Down & Dirty (12 page)

“It just went off without a hitch!” Greenberg gleefully concludes.

In Fort Lauderdale, about half a dozen Democrats exit “Recount One,” including Gore deputy field director Donnie Fowler and
Jeremy Bash, who worked on military and foreign affairs issues for Klain in the Nashville war room.

Field operatives meet them and hand them keys to their own cruising vessels, courtesy of Alamo Rent-a-Car. Bash and Fowler
shoot north on I-95 to meet with the Palm Beach Democratic chairman, Monte Friedkin.

Friedkin seems obnoxious and rude, a brash New Yorker who’s under the impression that he’s quite impressive. Bash and Fowler
ask about the butterfly ballot, and Friedkin immediately starts tearing into Theresa LePore. “She’s a fool!” he says. LePore’s
perfectly nice, Friedkin allows, “but an idiot!”

Bash, Friedkin, and Fowler head to Delray Beach, where the machine recount has commenced for some of the county’s ballots.
Democrat and Republican observers are shooting the shit good-naturedly. The floor is covered in the punched-out bits of cardboard
from the ballot, called chad.
^*
Bash and Fowler, under instructions from Gore lawyers Young and Sandler, are there just to observe. Not to argue, not to
talk, just to check out what’s being done, gathering information.

They soon hit the Delray Beach Democratic Party headquarters, at a strip mall, where half a dozen or so lawyers are taking
affidavits from maybe thirty Palm Beach voters who are complaining about problems with the butterfly ballot. There are three
or four notary publics certifying the statements. Inside, the phones are ringing incessantly, voters wanting to tell
their tales of woe. The Democratic operatives take a hard line: I’m sorry, miss, there’s nothing I can do for you unless you
come down to headquarters and fill out an affidavit.

Lina Petty, an operative in charge of the affidavit database, keeps her ears perked for attractive stories to tell. Republicans
and young people are in demand. At that point the Democrats don’t want a parade of old Yiddish Bubbies running around on TV
complaining. Democrats want to show that this wasn’t just old lefty Democrats who had a problem with the butterfly ballot.

Elsewhere, phone calls are going out. Democrats are recording—and in some cases hepping up—complaints. “I understand you were
called yesterday by the Florida Democratic Party,” reads one phone-bank script. “I am following up on that call on behalf
of the Gore-Lieberman campaign. Would you be willing to answer a few questions?” There’s a line for name, address, phone number,
county, age, race, voting precinct, polling place, time arrived at polling place, weather conditions. Then: “Did you intend
to vote for Gore/Lieberman but think you voted for someone else?

“If so, describe why you think you voted for someone other than Gore/Lieberman.

“Did you (check all that apply):

___ punch the wrong hole

___ punch more than one hole

___ other (describe)

“Was the ballot difficult to understand or confusing? Did you think to bring the confusion to the attention of a poll worker?
If so, who and with what results? Was the ballot difficult to punch or mark?”

And on and on.

Back in Austin, Bush, Cheney, and crew are discussing whom else they should send to Florida. Ginsberg will be great for legal,
but they need someone to run the whole shop, someone to be their version of Christopher—whom the morning shows are saying
is on his way to Florida on Gore’s behalf. Cheney suggests a man with whom he’d been sitting watching the election returns
come in the night before, former secretary of state James Addison Baker III. He’s a natural—skilled at PR, the law, and politics.

Get Baker, they agree.

Baker, seventy, has just landed in Houston, is making his way from Hobby Airport to his Rice University office, where the
bidnessman is scheduled to meet with a Mexican official. He’s tired, having been up late
with Cheney. His cell phone rings. He expects that it’s someone bringing news that the Florida mess has been sorted out; he
has a European hunting trip scheduled with Bush Sr.

It’s Evans.

We need you, he says. We need you to get down to Florida to supervise the recount.

Baker agrees. He’s used to it. He’s gotten calls like this before.

In fact, he’s constantly brought in to save the day—most recently after the Republican convention in 1992, when he was dragged
kicking and screaming from the State Department to run Bush Sr.’s faltering presidential campaign. The Princeton grad—from
a long line of wealthy Houston lawyers, one of whom started monster law firm Baker Botts—first befriended Bush Sr. in the
early ’50s, when he and his new wife, Mary, would play George and Barbara in mixed-doubles tennis at the Houston Country Club.
After Mary died of breast cancer in February 1970—leaving Baker with four boys to raise on his own—Bush asked him to help
run the Houston arm of his Senate campaign.

Bush Sr. lost, but Baker got the political bug pretty quick. True, his one try for office—a 1978 race for attorney general—ended
up with him getting stomped like a rattlesnake in a cattle herd, but that was partly due to the fact that he didn’t really
like “the people.” Didn’t have much need for them. No, he knew better uses of his time than shaking hands with strangers at
the mall; like his buddy Cheney, Baker soon became pretty damn good at selling himself as a ruthless CEO-type to the powers
that be, though not one entirely without his own agenda.

In 1976, as an undersecretary of commerce, Baker was tapped by then-president Gerald Ford to help stave off a convention challenge
from Ronald Reagan. At the convention that summer, his code name was “Miracle Man.”

Baker was less successful leading the charge against Reagan four years later, when he managed Bush Sr.’s ill-fated 1980 presidential
run, but somehow even this worked out well for Baker, and after Reagan earned the GOP nomination, he named Baker senior adviser
to his campaign. Like Bush, Baker seemed to leave no fingerprints; though he was in charge of prepping Reagan for his debates
against then-president Jimmy Carter, Baker was never even remotely blamed for “Briefingate,” in which Carter’s briefing papers
ended up in the Reagan campaign’s possession.

He’s always been shrewd, always manipulated his prey—whether press or politicians—with a deft arrogance. Reagan brought him
in as chief of staff, and Baker was quickly dubbed “the velvet hammer.” By his cousin.
Still, he worked his ass off for Reagan, negotiating with Capitol Hill law-makers on much of Reagan’s legislative agenda—shoring
up business support for his tax-cut package, for instance, crafting the right message on Social Security reform. He elbowed
out others grappling for power—Secretary of State Al Haig and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. He and Bush always had
a close, if oddly competitive, relationship—Baker would privately yuk about Bush’s selection of then-senator Dan Quayle as
his veep in ’88. But they would be forever partners in politics, and Baker was appointed secretary of state when Bush became
president in ’88.

He was reluctant to leave the Department of State in ’92, however, and only came on board to run the reelection campaign reluctantly,
and late, and some thought he didn’t give it his all. Barbara and W. blamed Baker for Bush Sr.’s election loss in 1992. Some
speculated that Baker was sick of being the handler, the fixer, thought he could do a better job than Bush Sr. anyway. And
with that, Baker took off, falling into a life of big bucks and oil-rights negotiating in former Soviet republics.

But being the grown-up was his fate. And here it was again, only now it was the son whose hide he was being called upon to
pull from the fire.

Sigh.

Don Rubottom, the administrative overseer of the five committees in the GOP-controlled Florida state house, wonders if the
legislature might have a role to play in any future developments.

I mean, who knows what will happen? Bush is ahead by less than 2,000 votes—and it’s certainly possible that a few thousand
illegally cast votes might show up. What if Florida’s electoral votes are invalidated? He starts researching the matter, and
learns that four times—in 1788, 1864, 1868, and 1872—states failed to award electors to any candidate. Were that to happen
here, Rubottom realizes, then Gore would become president! After all, with Florida’s 25 out of the picture, Gore has more
electoral votes than Bush!

Wednesday morning, Rubottom approaches his boss, house speaker Tom Feeney, Jeb’s running mate from his unsuccessful 1994 gubernatorial
run. Rubottom points to Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature
thereof may direct, a number of electors,” it says. The Legislature chooses the method of picking electors.

Feeney is intrigued. It might be the legislature’s responsibility to step in. Rubottom asks Feeney if he has permission to
sell the idea to Jeb’s people.

“Go for it,” Feeney says.

Feeney signs off on it. So Rubottom looks for four-term congressman Charles Canady, forty-five, Jeb’s new counsel. A conservative
who didn’t run for reelection because of his belief in term limits, Canady is set to become Frank Jimenez’s boss in a few
days. Rubottom finds him in the conference room in Jeb’s office.

Canady “was appreciative and will consider it as a possible route later,” Rubottom e-mails to Feeney later that afternoon.
Rubottom also calls Ginsberg, but Ginsberg seems a bit cagey about getting involved with the legislature. At least right now.

“I’m feeling some pressure,” says Theresa LePore to a small pack of reporters. Outside the Governmental Center in West Palm
Beach are reporters, and protesters, and voters—many of whom are upset, crying, angry. It’s Wednesday, 10:30
A.M
.

LePore is asked if 3,407 votes for Buchanan in liberal Palm Beach—with its high numbers of Jews and blacks—seems reasonable.

“There are types of people who would tend to be Buchanan supporters,” she says.“That there are small amounts of votes for
Buchanan in Democratic areas indicates a lot of those people did vote properly,” she says.