Lieberman.

  “Did you (check all that apply):

  ___ punch the wrong hole

  ___ punch more than one hole

  ___ other (describe)

  “Was the ballot difficult to understand or confusing? Did you think to bring the confusion to the attention of a poll worker? If so, who and with what results? Was the ballot difficult to punch or mark?”

  And on and on.

  Back in Austin, Bush, Cheney, and crew are discussing whom else they should send to Florida. Ginsberg will be great for legal, but they need someone to run the whole shop, someone to be their version of Christopher—whom the morning shows are saying is on his way to Florida on Gore’s behalf. Cheney suggests a man with whom he’d been sitting watching the election returns come in the night before, former secretary of state James Addison Baker III. He’s a natural—skilled at PR, the law, and politics.

  Get Baker, they agree.

  Baker, seventy, has just landed in Houston, is making his way from Hobby Airport to his Rice University office, where the bidnessman is scheduled to meet with a Mexican official. He’s tired, having been up late with Cheney. His cell phone rings. He expects that it’s someone bringing news that the Florida mess has been sorted out; he has a European hunting trip scheduled with Bush Sr.

  It’s Evans.

  We need you, he says. We need you to get down to Florida to supervise the recount.

  Baker agrees. He’s used to it. He’s gotten calls like this before.

  In fact, he’s constantly brought in to save the day—most recently after the Republican convention in 1992, when he was dragged kicking and screaming from the State Department to run Bush Sr.’s faltering presidential campaign. The Princeton grad—from a long line of wealthy Houston lawyers, one of whom started monster law firm Baker Botts—first befriended Bush Sr. in the early ’50s, when he and his new wife, Mary, would play George and Barbara in mixed-doubles tennis at the Houston Country Club. After Mary died of breast cancer in February 1970—leaving Baker with four boys to raise on his own—Bush asked him to help run the Houston arm of his Senate campaign.

  Bush Sr. lost, but Baker got the political bug pretty quick. True, his one try for office—a 1978 race for attorney general—ended up with him getting stomped like a rattlesnake in a cattle herd, but that was partly due to the fact that he didn’t really like “the people.” Didn’t have much need for them. No, he knew better uses of his time than shaking hands with strangers at the mall; like his buddy Cheney, Baker soon became pretty damn good at selling himself as a ruthless CEO-type to the powers that be, though not one entirely without his own agenda.

  In 1976, as an undersecretary of commerce, Baker was tapped by then-president Gerald Ford to help stave off a convention challenge from Ronald Reagan. At the convention that summer, his code name was “Miracle Man.”

  Baker was less successful leading the charge against Reagan four years later, when he managed Bush Sr.’s ill-fated 1980 presidential run, but somehow even this worked out well for Baker, and after Reagan earned the GOP nomination, he named Baker senior adviser to his campaign. Like Bush, Baker seemed to leave no fingerprints; though he was in charge of prepping Reagan for his debates against then-president Jimmy Carter, Baker was never even remotely blamed for “Briefingate,” in which Carter’s briefing papers ended up in the Reagan campaign’s possession.

  He’s always been shrewd, always manipulated his prey—whether press or politicians—with a deft arrogance. Reagan brought him in as chief of staff, and Baker was quickly dubbed “the velvet hammer.” By his cousin. Still, he worked his ass off for Reagan, negotiating with Capitol Hill law-makers on much of Reagan’s legislative agenda—shoring up business support for his tax-cut package, for instance, crafting the right message on Social Security reform. He elbowed out others grappling for power—Secretary of State Al Haig and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. He and Bush always had a close, if oddly competitive, relationship—Baker would privately yuk about Bush’s selection of then-senator Dan Quayle as his veep in ’88. But they would be forever partners in politics, and Baker was appointed secretary of state when Bush became president in ’88.

  He was reluctant to leave the Department of State in ’92, however, and only came on board to run the reelection campaign reluctantly, and late, and some thought he didn’t give it his all. Barbara and W. blamed Baker for Bush Sr.’s election loss in 1992. Some speculated that Baker was sick of being the handler, the fixer, thought he could do a better job than Bush Sr. anyway. And with that, Baker took off, falling into a life of big bucks and oil-rights negotiating in former Soviet republics.

  But being the grown-up was his fate. And here it was again, only now it was the son whose hide he was being called upon to pull from the fire.

  Sigh.

  Don Rubottom, the administrative overseer of the five committees in the GOP-controlled Florida state house, wonders if the legislature might have a role to play in any future developments.

  I mean, who knows what will happen? Bush is ahead by less than 2,000 votes—and it’s certainly possible that a few thousand illegally cast votes might show up. What if Florida’s electoral votes are invalidated? He starts researching the matter, and learns that four times—in 1788, 1864, 1868, and 1872—states failed to award electors to any candidate. Were that to happen here, Rubottom realizes, then Gore would become president! After all, with Florida’s 25 out of the picture, Gore has more electoral votes than Bush!

  Wednesday morning, Rubottom approaches his boss, house speaker Tom Feeney, Jeb’s running mate from his unsuccessful 1994 gubernatorial run. Rubottom points to Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors,” it says. The Legislature chooses the method of picking electors.

  Feeney is intrigued. It might be the legislature’s responsibility to step in. Rubottom asks Feeney if he has permission to sell the idea to Jeb’s people.

  “Go for it,” Feeney says.

  Feeney signs off on it. So Rubottom looks for four-term congressman Charles Canady, forty-five, Jeb’s new counsel. A conservative who didn’t run for reelection because of his belief in term limits, Canady is set to become Frank Jimenez’s boss in a few days. Rubottom finds him in the conference room in Jeb’s office.

  Canady “was appreciative and will consider it as a possible route later,” Rubottom e-mails to Feeney later that afternoon. Rubottom also calls Ginsberg, but Ginsberg seems a bit cagey about getting involved with the legislature. At least right now.

  “I’m feeling some pressure,” says Theresa LePore to a small pack of reporters. Outside the Governmental Center in West Palm Beach are reporters, and protesters, and voters—many of whom are upset, crying, angry. It’s Wednesday, 10:30 A.M.

  LePore is asked if 3,407 votes for Buchanan in liberal Palm Beach—with its high numbers of Jews and blacks—seems reasonable.

  “There are types of people who would tend to be Buchanan supporters,” she says.“That there are small amounts of votes for Buchanan in Democratic areas indicates a lot of those people did vote properly,” she says.

  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 g
arnered 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.