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just the facts

Dec 26th, 2000 01:48 PM

Bushies, don't bother to read. Way too many words: Installment 1 fm 12/21 NyTimes If Al Gore wants to appreciate the forces that defeated him in Florida over the last six weeks, he need not look much beyond the scene on Monday morning in the Senate chamber in Tallahassee: Gov. Jeb Bush and the state's entire Republican leadership presiding in triumph as Florida's 25 electoral votes were finally delivered to George W. Bush. The ceremony was more than a celebration of Mr. Bush's ascent to the White House. It was a display of the depth and complexity of the political forces Mr. Gore confronted here in Florida. And it demonstrated the extent to which Mr. Gore was up against far more than the presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Mr. Gore may have had some reason to feel that he was fighting the government of Florida itself. From the morning after the election, Jeb Bush took an intense and passionate interest in the battle to make his brother president, according to interviews with several state and Republican officials, notwithstanding his effort to strike a low public profile. He offered detailed guidance to his brother's lawyers on how to navigate the political thicket that was South Florida, providing information and insight about local officials who could determine his brother's political future. He enlisted his own campaign lawyer, Barry Richard of Tallahassee, to be the chief Florida lawyer on his brother's legal team, and he recruited dozens of volunteers to move into the disputed counties in the days after the election, Republican officials said. And within 24 hours after Election Day, six of the Florida governor's senior political operatives took unpaid leaves to join the effort against Mr. Gore, dealing with everything from answering routine press calls to briefing out-of-town lawyers on Florida election law. Mr. Bush's acting general counsel, Frank Jimenez, was the one who telephoned Mr. Richard to request his services. "I couldn't bear the thought of sitting behind my desk doing nothing while this situation played itself out around me," Mr. Jimenez said.

just the facts

Dec 26th, 2000 01:50 PM

The Democrats also mobilized intensively and relentlessly, but they had fewer levers of power. At every street corner demonstration and counting hall, it seemed that they were outnumbered, outshouted and outorganized by Republicans. The state's two leading Democrats, Senator Bob Graham and Attorney General Robert A. Butterworth, all but disappeared for long stretches of the contest. Jeb Bush, in his annual year-end interview with Florida Statehouse reporters this week, again portrayed himself as mostly detached from the effort that got his brother to the White House. He said he paid close attention to the fight only in the first week after Election Day, then "increasingly less, to the point where I was really completely out of it." But the extent to which both the state Republican Party and the government offices it controlled in Florida assisted in Mr. Bush's post-election success was suggested this week in interviews with party operatives across the state and in Washington, with lawyers and with aides to Jeb Bush and President-elect Bush. While the Republicans were widely known to have a coordinated strategy in Florida, the reach of the national party's connection all the way down to minor county party affiliates is now becoming even clearer. Local and state officials described in interviews a web of activity ‹ from seminars on ballot challenges and election law to the distribution of cheap cameras to collect evidence ‹ as new indicators of how sophisticated their efforts were. The state Republican Party, which is run by Al Cardenas, a lawyer who has been a close ally of Jeb Bush's for 22 years, turned overnight into a full-fledged operative arm of the Bush effort. It turned over all three floors of its red-brick headquarters to Mr. Bush's lawyers and strategists, led by James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, and Benjamin L. Ginsberg, the general counsel for the Bush campaign. Installment 2: Thirty state party employees who were to have been laid off after Election Day were put at the round-the-clock service of the Bush campaign, doing everything from legal research to fetching food and laundry for Mr. Bush's team.

just the facts

Dec 26th, 2000 01:52 PM

Installment 3: In at least 42 counties, Republican lawyers with ties to the state party were pressed into service, Mr. Cardenas said. In an orchestrated daily campaign, state legislators and local elected officials called radio stations, using airwaves to denounce any hint of a victory by the Gore forces and to broadcast the party "talking points" that were sent several times a day by e-mail. Republican workers in the state's 67 counties, many of whom viewed this as a personal test of Jeb Bush, moved into the counties that were at the fulcrum of the dispute, faxing and e-mailing daily updates about what was taking place on the ground to the presidential campaign headquarters in Austin. "As a local chairman, my ability to call on 40, 50, 60 volunteers in a short period of time, and to have them down there quick to help out, was quite an asset," said Paul Bedinghaus, the Florida Republican Party treasurer and the Pinellas County chairman. "The Democrats couldn't match that." In Tallahassee, Katherine Harris, the secretary of state who served both as the state's chief elections officer and the co-chairwoman of Mr. Bush's campaign, hired a battery of outside lawyers to defend her rulings on what, if any, recounts would be permitted ‹ lawyers paid with taxpayers' money. And finally, Mr. Bush had a fire wall: The State Legislature, a Republican bedrock, which Mr. Bush's advisers quickly determined could provide them the last line of protection should that prove necessary. Mr. Bush's lawyers, in researching the Constitution and federal election law, came across language that might allow the Legislature to, in effect, supersede the election and appoint its own slate of electors. And when the Florida Supreme Court issued one of a series of rulings that went against Mr. Bush on Nov. 21, Mr. Baker held a midnight news conference where he very deliberately noted this power afforded to state legislators. The Republican leaders got the message and made plans to call a session.

OliveOyl

Dec 26th, 2000 03:32 PM

Well, if the Bush brothers are this capable of mustering supporting troops in a moment's notice, organizing them into a well oiled machine which functioned smoothly to bring the desired goal to fruition despite the greatest odds, we all can sit back and rest assured that we are, indeed, in able hands. Now, a quote from one of your own, LBJ: "Don't spit in the soup. We all have to eat it!"

just the facts

Dec 26th, 2000 04:15 PM

Wait, wait...not done yet. Installment 4 The Bushes, without question, had their own partisan obstacles to confront in the state of Florida, including Democrats who controlled some of the important canvassing boards in South Florida and a State Supreme Court dominated by justices appointed by Democratic governors. Mr. Bush benefited from Mr. Gore's legal miscalculations, in particular, his failure to aggressively pursue a statewide, rather than selective recount, with uniform standards for counting ballots. Finally, and not incidentally, participants at every level of the effort to defend Mr. Bush from Mr. Gore's onslaught invariably described their work as a moral crusade that, if aggressive, crossed no lines and broke no laws as it sought to halt what many described as an illicit bid for power by Mr. Gore. "We were fighting for our lives, and we were fighting for a righteous cause," said Marjorie Kincaid, the Republican chairwoman in Hillsborough County. Democrats these days speak with a certain respectful awe about the persistence, ferocity and scope of the Republican Party's mobilization, citing, for example, how local party workers at one point staked out virtually every court clerk's office to act as an early warning system for surprise motions or orders. "The Bush strategy was fight everything everywhere all the time," said John D.C. Newton, a Tallahassee lawyer who worked on Mr. Gore's legal team here. "There were deadlines, and they were short, and as long as they kept fighting, the official record said they were ahead."

just the facts

Dec 26th, 2000 04:21 PM

Installment 5: A Single Goal Fighting to Maintain A Razor-Thin Lead Mr. Baker and his team of lawyers arrived within 48 hours after the polls had closed, plunging immediately into a tumultuous and anxious environment. The Texas governor's lead over Mr. Gore had dropped to 327 votes as the state's 67 counties conducted a mandatory post-election machine recount. And Mr. Gore had quickly moved to seize the political advantage, pressing for a more thorough count of the votes. "There was great concern that we were behind the eight ball on the P.R. kind of thing," said Mr. Bedinghaus, the state party treasurer. "We got a lot of calls locally, saying: 'You guys are rolling over. Why aren't you out there?' " Mr. Baker and his aides moved into the state party headquarters, which is named after the first president named Bush, and seized on the goal that would govern their actions in the courts and the political arena: To block a recount. The overriding concern, one senior Bush aide said, was that any tally putting Mr. Gore even fleetingly in the lead, especially since the vice president was carrying the popular vote nationwide, would be politically devastating for Mr. Bush. From the start, Mr. Bush's advisers kept an eye on the clock, appreciating the extent to which legal deadlines played to their benefit, and the advantage of exploiting opportunities to slow down the proceedings. And they swiftly decided to aggressively present to the nation and, not incidentally, to federal and state judges who were watching the counts on television, an image of Florida in chaos. They did that not only by alerting reporters to genuine episodes of discord, but also by organizing their own demonstrations, then complaining about the chaos that resulted. These images underscored Mr. Baker's warnings, in his televised appearances, that the nation was growing alarmed at the spectacle in Florida. Republican "observers" were dispatched in teams to disputed counties, told to aggressively monitor the counts and to steer the news media to episodes where there was evidence of disagreement. Party officials directed this effort with two daily conference calls, at 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. The Bush campaign arranged three-hour election law seminars in Tampa, to instruct Florida Republicans and others who came from out of state on the intricacies of the state's election law and open meetings law, including detailed instructions on how to challenge a ballot.

just the facts

Dec 26th, 2000 04:23 PM

Installment 6: State Republicans handed out disposable cameras to document episodes of questionable vote counting, and even "evidence bags" to gather disputed chads. At times, those props served to encourage a carnival atmosphere. Mr. Bush's ability to marshal these forces was in no small part a tribute to the strength the Republican Party in Florida enjoys with his brother in power. It also reflects the changing political demographics of this state where, like in much of the rest of the South, the Democratic Party is in decline. And Democrats here do not have the advantage of a strong labor movement that might otherwise have provided Mr. Gore with the troops needed to counter the Republicans. The loyalty to Mr. Bush in the state that elected his brother is, even Democrats say, much more intense than that shown toward Mr. Gore. "We'd call people all night to have them there the next day and nobody got mad that we woke them up or anything," said Ms. Kincaid, the Hillsborough County Republican chairwoman. A Principal Player, A Neutral Stance, A Common Effort As secretary of state, Ms. Harris was in a position to use her broad discretion over the conduct of state elections to shape the outcome of the race.

no respect for

Dec 26th, 2000 05:00 PM

The key to dealing with the Bush people, however, is precisely not to accept them. Like most Americans, I have nothing personal against Bush, Dick Cheney, nor against Colin Powell and the others now surfacing as members of the new administration. But I will not reconcile myself to them. They lost the election. Then they arranged to obstruct the count of the vote. They don't deserve to be there, and that changes everything. They have earned our civic disrespect, and that is what we, the people, should accord them. ...JKGalbraith, Texas Observer

just the facts

Dec 26th, 2000 05:17 PM

Ms. Harris promised that she would carry out her duties in a neutral fashion. To emphasize the point, she retained Steel, Hector & Davis, a major Tallahassee law firm traditionally associated with prominent Florida Democrats. Joseph P. Klock Jr., managing partner of the firm, said in an interview this week that Ms. Harris remained true to her neutrality pledge. "Some clients," Mr. Klock said, "will tell you, 'This is where I want to go, take me there.' She did not do that once. She said, 'Show me the law.' " Over the 36 days it took to settle the Florida election, Ms. Harris made a series of crucial decisions, and each one, without exception, helped Mr. Bush and hurt Mr. Gore. She told county canvassing boards they lacked the discretion to conduct manual recounts recounts Mr. Gore desperately wanted. She enforced strict counting deadlines, just as Mr. Bush wanted, and then, contradicting an earlier directive from her office, she advised counties to apply a liberal standard for counting absentee ballots, a move that helped Mr. Bush pick up hundreds of critical votes. "She was clearly trying to get as many of these votes in as she could, whether or not they met the criteria, and so was the Bush campaign and the Republican Party," said Bob Rackleff, a Democrat on the Leon County canvassing board. In courtrooms across the state, her formidable team of lawyers relentlessly opposed the Gore campaign at every step. Besides her own legal staff, Mr. Klock's firm placed 29 lawyers and 11 paralegals at Ms. Harris's disposal. These lawyers, billing Florida's taxpayers $175 an hour, pulled out all the stops, routinely clocking 16-hour days, sometimes working in shifts to crank out briefs 24 hours a day, sometimes sleeping on conference tables. They rented a private plane to fly to Washington for arguments in the United States Supreme Court. So far, Mr. Klock's firm has submitted bills for $627,280 in legal work and $54,986 in expenses. No matter the courtroom, the Gore legal team, as high-powered as it was with David Boies, the man who took on Microsoft, as its leader, faced a potent tag team of private Bush lawyers and public Harris lawyers. The Harris and Bush lawyers, reinforcing each other's arguments, eating up precious court time, each focused on the single, shared goal of preventing recounts. "The most harmful thing was the stops and starts caused by the elections decisions from Harris's office," said Mr. Newton, the Gore lawyer. "There were too many days when nobody counted, and in those early days, every little bump hurt. We'd get past one hurdle, then face another, and another, and another. Every time we turned around there was another obstacle." Mr. Richard, the senior lawyer for the Bush campaign in Florida, drew a blank when asked to cite a single argument or action by Ms. Harris that hurt Mr. Bush. There was, he said after a pause, perhaps one minor argument by the Harris lawyers that displeased Bush lawyers. "I can't remember what it was."

XX	Dec 26th, 2000 05:40 PM

In case you haven't heard--THE ELECTION IS OVER YOU MORONS!!! Get a life and quit obsessing about it! Quit cluttering up our board with this damn nonsense!

no respect for GOP

Dec 26th, 2000 06:40 PM

Why are you the first to call names? Don't you have VOCABULARY? It's our board, too. I just wish I knew who you were, so I'd never answer your questions. BYE!

Mom	Dec 27th, 2000 10:02 AM

SHAME on you people for continuing this pointless, political diatribe in this the season of peace, love and goodwill toward each other! Why don't you go visit the cancer ward at a Childrens' Hospital, a hospice, or a homeless shelter and ask them if they care about it. I think you will find that in the grand scheme of things it just does not matter! In this the Christams season, you should be giving of yourselves and not arguing or whining about things which you cannot change.

love the sinner

Dec 27th, 2000 10:18 AM

Jesus, apolitical? Hardly.

Leone

Dec 27th, 2000 10:22 AM

I believe LBJ also preferred to hire his critics (his philosophy was "better to have them pissing out than into the tent"). This posting is a perfect example of "outside the beltway" thinking. While you're debating conspiracy, vote count, the High Nine, etc., W. is forming his cabinet in anticipation of being sworn in January 20th. I didn't vote for W., I'm not nuts about the man, but I will be there anyway, to watch it happen. You need to fast forward a bit, catch up with reality. Ciao.

keeping it current

Dec 27th, 2000 12:27 PM

OK to stay current, let's talk W nomineees: In October 1998 John Ashcroft gave an interview to the Southern Partisan magazine in which he lashed out at "revisionists" who make malicious attacks on America's founders, such as charging that George Washington was a racist. If you're not familiar with the finer points of Southern-fried, right-wing, Confederate-flag-waving political culture, the Southern Partisan is the leading publication of the Neo-Confederate movement, a movement which extols the Confederacy, Southern culture, and at least toys with the idea of the South again seceding from the union. Yes, they did once call David Duke "a candidate concerned about 'affirmative' discrimination, welfare prolifigacy [sic], the taxation holocaust ... a Populist spokesperson for a recapturing of the American ideal." But, hey, they go in for more than just politics. They publish articles on everything from the latest tips on how to re-enact Pickett's Charge to some of the sharper commentary on why Jews "agitate for the radical secularization of our society."

Dad	Dec 27th, 2000 06:13 PM

Hey "MOM" I think the overthrow of this government is just a **tad** important. There has been a coup d'etat in the United States and ignoring that fact will never work with millions of people. It doesn't matter if CNN Inc. is choosing to keep this all under the rug so to speak....millions of people are still talking to each other daily on many web pages, newsgroups, newsletters, email, phone and face to face about this coup by the Bush junta. That is far more important than drug addicted street people (the ones you call homeless)....so you can spend your time helping them if you wish, but many of us would rather spend our time crying out about the overthrow of the United States government that occurred.

spindoctor

Dec 27th, 2000 06:32 PM

I plan to teach my children responsibility. Don't whine about the rules after the game has started. Learn from your mistakes-look at the published ballots prior to the election. Floridians cost Gore the election because they were to lazy to be proactive and only wanted to complain once they figured out that their boy wasn't going to win. What I have learned from Florida and the election is that I don't want to give my travel money to the state. The trip that I had planned for March to Marco Island has been canceled. I don't let my kids whine why would I want to go somewhere that encourages it?

mom	Dec 27th, 2000 07:07 PM

Finally something we can agree on! Boycott Florida! My children share my outrage at the shameless obstruction of justice in Florida, and legal scholars will long remember the partisan Bush v. Gore unsigned decision, which cites no legal precedent. You have it very wrong about "changing the rules", but obviously we are getting our news from different sources. You must be listening to FOX news channel and Rush Limbaugh. Show me anywhere in Florida law where it says that anything other than the intent of the voter matters. We are in for a long, bumpy road, and a few of us have been paying attention. World opinion has not been kind towards the events in Florida.

Ana	Dec 28th, 2000 01:17 AM

The dirtiest U.S. election in more than a century—and one of the dirtiest elections anywhere in the world in recent times—elicited nary a public peep from the American people. The world sits not so much in admiration that tanks are not rolling down Main Street—as the self-important American media tells its captive audience—as it sits in disbelief at the submissive national mood. A man the people did not elect was appointed President by five black-robed politicians and a state government machinery controlled by the man's own brother, but the people do not take to the streets. Only in America. Within seconds of George W. Bush's judicial installation, network anchors were hectoring people to accept the outcome, however abhorrent—a shockingly inappropriate, politicized, and unsolicited piece of advice. However, the bipartisan media brainwashing would not have worked if it had not found a fertile ground in the nation's admirable respect for the rule of law and democratic institutions, and the importance it attaches to stability. The installation of Bush in the White House by politicized judicial fiat and state government intervention is a fatally dangerous blow to the very democratic institutions the nation is being called on to protect with obedient silence. Silence is consent. And by consenting to an illegitimate Presidency, one that is not the product of a democratic election, Americans, bent on keeping peace today at any cost, may be sending instead a message of impunity to an increasingly corrupt political class: in other words, they can do as they please. With no opposition to keep the issue alive, the nation will forget and Bush will legitimize himself just by virtue of living in the White House, possession being nine-tenths of the law. The process has already begun. I used to sleep soundly every night knowing that the famously resilient American society and political system would be there next morning when I woke up. Not anymore.

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