Down & Dirty

by Jake Tapper

  After the tape of the board meeting was leaked to the press, the editorial board of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune slammed her. “Because she lacked the nerve to do so, she failed in her duty to all Floridians and to her office….In choosing political expedience over principle, Harris may have damaged her reputation beyond repair.”

  Just six years! Most politicians take at least a decade to completely sell out the very cause that compelled them to run for office in the first place. But Harris is on a fast track. She wanted to run for senate this year, in fact, but Jeb had already decided that Rep. Bill McCollum would get the nomination, and he cleared the field accordingly and told Harris no.

  Around this time, I get a phone call from a high-ranking Gore adviser I’ll call “Strep Throat.” *

  Strep Throat seldom called me during the campaign, frequently not even returning my phone calls, so I am immediately suspicious. The Gore media strategy was cataclysmically poor, I thought. It’s part of the same idiocy that Clinton referred to on Election Night behind closed doors—Gore was surrounded by hired guns who weren’t in it because they believed in him (whoever he was that day) but rather because they were Democrats who wanted to make some money and accrue some power. This was in stark contrast to both Bush and, of course, Clinton, both of whom were surrounded by True Believers.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  Strep Throat wonders if I’ve heard the rumor that “everyone” is talking about—that Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush had, or are having, an affair.

  No, I say. What’s the proof?

  None yet, Strep Throat says. But people are working on it. He hears that Mike Isikoff from Newsweek is on it. (I later ask Isikoff about this, and he says it isn’t true.) Better look into it, Strep Throat says.

  I ask a staffer at a Democratic state senator’s office about any rumors she’s heard about Jeb. She gives a couple, but when asked, says she’s never heard anything about Jeb and Harris.

  Chris Vlasto, the ABC News producer who with Jackie Judd broke the story of Monica Lewinsky’s DNA-coated Gap dress, has been given the same “tip.” He asks staffers at three local hotels, inquires around town, checks out phone and e-mail records, and comes up snake eyes.

  There’s no evidence, Vlasto thinks. Not at all. No hint, even.

  At a Tallahassee bar, Café Cabernet, I ask some local scribes about it, and though they’ve heard the rumor in recent days, they never heard it before this election mess.

  It’s vile and despicable stuff, completely untrue, and it comes from a senior adviser to Vice President Al Gore.

  Theresa LePore spent Sunday organizing her office, getting ready for a hand recount, while Roberts spent her day scoffing at GOP attempts to have her removed from the canvassing board because she gave the Gore campaign money and has that bumper sticker on her Lexus SUV. But now it’s back to work, and they start with a short meeting.

  Local GOP attorney J. Reeve Bright is here. Some of the Republican lawyers here for Bush think Bright’s something of a pain in the ass, a gadfly. But Bright knows one thing from talking to Wallace, Johnson, and Murphy yesterday: if the canvassing board requests an opinion from Clay Roberts on whether they can go forward with the hand recount, whatever Roberts says in response will be binding.

  This is something that Burton still doesn’t know. He continues to think it’ll just be an opinion, something the board can consider and weigh and, ultimately, disregard if they feel it is inaccurate. Burton doesn’t even know that the division of elections office is part of the secretary of state’s office.

  Bright casually says to the board that they should get this opinion before they plunge in. Carol Roberts has been advised that this would be OK as long as they seek similar guidance from Democratic attorney general Bob Butterworth.

  “The request to be made in writing?” Bright asks.

  “Yes, yes,” Burton says. “Absolutely.”

  They fax requests for guidance on how to do the hand recount, one to Butterworth and one to Roberts.

  Four hours later, Clay Roberts writes back: they can’t do the hand recount at all. Such counts are only in the event that there has been “incorrect election parameters or software errors.”

  Harris writes them that: “No county canvassing board has ever disenfranchised all the voters of its county by failing to do their legal duty to certify returns by the date specified in the law.”

  Palm Beach County attorney Denise Dytrych is back from Middlebrooks’s trial and wherever she was over the weekend. She tells the board that Clay Roberts’s letter is binding.

  “It is?!” Burton thinks. “I never would have asked for it if I knew it was going to be binding!” They can’t count. They are now legally required to not count.

  In the days to come Burton will wonder about Kerey Carpenter, who kept suggesting that he seek an advisory opinion from the division of elections but never said anything about it being binding.“Was she putting stuff in my head?” Burton will wonder. “Was she playing me?”

  Carpenter, who has moved on to other legal matters, will not again set foot before the canvassing board.

  As Monday’s protest march reaches Narcissus Avenue, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his team turn left.

  A few blocks away, a stage has been assembled outside the West Palm Beach governmental building, at Third and Olive Streets. But a welcoming crowd does not await Jackson. Approximately two dozen Bush supporters—half of them black and all of them hostile—have reserved choice spots at Jackson’s “Democracy & Fairness, Every Vote Counts, Every One Counts” rally. While Jackson & Co. are marching from the Meyer Amphitheater, near the inlet that separates Palm Beach from West Palm Beach, the pro-Bush contingent stands front and center, shouting “Jesse go home!” at the top of their lungs.

  Soon they can say it right to Jackson, as he mounts the stage, around 5 P.M. And they do. And they won’t stop. One of their number, holding the “I Support Sec. Harris and Florida Law” sign, is Don Black, former Alabama Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and a Bush voter. Black has found common cause with a half dozen African-American conservatives, the members of “Freedom Fighters International.”

  Whaddaya know? George W. Bush is a uniter, not a divider, after all!

  Interestingly, the members of Freedom Fighters International—the most vociferous “Jesse Go Home” bellowers—aren’t even from Palm Beach. Rumor has it they have been bused in from Miami, though they won’t say who paid for their tickets. (Finally, a busing program that conservative Republicans can support!) They all hate Gore; spokesman Michael Symonett proceeds to tell me that Gore’s a murderer, since he comes from a long line of Southern Democrats.

  It doesn’t matter what the protest organizers do or say—whether they attempt to stop the heckling with mockery or prayer or an off-key verse of “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” The Bush-backers keep yelling. They hold their signs high, blocking Jackson from the platform set up for the TV cameras.

  Soon enough, Jackson leaves at the advice of police, who cite security reasons. He skedaddles back to the amphitheater, and the rally is moved there.

  The Jackson demonstration is clearly a disappointment for its organizers. West Palm Beach police were told to prepare for a crowd as big as thirty thousand, but the turnout was closer to three thousand. And it is not exactly a cross section of the local electorate. For the most part, the participants seem to be among the most fervent Gore supporters. Based on their signs and banners, they come from liberal interest groups that detest Bush and all that he stands for—People for the American Way, local Gore-Lieberman activists, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The most popular sign—“Let every vote count”—is the work of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates Inc.

  Jackson is staying in my hotel, so it was not tough to catch him earlier Monday afternoon. He was standing in the lobby, resplendent in a flowing black silk shirt, his well-fed belly p
oking out from its midst. Surrounded by cameras, his entourage, and fans seeking his autograph, Jackson is in his starry-eyed element.

  “So why are you here?” I ask him. Angry Bush-backers have been slamming him for days; some Democrats have even expressed concern—albeit off the record—that his presence isn’t exactly helping things.

  “Disenfranchised voters have faces,” Jackson answers in his famously modulated tones. “They’re Jewish Holocaust survivors, they’re African-Americans, they’re Haitian-Americans, they’re farm workers, they are students. They were turned away. They have a right to vote. And their vote must count. Because they matter. There are voices that are trying to close the door on them again. They closed the poll on them last Tuesday; they’re trying to close the polls again. Democracy puts a higher virtue on fairness and accuracy than it does speed. Let’s have a fair count.”

  “So should there be a revote?” I ask, knowing how unlikely this is.

  “It could be a first vote,” Jackson replies. “That’s fair. Either undercounted, discounted, disenfranchised, voters need a fair vote.”

  What of the reports that some of the Gore chieftains weren’t happy being represented by such a polarizing, controversial figure as himself?

  “The right to vote is not about Gore or Bush, it’s about people who are disenfranchised. I marched. Our right to vote is sacred. The issue today is not the campaign. It’s essential to vote. Now, I think Gore does appreciate what we’re doing. Because he knows the disenfranchised people have a right to be heard.”

  In the supervisor’s warehouse in Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, the canvassing board—Judge Robert Lee, county commissioner Suzanne Gunzburger, and elections supervisor Jane Carroll—begin counting the sample 1 percent of the ballots.

  GOP lawyer James Carroll, no relation to the elections supervisor, asks them to reconsider. But no one on the board formally brings up his suggestion. “The request dies from lack of a motion,” Lee says.

  James Carroll isn’t happy, and things get heated. Lee in turn gets fired up. This is not a public hearing, he says, this is a meeting, and you are here by our good graces, not because the sunshine law applies. “If you interrupt again, I’m going to ask the deputy to remove you,” the judge tells him.

  They begin with a ninety-minute debate over the standards to use. The board eventually decides—on a 2-to-1 vote—to use the “two-corner” rule, meaning the chad has to be detached from the ballot in at least two corners. The county workers count all 3,892 ballots from the three Democratic precincts; the canvassing board inspects any disputed ones.

  The end result is a net gain of just 4 Gore votes.

  Lee reads the statute that says that a full hand recount is warranted only when “the vote tabulation system fails to count properly marked” ballots. The county attorneys agree with Jane Carroll’s own attorney—they shouldn’t have to do a recount if there’s nothing wrong with the tabulation machines and no evidence of fraud.

  The Democrats vehemently disagree.

  You don’t get to even make an argument, Lee tells them. It’s a two-pronged test as to whether the matter’s even open to debate—prong no. 1 is “Is there a problem with the system?” and no. 2 is “How significant is the difference?” The 1 percent recount fails to meet either one. “Unless we conclude that there’s a problem with that thing in there,” he says, “we don’t go to Step Two to determine if there’s an effect on the outcome of the election.”

  The attorneys keep yapping away. Rep. Peter Deutsch and local attorney Charles Lichtman square off against county GOP chair Ed Pozzuoli, state senator Jim Scott, and Carol Licko, who resigned as Jeb Bush’s general counsel in May. Yap yap yap!

  After warning them three times to keep their traps shut, Lee turns to a sheriff’s deputy. “Deputy? All of them—out!”

  The attorneys look at Lee, stunned.

  I have warned you guys, he tells them. Now you’re going to be behind the window like everyone else, and you can stand over there and watch us.

  “The recount has not indicated an error in the votes tabulation, which could affect the outcome of the election,” Lee says aloud.

  They vote.

  “All in favor, aye,” he says.

  Gunzburger says, “Aye.”

  “And opposed?” Lee asks.

  Carroll says, “No.”

  As does Lee.

  “The election results stand,” Lee says. No hand recount in Broward.

  In Palm Beach Democratic HQ, discussions have been about taking Burton, LePore, and Roberts to court to force them to adopt a more liberal ballot standard.

  “This standard is going to kill us,” Dennis Newman says to Jack Corrigan and David Sullivan. They’re not counting votes that are clearly Gore votes, he says. “We can’t wait until the end of the process to challenge this, we need to get in there now and change it, get a legitimate standard going.”

  On Sunday evening, as Newman runs a massive training for hundreds of Democratic observers, Corrigan and Sullivan are working with Ben Kuehne on drafting the legal motions. They’re going to take these guys to court.

  In Broward, Lee and Carroll look outside at the craziness, the protesters and lawyers coagulating, the gnashing of teeth. Deutsch is holding a press conference, talking about how he was illegally forced from the meeting. A Sun-Sentinel reporter will later tell Lee that Democratic honcho Mitch Caesar and some others are outside talking up the notion of recruiting a well-financed opponent for Lee in his next judicial election.

  “How do we get out of here?” Lee asks Carroll. The back door goes out only to the roof, where there’s barbed wire. He and Carroll laugh about the image of them scaling the building to avoid the crowds.

  In a way, it’s just annoying, Lee thinks. He has no doubt in mind that if the current skirmish he’s been drawn into were reversed, those exact same parties would be making—with the exact same vigor and vehemence—the exact opposite arguments. Democrats would be saying that the Republicans were inventing votes; Republicans would be arguing that county canvassing boards have the discretion to do whatever they see fit. It’s all kind of tiresome, he thinks.

  Monday night, The Flag takes a bunch of the Tallahassee operation out for dinner at The Governor’s Club.

  It’s been a long day. Broward voted against having a hand recount, Clay Roberts issued his opinion against the legality of the very notion… it’s clear to all that the Republicans are very well coordinated.

  They sit in a nice upstairs dining room—leatherbound books, white-coated waiters, a long table. Daley and Christopher sit across from one another in the center of the table, and they’re flanked by Berger, Klain, Douglass, Sandler, Christopher attorney Mark Steinberg, Berger’s law partner John Newton, spokesman Hattaway, Daley aides Graham Streett and David Lane. Much of the discussion at dinner is about Bob Butterworth. About how he’s done nothing for them. Daley, in particular, expresses some frustration. Butterworth is the only Democratic state official, really—the governor, house, senate, division of elections director, secretary of state, even the goddamn (purportedly Democratic) secretary of agriculture is in the Bush camp. And yet he’s done nothing for their cause, he’s AWOL. Silly Butterworth; unlike Harris and Jeb, he actually is trying to behave impartially.

  Christopher mentions having met him, how he found him not all that impressive, rather underwhelming. As Daley goes on about Butterworth, he gets increasingly agitated. Just talking about it is pissing him off. He tells Streett to get Butterworth on the phone for him. Streett gets up, walks to the corner of the room, punches up his cell phone.

  When he’s got Butterworth on the line, Streett brings the phone to Daley. Daley snags it and leaves the room, whereupon he proceeds to rip Butterworth a new asshole. It’s day six and Harris has already shown the world how aggressive she’s going to be for Bush, and where have you been?! Daley asks. We have no friends in this state, he says. Everything we’ve gotten so far we’ve gotten on our own, while Bush has the w
hole thing wired. He tells Butterworth about the opinion that Roberts handed down earlier today on the illegality of hand recounts. Palm Beach asked for an opinion from you, and you didn’t even give them one, he says.

  The next morning, Butterworth—despite a 1993 opinion he issued that “any questions arising under the Florida Election Code should be addressed to the Division of Elections and the Department of State”—issues an opinion that differs from Harris’s.

  “No vote is to be declared invalid or void if there is a clear indication of the intent of the voter as determined by the county canvassing board,” he writes. He was compelled to offer his opinion since Clay Roberts’s take on it all “is so clearly at variance with the existing Florida statutes and case law.”

  It’s the first and last time the Gorebies find any use for the man they’ll come to think of as Butterworthless.

  8

  “I’m willing to go to jail.”

  Post-Elián, there aren’t a lot of Cuban-American Republicans who have framed letters from Janet Reno on their office walls. Roberto “Bobby” Martinez—the former U.S. attorney whom Kendall Coffey replaced—may be the only one. He tries to be a voice of caution, calm, the rule of law.

  Martinez is a friend of Jeb’s, has been since prep school at Phillips Andover. He served as his general counsel during Jeb’s transition to governor. Now he’s serving as one of the lead attorneys—along with former state representative Miguel De Grandy—in front of the Miami-Dade canvassing board.

  Armed with a book on election law—Martinez hasn’t been involved in a recount for more than a decade, when he argued against Coffey in a state legislative race—he went into the building and checked it all out. Everything seemed in order. Judge Lawrence King, Jr., the chairman of the canvassing board, even gave Martinez a tour of the counting room. To Martinez, King seemed very proud of his staff and the process, telling him how professional it was, how careful the workers were not to touch the individual ballots, as repeated handling could degrade the cards.