Down & Dirty

by Jake Tapper

  “I conclude that the public interest is best served by denying preliminary injunctive relief in this instance….Nowhere can the public dissemination of truth be more vital than in the election procedures for determining the next presidency.”

  “DENIED.”

  Middlebrooks has given Olson nothing.

  Over the weekend, circuit court judge Terry Lewis was playing tennis with a pal—an active Republican, a former candidate himself—who just happened to ask Lewis if he thought any of the various election court cases were going to end up in his courtroom.

  “I doubt it,” Lewis said. It looked like things were going to stay in the South of Florida, butterfly ballot in Palm Beach, federal case in Middlebrooks’s Miami court.

  Lewis isn’t thinking about any of that Monday as he listens to testimony in a case where a woman is suing her daughter for allegedly bilking her savings account. Suddenly Doug Smith—a Leon County public information officer—is in the back of the courtroom motioning for him.

  Lewis beckons him to the bench.

  Smith hands him a copy of a brief filed Sunday: Canvassing Board of Volusia County v. Katherine Harris and the Elections Canvassing Commission.

  But even this the unflappable Lewis doesn’t think much of. It’s just an action for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief—basically a request that Lewis make Harris accept their vote tally even if it comes after the 5:00 P.M. deadline. Shoot, he’ll be back on the tennis court in no time.

  Shortly after noon, Judge McDermott, the Republican chair of the Volusia County canvassing board, calls a press conference.

  “I think it’s reasonable,” he says, “to assume that we should have a definitive and official certification of all the ballots by midday tomorrow, Tuesday, OK?”

  Nevertheless, McDermott announces that as an insurance policy the Volusia County canvassing board is suing Clay Roberts and Katherine Harris for the purposes of “seeking a court order for an extension for the deadline, just in case. That has been filed.” The hearing will be today at 1:00 P.M. “The reason we have filed the suit is, one never knows what problems may come up,” he explains. “We’ve had some surprises—most of them unpleasant—in connection with what we’ve done so far, and you’re aware of those surprises. The additional three hundred twenty ballots, that was at least a ten on the Richter scale, as far as I was concerned. So, you know, Lord knows what other surprises or problems are waiting there for us.”

  A journalist asks, “Judge, does the recovery of the three hundred twenty lost votes justify in your mind a hand count?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” says the Republican. “Yes, absolutely. I was disappointed that this came to light, but, you know—and just as a matter of principle, it was the right thing to do, just for those of us here at Volusia County, but especially in view of the fact that we’re dealing with the race for president of the United States and everything that entails.

  “The people of the United States and—it’s interesting, the polls that have been taken of ordinary citizens, the vast majority—I think it’s about seventy-five percent or perhaps even more of ordinary citizens are saying, ‘Look, we’re as frustrated as everybody else is about not knowing the results, but it’s important that all these canvassing boards and other authorities throughout the various states, chiefly Florida, of course, do it right.’”

  The Gore people have decided to join with Volusia County. Hattaway’s on the phone with a reporter who’s asking him about it, something about a hearing at 1 P.M. He turns to Jeremy Bash, ace cub lawyer. “What’s this about a hearing at one o’clock today? Something about Volusia County?”

  “I think that’s tomorrow,” Bash says. “Tuesday.”

  “Well, I’ve got a reporter on the phone here who says it’s today.”

  Bash goes out to the hallway, where he runs into Mitchell Berger, his Tallahassee law partner John Newton, and—straight from central casting, missing only his mint julep—aged, white-haired Democratic éminence grise and barrister Dexter Douglass.

  “Is the hearing today?” Bash asks.

  “No, it’s tomorrow,” Berger says.

  “I think it’s today,” Bash disagrees. “Check it out.”

  Newton calls the court clerk. The hearing is today, in half an hour. Their brief isn’t ready. Berger, Newton, and Douglass rush over. The plan is to ask the judge for a continuance.

  But once they get there, Lewis says no. Debbie Kearney is there for Harris; Barry Richard is there for Bush, who has enjoined on the other side. So Douglass simply plunges in with his argument, using his folksy North Florida charm. The legal arguments aren’t crisp, aren’t quite fully formed. How could they be? Douglass just joined the team a matter of minutes ago.

  There are two conflicting statutes here, about whether Harris is obligated to reject late vote tallies or not.

  101.111 (1) reads: “If the county returns are not received by the Department of State by 5 P.M. on the seventh day following an election, all missing counties shall be ignored and the results shown by the returns on file shall be certified.”

  However, states Florida statute 102.112 (1), “If the returns are not received by the department by the time specified, such returns may be ignored and the results on file at that time may be certified by the department.” (Emphases added.)

  Now we all know what President Clinton, Parser-in-Chief, was referring to when he said the fate of the free world came down to what the definition of the word “is” is. But Harris and her attorneys have asserted that late returns may be allowable only in case of natural disasters. About this, Douglass goes full folk.

  “Let me tell you, this is not only a hurricane, this is a bark-splitting North Florida cyclone with a hurricane tailing on the end of it. It’s one that rips across the entire country. It winds its way all over the country and all over the world.”

  Richard, of course, disagrees. “There has been no compelling reason to order the secretary of state to do something by law she is not obligated to do,” Richard says.

  “How do you reconcile this statute that seems to provide a manual count if you can’t get done within the time period?” Lewis asks.

  “It is not our place to question the wisdom of the legislature,” Richard responds.

  Lewis listens to the arguments. The question for him is not so much whether the preliminary certification must take place at 5:00 P.M. tonight. It must; the statute seems clear on that. So Volusia County is screwed, temporarily, at least—they still have the contest phase to work within, if they so choose.

  What is up for debate is whether Harris is required by law to ignore any returns that come in after the deadline. In other words, is Harris required by law to screw the canvassing boards that want to recount their ballots? Or is it something she can do but doesn’t have to?

  Harris’s attorney, Kearney, concedes that the more recent statute—the “may” statute—is the applicable one. Fine, Lewis thinks. So she does have discretion. Then why is she refusing to even listen to their reasons? Why is she telling the canvassing boards that it doesn’t matter what reason they cite, she’s not taking any late ballots? That doesn’t seem like the exercise of discretion to Lewis. Hmm.

  State house senior aide Rubottom is angry.

  Kearney did nothing to defend the legislature’s law. He doesn’t see any contradictions in the may/shall issue, it’s up to Harris to accept the returns if she wants.

  He calls Kearney; he calls Ginsberg; he calls Jimenez. He tells them all that the legislature is there and eager to insert itself in this conflict if necessary.

  Al Gore finally appears. The nation has only seen him walking here and there, to and fro, playing a rather lame touch-football game with his family on Friday.

  “There’s an awful lot at stake here, and what is at stake is more important than who wins the presidency,” Gore says, trying his darnedest to seem sincere, but as always falling short. “What is at stake is the integrity of our democracy, making sure that the wi
ll of the American people is expressed and accurately received.

  “That is why I have believed from the start that while time is important, it is even more important that every vote is counted and counted accurately…. And so that’s what I’m focused on, not the contest, but our democracy, to make sure that the process works the way our founders intended it to work.

  “Look,” he says, the human TelePrompTer trying to seem ad-libby. “I would not want to win the presidency by a few votes cast in error or misinterpreted or not counted, and I don’t think Governor Bush wants that either.”

  Oh, yeah?

  “Now, if there’s any saving grace at all to the extra time that this is taking, it is this: Schoolchildren all over the United States are learning a lot about how a president is chosen in this country. [STAGE DIRECTION: CHUCKLE]

  “They’re learning a lot about our democracy. And families are able to make the point without fear of ever again being disputed that it matters whether or not you vote, and every vote counts. So register and vote and participate in our democracy.”

  Ugh.

  Al Gore wants to know just who this Katherine Harris character is.

  “What do we know about her?” he asks his communications director, Mark Fabiani.

  Fabiani says that she’s very partisan, a state co-chair of the Bush campaign.

  “Why aren’t we getting that out?” Gore asks.

  No decision had been made because she obviously wields a lot of power, Fabiani says, and the legal guys are worried about picking a fight with her.

  But later that afternoon, the Gore generals talk about it and decide that since it’s crystal clear that she’s not a friend, they might as well start trying to discredit Harris and her decisions. Soon Gore spokesman Chris Lehane is talking to reporters, calling her “Commissar Harris,” a “lackey” and a “hack.”

  Of course, there’s much more to the answer to Gore’s question than just Lehane’s pointed barbs. She’s rich, for one, worth about $6.5 million. The granddaughter of the citrus magnate and state representative Ben Hill Griffin, Jr., Harris—born in Key West, raised in Bartow, east of Tampa—comes from a long line of Democrats. As such, she once interned for then-senator Lawton Chiles during her four years at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia.

  She’s been all over the map, job-wise. She’s served as a marketing executive for IBM in Tampa, New York, and Dallas. In Sarasota, she worked in commercial real estate. Freshly divorced in the 1990s, Harris quit her job in real estate and served as a Vanna White–like character in a Sarasota nightclub act, “Mr. Chatterbox’s Sentimental Journey.” In addition to giving members of the audience gift certificates to Wendy’s and for dry cleaning, Harris’s primary job was to show the crowd how to perform a chicken dance.

  This is the person who might decide who becomes the next leader of the free world.

  Bearing in mind Harris’s role in the presidential conundrum, Chiles would turn over in his grave if he knew that he played perhaps the major role in pushing her toward her current power. In 1991, Chiles appointed his former intern—who studied art in Spain—to the board of trustees of Sarasota’s Ringling Museum of Art, known for its collection of works by Peter Paul Rubens. Harris’s fellow board members eyed her warily. In 1992, however, she proved her worth by taking control of the museum’s annual fund-raiser and using her marketing skills, and social contacts, to make the fund-raiser, which normally just broke even, profitable.

  Not long afterward, she and her fellow board members hopped a flight to Tallahassee to lobby for restoration of museum funds that had been cut. The trip was a success, but Harris was quite dismayed with her meeting with freshman Democratic state senator Jim Boczar, who didn’t seem to care about the museum. Boczar told her that as far as he was concerned, a Rubens was a sandwich.

  Harris ran against him in 1994, breaking all fund-raising records for a state senate seat, raising more than half a million dollars. In November, she beat Boczar handily, 60 percent to incumbent Boczar’s limp 40 percent. With her victory, a senate split down the middle 20 to 20 finally landed in GOP hands, 21 to 19. And Republican control of once-Democratic Florida began to take root. Harris was the harbinger.

  For a newcomer, Harris took to the sleazy ways of Tallahassee politics pretty damn quick. A chunk of her 1994 campaign coffers cash—$20,600—had come from Riscorp Insurance Company. Riscorp gave $400,000 to ninety-six different candidates that year, but Harris was the largest beneficiary of the company’s largesse. In 1996, from her seat on the state senate’s Banking and Insurance Committee, Harris offered a bill that made it more difficult for Riscorp’s out-of-state competition to offer discounts for workers’ compensation policies. (She also was a co-sponsor of a bill that would have required parental consent before a minor could have an abortion, a bill that Governor Chiles happily vetoed.)

  Around that time, Harris not only became a big fixture in the Sarasota social scene, and a regular in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s gossip column (“ANNUAL CLAMBAKE IS A CASUAL EVENT”), she found love. Set up on a blind date, Harris was wooed by Swedish businessman Anders Ebbeson, who runs a company that makes accessories for yachts, and who took her to the opening night of the 1995 opera, where they saw Verdi’s La Forza del Destino—The Force of Destiny. In September 1996, while cruising the Greek Isles with a dozen or so other loaded Sarasotans, they announced their engagement.

  Snagging an interview with Harris at the Governor’s Ball at Ringling Museum, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported the news of her engagement breathlessly.

  “Will she change her last name? ‘No,’ said the legislator. ‘I planned to, but Anders said that I had built my public life with the name Harris, and I should keep it.’ Children? ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘Right now I love what I’m doing, what I’m able to accomplish, and there’s a lot more to do.’ The wedding in Paris? ‘It’s what Anders wants; the city is very special to him.’

  “You might say that the last couple of months have been hectic for the petite legislator. Last Saturday, though, was a time for Katherine to dance with her new husband and bask in the beauty of her beloved museum.”

  They were married on New Year’s Eve 1997 in Paris, but she was back in Tallahassee before the week was over to assume the chairmanship of the state senate Commerce Committee.

  In 1998, incumbent secretary of state Sandra Mortham was set to be Jeb Bush’s running mate in his second go at the governor’s mansion, against recount veteran and current Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay. Harris declared her intention to run for the office.

  But Mortham fell out of favor with Jeb after she was criticized for using state funds on outings that had little to do with anything but her own self-promotion. So Mortham said she would instead run for reelection for secretary of state.

  But Harris said she was staying in the race.

  That same year, five Riscorp executives pleaded guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges surrounding their 1994 campaign donations, which were illegal. The company’s founder—who illegally reimbursed his employees for donations to candidates—was sent up the river for five years. Mortham had received $5,825 in illegal contributions from the company. Company executives wrote checks to political candidates and received special bonuses from their boss paying them back—a clear violation of election law.

  Harris’s share of illegal contributions, however, was even larger, the most of any legislator, $20,292. Her campaign manager, David Lapides, was described by federal prosecutors as a “co-conspirator” or “co-schemer” in the Riscorp strategy to hide contributors’ true identities; a 1994 memo from Riscorp representatives to Lapides offered instructions on how to change the addresses on Riscorp checks so they couldn’t all be traced back to the company. “Katherine’s office called and asked if we could give them different addresses to list for each of the checks. All the checks show the P.O. Box 1598 address and if we submit these, the newspaper will probably make the connection and track them all to Riscorp,” read an internal
Riscorp memo. * Harris was never linked to the malfeasance, and she returned the illegally donated funds. But she wouldn’t let reporters inspect her files, unlike other politicians who took Riscorp money.

  Incredibly, under the guidance of senior adviser “Mac” Stipanovich, Harris ran TV ads against Mortham for taking “illegal contributions from insurance executives.” Harris beat Mortham in the September GOP primary.

  Then Harris, who said she was running for secretary of state to depoliticize the office, called her children’s advocate Democratic opponent “a liberal lobbyist” and beat her, 56 percent to 44 percent. That same day, Floridians voted for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the secretary of state’s office in 2002.

  Where Mortham had heralded an election-reform package, Harris turned her attention elsewhere. She traveled extensively, spending more than $100,000 in state money on trips to Barbados, Brazil, New York City, and elsewhere to promote trade with the Sunshine State—her travel almost three times more than Jeb’s. At the Sydney Olympics, Harris spent $350,000 in taxpayer funds on a Florida Pavilion.

  The amount of money she spent on reforming the state’s election problems was slightly less than that.

  Perhaps the most telling step in Harris’s journey to power came in March, however, when she shocked her former colleagues on the board of trustees of the Ringling Museum of Art. They were talking about a plan by the GOP senate president, John McKay, to give the museum to FSU—a move that the trustees opposed.

  In a conversation that she apparently didn’t know was being recorded, Harris said that McKay’s plan would “destroy the museum. I mean, it’s bad. I don’t see any upside.” But, she told the trustees, she wasn’t going to do anything about it. “John is immensely powerful,” she told them. “And I said, if John wants to do it, it is a done deal. I have said that I can’t take a personal proactive role.” Other cultural establishments “are doing terribly under FSU,” she acknowledged. But “I am not fighting McKay on it….John McKay is powerful….It’s really sad to watch all of our whole work go down the drain.”