Down & Dirty

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Down & Dirty Page 8

by Jake Tapper


  Another photo op is arranged in the dining room. With place settings, grilled cheese sandwiches, fruit, and cold squash soup before them, Bush sits at the end of the table, Laura to his left, Lynne Cheney to his right, Dick Cheney across the table.

  “I’m upbeat,” Bush says when asked how he feels.

  “My soup is getting cold,” Bush says after a few questions, trying to get the reporters away.

  The soup, of course, is supposed to be cold. It’s cold squash soup.

  Warren Christopher walks into the Gore-Lieberman suite at the Loews Hotel. Lieberman looks at him with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Look what you’ve gotten me into now,” Lieberman says.

  They go around the room, talking about what to do next. “I think we should be aggressive in asserting our position,” Christopher says. “But we’ve got to temper what we do with the realization that the nation is focused on us and is expecting us to act responsibly.”

  There are a few communications issues going on. Daley doesn’t want Chris Lehane, Gore’s sharp-tongued campaign spokesman, to be representing the cause. He doesn’t like his style—doesn’t really like him—preferring communications director Mark Fabiani. Gore, too, wants Fabiani. But even before the election, anticipating a whole different post-election legal dispute, Fabiani wrote Gore a memo arguing that any post-campaign battle should not have campaign faces. In that memo—written in case Gore won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote—Fabiani argued that neither he nor Lehane would be appropriate for such a situation.

  A first draft of Fabiani’s memo read:

  POST-ELECTION STRATEGY

  Operational Issues

  Successful management of the post-election period will require immediate and substantial enhancements to the current Gore team. It is important that we all recognize that the Gore team, as currently constituted, will not be well equipped to successfully manage this post-election period. This is true because the post-election period will require a different mix of skills than currently exists on the Gore team and because current members of the Gore campaign team will either be completely unavailable or physically and mentally exhausted after November 7th.

  Scenarios

  Post-election planning should focus on the following scenarios:

  A clear popular vote and Electoral College victory for Gore.

  A clear popular vote and Electoral College loss for Gore.

  A clear Electoral College victory and popular vote loss for Gore.

  A disputed Electoral College victory and popular vote loss for Gore.

  The Basic Proposition

  If Gore wins, he will not benefit from any traditional honeymoon period.

  If Gore wins only a narrow popular vote plurality and an Electoral College majority, Gore will immediately come under heavy scrutiny by both the media and the political opposition. How Gore deals with this scrutiny could determine the course of his presidency.

  If Gore wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote, the period after the election will determine whether his presidency is seen as legitimate.

  If Gore’s Electoral College victory is disputed, the post-election period will determine whether Gore’s young presidency even survives until Inauguration Day.

  There are other factors, too. Fabiani doesn’t think the recount effort can afford to have him traveling and out of pocket for so long. Plus, frankly, he’s longing for his family and La Jolla, where he thought he’d be heading by now. The last place he wants to go right now is Tallahassee. But he has an idea. Fabiani’s deputy, Douglas Hattaway, is very low-key and calm. Given that this is going to be a battle against the public’s patience, Hattaway—a Tallahassee boy—might be a good idea.

  Soon, Fabiani calls Hattaway into his office.

  “Want to go to Florida?” Fabiani asks, almost like an afterthought.

  There’s a pause.

  “Sure,” Hattaway says.

  “OK,” Fabiani says, relieved. “You’re going to go down with Christopher and Daley. It’s leaving at four.”

  That’s in an hour.

  The small team actually leaves Tennessee closer to 5 P.M. central, shuttled on a Lear Jet and armed with a few documents. There’s one about the disproportionate number of votes Buchanan got in Palm Beach County, a three- to four-page memo on butterfly ballots, a one-pager on Florida recount law, and something about the Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris—who was apparently one of Bush’s campaign co-chairs and now holds a tremendous amount of power.

  Daley and Christopher sit in the back, talking quietly, reviewing documents. Up front sit Hattaway, Daley aide Graham Streett, and Hattaway’s assistant, Terrell McSweeney.

  “Daley isn’t into all these ‘irregularity’ things,” Streett says, referring to the arguments many in the Gore camp want to make about the reports—all merely anecdotal, at this point—they’ve heard about, say, blacks being stopped at polls, harassed, and intimidated by cops. “He thinks we should be cautious talking about the irregularities.”

  Streett’s right. Daley’s been around politics since birth, so he knows a few hard and fast facts about this kind of thing, and it’s made him pessimistic about it all. First off, Daley thinks, it’s very, very rare that an election is turned over unless it’s because of some bizarre accident or mistake, some number that was recorded incorrectly, some ballots that an angry elections judge took home. That kind of thing is usually sorted out within twenty-four hours. But barring some legitimate explanation like that, the longer it goes—whether it’s a race for state rep or mosquito abatement district, it is very tough to turn an election over. The system is set up that way. Then there’s the matter of all these rumors. Not that Daley is flip about it, but every election has allegations of roadblocks and people being arrested and yada yada yada. This stuff won’t play in Peoria.

  That isn’t surprising, of course, Hattaway thinks. Daley frequently weighs the PR implications of every decision. Some of the Gore folks back in Nashville seemed a bit breathless in their allegations about various conspiracies, particularly ones that the Gore team doesn’t plan on addressing.

  Christopher wants to know about the butterfly ballot.

  “What do we know about this?” he asks. “It’s very interesting.”

  Christopher notices figures transposed on the butterfly ballot chart and points it out to Hattaway, who is immediately impressed with the sharpness and studiousness of the old bird.

  The plane starts to bounce around in turbulence, and soon thunder and lightning surround the plane. Streett, Hattaway, and McSweeney roll their eyes at one another, concerned but almost slightly amused at the chaos into which they’ve been thrust.

  At the Loews Hotel Wednesday night, Whouley’s eating dinner with John Giesser, his deputy at the DNC, when Al Gore’s son-in-law, Drew Schiff, walks in and asks him to come upstairs, to be with the old man, the man who calls Whouley his “brain.”

  Whouley gets up and follows Schiff to the elevator.

  Whouley’s old school, the kind of guy who speaks about his underlings with both an earthiness and a passion for their skill. He would describe an employee of his political-consulting firm, Dewey Square, as “a disheveled, schlumpy, fucking guy, but a great election law lawyer.” Whouley’s not a big man, but he talks tough, and he means it.

  The Dorchester boy started in politics while still at Boston College, running a ward in a race against the incumbent mayor Kevin White. Whouley did a good job: his guy lost by only 50 votes in his ward, enough to recommend Whouley to a young lieutenant governor candidate named John Kerry in 1982.

  He did Kerry’s Senate race in 1984, slowly working his way up in Massachusetts politics: a mayor’s race (W), a congressional seat (L), a state auditor’s race (W). The latter put him in charge of a great patronage job, director of human resource management. In 1987, he was twenty-nine, earning $54,000 a year, with his own parking space on Beacon Hill and a bunch of his old pals from the neighborhood under him.<
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  A year later, the governor, Mike Dukakis, was the Democratic nominee for president, and Whouley slated Illinois for him, worked for him in Iowa in the last month before the caucus. He met a couple guys named Clinton and Gore when he ran Louisiana for the Duke a bit later, and the two Southern Democrats came in to work on the Massachusetts governor’s hapless campaign.

  Clinton didn’t remember him when Whouley introduced the Arkansas governor at the Florida straw poll in October 1991, but Whouley made Clinton the front-runner with the skills he’d picked up along the way.

  After Clinton’s poll numbers went down the shitter in the wake of the Arkansan’s draft-avoidance-letter revelation and the bottle-blond cabaret-singer scandal, Whouley came up with the idea to drop off a seven-minute videotape of Clinton talking to voters at the homes of 20,000 likely voters. Clinton came in second—at that point exceeding expectations—and Whouley moved to Little Rock to serve as Clinton’s national field director.

  In 1996, he managed Gore’s slice of the reelection campaign. This time, Gore asked Whouley to serve as campaign manager soon after, but neither Whouley nor his wife was in any mood for another move, this one to Nashville, so he declined. Three times. Gore really wanted him there. Whouley remained in D.C., serving as one of Gore’s senior strategists. He played a leading role in picking the states Gore needed to win, working with strategist Tad Devine on how much money would be channeled to Democratic efforts in each one, planning the Democrats’ “Get Out the Vote” activities.

  In the end, Whouley’s end of the campaign was the one thing that worked well. So it was no wonder that Gore called on him today.

  “How do you think it’s going down there?” Gore asks.

  “I think they’re doing a great job,” he replies, praising Baldick and Alper in particular.

  “When are you heading down?” Gore asks, smiling.

  “I think I should be in Nashville tomorrah, and I’ll be down theah on Friday,” Whouley says, recognizing a nudge for what it was.

  “Excellent,” Gore says.

  To get to the Gore campaign’s last best place of hope, you head down Apalachee Parkway (U.S. 27 South), turn left on Crosscreek Road near the Sonny’s Barbecue, and there’s a mall there, a nondescript strip mall that houses a couple veterinarians and a CPA.

  Gore attorneys Klain, Sandler, and Young are here.

  The place is a dump. Dingy, with wires all over. Klain says he’s going to pick up Daley and Christopher.

  They meet Mark Herron. Herron’s a local lawyer, an elections and campaign law expert who was working to get former governor Lawton Chiles off the hook for some free hunting trips he’d taken, when Chiles died. An FSU, FSU Law guy, Herron starts briefing them on Florida law and what they can do now.

  Just last session, the legislature rewrote a lot of the statutes about challenging an election. The real meat of the coconut happened in the revisions to the protest/contest/recount statutes. A candidate can request a hand recount of the ballots, but if Gore wants to do it, a decision has to be made within twenty-four hours, Herron says. The statute gives seventy-two hours, but Friday is a holiday, and you can’t count on government offices being open.

  We need big swings, Young thinks. We’re 1,700 votes down. We should go after those four counties where we know there were problems yesterday—Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Volusia. We probably won statewide; by hitting those counties we can maybe pick up the difference.

  When Klain returns, around 8:30, Sandler’s embarrassed. Here’s the dapper Christopher, former diplomat, in his famous tailored, elegant suit, and here’s Sandler, sitting in this dump, wearing stained khakis, not having showered in forty hours. “This is not how you want to meet Warren Christopher with the presidency at stake,” Sandler thinks.

  As the counties’ machine recounts continue, Bush’s lead has shrunk from 1,784 to less than 400 votes by sunset, according to press accounts.

  On Larry King Live that night, LePore sees Democrat Wexler and Republican Foley square off against one another. Ironically, even though a former Foley staffer ran against her in 1996, Foley’s the one defending her today.

  “If there was confusion,… the Democrats should have objected before this sample ballot was printed and published and distributed,” Foley says.

  “Good point,” King says. “Congressman Wexler, you signed off on it.” “Well, that’s not exactly so, Larry,” Wexler says. “Many people did complain to the supervisor of elections when they saw the sample ballot.”

  That’s not true! LePore thinks. In October, LePore mailed out 655,000 sample ballots. Even before the sample ballots had gone out, she’d sent them to all 150-some candidates, faxed and mailed them to Friedkin and Friedkin’s counterpart at the Republican Executive Committee of Palm Beach County. The Palm Beach Post and the Sun-Sentinel printed copies in their papers. And not one complaint. Not one! Not a peep! What the hell was Wexler talking about?!

  “… the Palm Beach County supervisor herself, Larry, yesterday, sent out an urgent message to poll workers late in the afternoon, which I’ve never seen done, which said, ‘Advise the people how to vote, because there’s mass confusion,’” Wexler goes on.

  “Ah, OK,” says King.

  “Ah, OK”?! LePore thinks. Wexler was the one to request that “urgent message”! And now he’s citing it as evidence that there was something wrong with the ballot?! Acting like he had nothing to do with it, this whole “which I’ve never seen done” thing?! What a liar!

  Maybe I was naive to call him a friend, she thinks.

  Whouley’s deputy on the Gore campaign, Donnie Fowler, has been amassing information all day. He’s jazzed as he steers his rental car to a Palm Beach Denny’s shortly after midnight as Wednesday becomes Thursday. Over a Grand Slam breakfast at 12:20 A.M., Fowler writes a memo to Young, Sandler, Whouley, senior political adviser Monica Dixon, and Klain, which he faxes to them in his chicken scratch.

  Summary—

  19,000 ballots rejected by county because voters “double-voted” due to confusing and illegal ballot (voters punched Buchanan & Gore)

  rejected ballots equal 4% of total votes cast for president, but only 0.8% of ballots rejected in U.S. Senate race

  possible Voting Rights Act violation: although an average of 4% of ballots were rejected for double-voting (or “overvoting”) county-wide, up to 15– 16% of ballots rejected in African-American precincts; Cong. Robert Wexler highlights in press conference with 12 TV cameras

  Gore picks up net 650 votes in Palm Beach recount; certification expected Thursday by 5:00 P.M.

  Judge Charles Burton in recount press conference admits that punch card system is faulty because little dots punched out can interfere with actual counting by machine

  Judge Burton also admits precinct 29-E originally registered 0 votes because of human error; actual count was 368 Gore to 23 Bush

  Reports of voters in line at poll closing (7:00 P.M.) turned away by election judges

  Local activist & attorney both criticize antiquated ballot-counting machinery

  Evidence that Republican county commissioner coerced Democratic election commissioner into holding recount test less than 24 hours after polls closed

  500 absentee ballots left at post office—un-picked up and undelivered on election day

  3,000 complaints on file at county headquarters

  unable to get through to county election commission on election day via phone

  In the wee hours, Fowler calls his ex-girlfriend on his cell phone, leaves a message on her voice mail: “We got something here,” he says confidently. “This is where it’s going to happen, Palm Beach. This is where I think we’re gonna win the White House.”

  4

  “Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold.”

  One thing becomes crystal clear very early on in the whole damn mess: Florida election law—especially as it pertains to recounts—is chaos.

  Statutes collide. Provisions are vague. Unlike i
n other states, those supervising the process are often the harshest of partisans. And, most insanely, the standard by which ballots are assessed is vague, requiring that one assess the “intent of the voter,” a gauge that can be interpreted differently in different counties. Especially if the counties use punch-card ballots.

  When the Votomatic punch-card ballot machine was invented in 1962, elections officials were delighted. This was The Future! This was based on the computers of IBM! But little by little, glitches in the system were revealed, especially since the machines were created for speed, not accuracy. Over the years, wealthier counties began purchasing higher-technology voting machines. And over the years, at times of close elections, the weaknesses of the Votomatic were apparent. In a 1977 Miami Beach city council race, Robert “Big Daddy” Napp lost by 244 votes. But there were 710 overvotes unread by the machine, Napp said, though no court would listen to him. After losing a 1991 Oakland Park city council race by 3 votes, Al Hogan, too, lost in court when he tried to get a hand recount of the faulty punch-card ballots. In times of close elections, punch-card ballots provided little assurance that the Election Night tally was correct.

  The Recount Primer had suggestions for what to do in times like this:

  Punch Cards

  Some argue that punch card computerized voting is inherently unreliable (see Duggers, “The Analysis of Democracy,” The New Yorker, November 7, 1988). The Duggers thesis may be a bit overstated; however, it is true that recount totals in punch card jurisdictions will inherently vary from election night totals: at least one relevant chad (the little bits of card that are punched out when the voter punches the stylus through the card to record the vote) will randomly be removed as a result of the handling of the cards. Punch cards also raise the issue of what determines a valid vote: a machine or the judgment of an election official. Some of the most common problems experienced in punch card voting include:

 

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