Down & Dirty

by Jake Tapper

  Cuban-American advocates countered that black state house and state senate seats were way out of line with their population—29.9 percent of the county’s state senate seats, 20 percent of the state house seats, and only 15.6 percent of the voting-age population.

  Arguing that the statewide population of Hispanics—12 percent—exceeded the statewide percentage of statewide legislative seats—7 percent—De Grandy sued the legislature in federal court to get a fourth Hispanic state senate seat and two more Hispanic state house seats.

  Some thought that Cuban-American claims of disenfranchisement were disingenuous. “The Cubans have ridden on the backs of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans to claim privileges which, as the only middle-class émigrés of any size that we have had in this country, they don’t need,” one Democratic state senator said. And after a three-judge panel ruled in favor of De Grandy on the state legislature suit, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994 took De Grandy v. Bolley Johnson, Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, et al. and ruled against him, arguing that the representation in Dade County was fair enough. Steve Zack represented the state senate in the case.

  “You have counted one hundred thirty-some precincts, which are not representative,” De Grandy says to the canvassing board. “And I’m not concerned with whether they are representative of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, they are not representative of my community, which is a protected class under the Voting Rights Act.”

  You can’t count the votes gleaned from the hand count of the 130 non-Hispanic precincts and not do so for the other precincts, he says, or “you will be violating the rights of the Hispanic community in Dade County.”

  But De Grandy misunderstands the plan, old-school Miami boy Murray Greenberg says. “Apparently due to lack of sleep I am not making myself understood,”he says. They’re not going to count whatever votes have been picked up so far in the hand recounts, they’re going to start from scratch.

  De Grandy now does the ol’ switcheroo. You’re not going to count those votes from those non-Hispanic precincts? Horrors! How dare you! It’s a catch-22, De Grandy knows—but it’s one of their own doing. They want to count every vote, but now they’re going to take back all the ones they took from the table count and discount them again? “At that point you have created irreparable error, because now you have discerned in one hundred thirty-some [precincts] that there were some votes that you could discern the intent of the voters,” De Grandy says. You can’t ignore them. Plus, De Grandy says, King himself said a few days ago that the board can’t count only the undervotes. He can’t just change his mind!

  Jack Young steps in, deferring to whatever Leahy and King want to do. He’d rather have all the ballots counted; but better this than nothing.

  Lawyer Birchfield says that dimples counted as votes in undervotes are not seen as such when appearing next to a punched chad—which one might then assess as an overvote, were one to be consistent—so he feels the full countywide vote is necessary.

  Just like one of the many hurricanes that so frequently pound the Florida coast, they are starting to move in circles. Greenberg steps in to try to get King to hurry it all up. “I admonish you all for the last time, you heard from both parties, you heard from the supervisor, vote!”

  The canvassing board votes, 3 to 0, to count the undervotes.

  At 8:50 A.M., they proceed up to the nineteenth floor to start counting.

  To get to the tabulation room on the nineteenth floor, you exit the elevator, enter a secured door to the elections offices, walk maybe sixty feet, and enter a small room that has a large glass window.

  In this secured space between the elevators and the tabulation room stands Mayco Villafana, spokesman for Miami-Dade County, who is confused.

  Why is the media so angry? he wonders.

  In the past, reporters seemed more than content standing behind the glass window. And Villafana was providing, after all, audio of what was going on inside, as well as a roving video camera, the signal from which any channel could take, live, as its own if it so wished. But reporters approach Villafana and tell him that it’s unacceptable that they don’t have complete access to the tabulation room itself. Nicholas Kulish of the Wall Street Journal hand-writes a petition demanding “media representation in the counting room”… “in the interests of democracy.” Outside the window is not good enough, Kulish writes. “To observe without hearing is not to be present essentially, so any decision to bar the media would constitute a barring of the public, who we represent…. We hope this can be settled without legal action.” Lawyers everywhere. *

  As the week has gone on, Monday, Tuesday, the protests outside the Miami-Dade county building—the Stephen P. Clark Government Center—are increasingly hostile.

  After Monday’s counting had concluded, Gore had gained 46 votes—though, of course, that was because the first hundred or so precincts were Democratic precincts. That didn’t stop Republican officials from revving up their minions with accusations that the 46 votes were proof of fraud.

  “This thing is rigged!” Republican congressman David Hobson of Ohio said. “It is a joke on our democracy.” “Unfortunately Miami-Dade has become ground zero for producing a manufactured vote,’’ adds Congressman Sweeney.

  There’s an RV outside the county government building, into and out of which protester organizers hustle, handing out leaflets, armed with free T-shirts—emblazened with vitriolic anti-Gore mottoes—to give to the crowds.

  On Tuesday, Villafana and the building’s chief of security, Ed Hollander, asked the protesters to move their RV; it was in a space for media, and reporters were complaining. But Villafana and Hollander found the Republicans combative and confrontational. An operative came up in Villafana’s face, bumped him, asked him menacingly,“Is there any problem here?!”

  Weird, Hollander thought. I’m here with cops and everything, and here is this guy trying to pick a fight.

  They negotiated that the RV would move by the end of the day.

  The protesters claim to be just outraged Americans. But Villafana and Hollander discover that the RV has been rented by Sean T. Miles, vice president of operations for the Bush-Cheney advance team.

  And while the outside world might not know it, most of the demonstration is organized by Brad Blakeman, who tells reporters that he’s just “a Long Island lawyer.” He is from Long Island, and he is a lawyer, but he’s also the Bush-Cheney campaign’s director of advance travel logistics. Inside the RV is Republican strategist Roger Stone, last seen publicly flacking for Donald Trump’s flirtation with presidential politics. And Bush communications honcho Ed Gillespie is seen on the ground Monday and Tuesday directing the crowds, steering the orchestrated ugliness. One of Bush’s media advisers, swingin’ Stuart Stevens, is buzzing around somewhere, as well.

  Blakeman tells reporters that they are all just outraged Republicans who have come from all over the country. The truth is that while some are rank-and-file Florida Republicans, a significant number of the protesters—and not just its leaders—are Bush campaign staffers or Republican staffers from the House and Senate.

  A week earlier, the following e-mail had been distributed, one of many:

  Dear Friends,

  I am enclosing below a request by the Bush campaign for supporters to go to Florida to assist them in monitoring the efforts there to invent votes for the inventor of the Internet. The message states that the Bush campaign will pay your expenses.

  While the Florida Supreme Court ought to put an end to this chicanery, if they do not, more Republicans will be needed to keep a watchful eye on the highly selective and subjective hunt for phantom Al Gore votes that is set to begin in Miami-Dade County, where there are over a million ballots. I hope you can travel to Florida to assist the Bush campaign in this effort to preserve the integrity of this election.

  Sincerely,

  National Council for a Republican Congress

  There were others.

  Subj: Bush campaign w
ill pay your expenses to go to Florida for recount

  Date: 11/18/2000 1:40:36 PM Central Standard Time

  From: Legliaison

  BCC: HOUSTONRVW

  FROM: Dallas County Republican Party

  FROM: the Bush campaign

  Can anyone help in Florida the next few days? We can’t overstate the importance of this effort—so if you can go, please contact georgewbush.com. Right now, we have people down in Florida working on the recount. They have been there for eleven days under difficult circumstances, and we now need to send reinforcements. Please forward this message. The campaign will pay airfare and hotel expenses for people willing to go. Because of cost, we are doubling people up in rooms so the only caveat is that if someone wants their own room, they will need to pay for that themselves. Also, if they need to be somewhere for Thanksgiving, we will make sure that they can honor those commitments.

  Thanks for all of your help. As you can imagine, this matter is URGENT so the sooner we can get the names of interested people the better. Although we need any interested person, we have a particular need for attorneys. Please contact georgewbush.com if you have any questions.

  If you pay for it, they will come. And here they are.

  Like Marjorie Strayer, who tells reporters she’s just a Virginian on vacation in Miami. It turns out she’s an aide to Rep. Heather Wilson, Republican of New Mexico.

  They’re obnoxious, they’re hateful, they inject venom and volatility into an already edgy situation. Thank you, Governor Bush, the uniter not the divider.

  When Congressman Deutsch tries to talk to a CNN interviewer, the crowd’s boos prevent him from doing so. “This is the new Republican Party, sir!” Blakeman bellows on a bullhorn. “We’re not going to take it anymore!” Deutsch can be so obnoxious and toxic it’s almost just. But leave it to the Bushies to make you feel sorry for a guy like Deutsch. Almost.

  On Wednesday, the protests take on a more legitimate feel when they are joined by maybe a hundred local Cuban-Americans, some of whom heard interviews on the local Spanish radio station, Radio Mambi, with Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who slammed the canvassing board. The reporter who calls in the interviews for Radio Mambi, Evilio Cepero, plays another role at the protests, wandering around with a megaphone yelling,“Denounce the recount!” and “Stop the injustice!”

  The crowd swells as recorded phone messages in Spanish, sent out by who knows who, are made, alerting local Cubanos that they’re needed at the government center.

  On his way back from a TV interview, Sweeney gets a phone call from two GOP observers at the Miami-Dade count—Martin Torrey, one of his aides, and Brendan Quinn, executive director of the New York GOP. They tell Sweeney that the canvassing board is moving behind closed doors! That they’re just going to do a partial count!

  “Shut it down!” Sweeney orders.

  Quinn tells two dozen or so of the Republican operatives to storm the nineteenth floor. Emotional and angry, they immediately make their way outside the larger room in which the tabulating room is contained.

  The mass of “angry voters” on the nineteenth floor swells to maybe eighty people. It includes:

  Matt Schlapp, a Bush staffer in from Austin;

  Thomas Pyle, a policy analyst for House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas;

  Michael Murphy, a DeLay fund-raiser;

  Roger Morse, an aide to Rep. Van Hilleary, Republican of Tennessee;

  Duane Gibson, an aide to Chairman Don Young, Republican of Alaska;

  Doug Heye, a spokesman for Rep. Richard Pombo, Republican of California;

  Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee;

  Rory Cooper, political staffer at the NRCC;

  Garry Malphrus, majority chief counsel and staff director for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on criminal justice;

  Chuck Royal, legislative assistant for Rep. Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina;

  Kevin Smith, a former GOP House staffer;

  Steven Brophy, a former aide to Sen. Fred Thompson, Republican of Tennessee; and

  Layna McConkey, a former legislative assistant to ex-Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot, Republican of Iowa, now an employee for a GOP fund-raiser.

  “Let us in!” they yell. “Let us in! Let us in!”

  They bang on the doors.

  They bang on the walls.

  They chant.

  “LET US IN! LET US IN! LET US IN!”

  It feeds on itself.

  Individually, these are not intimidating guys, not tough fellas you’d be afraid of in a bar. They’re wimps and fatties, largely; poorly dressed Washington, D.C., geeks. Gibson, in particular, a tall bespectacled dork, is freakishly agitated, frenzied, odd. In a bar, Gibson would get the shit kicked out of him by an anorexic junior high school girl. But here he—like his socially wanting peers—clearly feels emboldened. Physically weak, here they feel mighty. And however wanting their upper-body strength may be in real life, right now they’re running on adrenaline and anger.

  “LET US IN! LET US IN! LET US IN!”

  Inside the tabulating room, Leahy and the others can hear the protests, loud and clear.

  GOP observer Neal Conolly says that the Bushies feel “that the accommodations on the eighteenth floor, where there was more room for people to observe, were more conducive and in compliance with the open-meeting law. And I would request that the board consider that.

  “I don’t know who the people are that are outside shouting and making noise,” Conolly says. “But I think that they probably result from the fact that there’s some concern of the people on the outside that what we’re doing in here is limiting access to the openness of the proceeding, and I think that that perception is important.”

  “It is really a logistical problem at this point,” Leahy explains.

  Democratic observer Steve Kaufman asks how it will be possible to get other observers in and out of the room with the crowd so frenzied.

  “I can’t help it,” Leahy says. “Hopefully the mood out front will settle down.”

  Congressman Diaz-Balart holds a press conference with De Grandy. They turn up the burner from simmer to boil.

  “What happened was that the way they were going about it, where they were counting all votes with significant numbers of observers in a large room, opened to you, the press, and open to observers at each table, that wasn’t going the way that the Gore campaign had hoped,” Diaz-Balart says. “And so, now, they’ve decided to leave that room, to leave the sunshine of a place where you, the press, and observers can be at every table, and to go back into a room, separated from the press, where they will count only the votes where the voters of this county decided that they would not vote for president. That, I think, is an outrage, and I think that all Americans should know what is going on at this very moment in Miami-Dade County.

  “If it were not so tragic, if we would not be witnessing, in effect, the stealing of a presidential election, it would be laughable,” the congressman adds.

  De Grandy takes the mike to pour fuel on the fire.

  “We have an even greater concern, as Hispanics in this community, in terms of our voting rights being violated at this point by illegal procedures that are being implemented by this canvassing board,” the lawyer says. “There were votes that were counted in the sample recount that occurred last week. Those votes were not in precincts that were Hispanic communities.”

  He’s right that it’s a mess; the canvassing board is starting the count from scratch and ignoring its last few days’ worth of work. Unlike Martinez, De Grandy is only too happy to prod Miami’s racial sores.

  Villafana heads out to where the two dozen or so Republicans are aggressively chanting and banging on walls. He’s trying to help get the media set up—a bunch of reporters are in the crowd, too—but the protesters make his job impossible. Every time Villafana opens the door to help the media set up inside, the thug-wannabes rush the doors in a very intimidati
ng manner, he thinks. Observers can’t get in, either. When the sheriff’s deputies open the doors, the GOP protesters grab the door, don’t allow them to close it again, and block the observers from coming in.

  Villafana steps in to try to close the door.

  “Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me!” one of the observers cries, all the while furiously kicking Villafana, out of camera view, since the lenses are focused on their faces, not the floor. Other observers push Villafana, shove him—below the waist.“Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me!” the protester keeps shouting. But the only person getting banged up in this case is Villafana.

  Having been through Elián protests that got way ugly, Villafana and chief of security Hollander feel that this one has potential to turn into a more violent confrontation at any time. “We’re going to have to keep the doors closed, and call for backup,” one of the sheriff’s deputies says.

  Villafana and Hollander instruct the police officers to guard the doors and to allow the protesters to take control of the lobby area. The cops have other duties—guarding the ballots, maintaining the sanctity of the elections process. They don’t have the time or the inclination to deal with these Republican rabble-rousers.

  So the doors stay closed. And because of this decision, members of the media, and many observers, don’t get to enter the area. And the system shuts down. And the hand recount can’t continue

  The members of the canvassing board discuss returning to the eighteenth floor to stop the insanity. The protest is loud but not nearly as ugly as it is up close, separated as they are by walls and distance and space. But they’re completely aware of what’s going on, completely aware that the process can’t continue with things as they are—they just can’t get the process flowing with the protesters being so hostile and aggressive.