Down & Dirty (80 page)

During a break, Terrell approaches Dexter Douglass. He likes Douglass and knows that Baker—who was friends and hunting buddies
with Chiles—likes and respects him, too.

“You ever get to Texas?” Terrell asks him.

“Not much, Irv,” Douglass says. He’s very guarded.

“Don’t you know about the
Pennzoil-Texaco
case, and which side I was on?” Terrell asks, smiling.

The lightbulb goes off over Douglass’s head. “You were on the plaintiff’s side, weren’t you?” Douglass says. “So you’re not
all
bad, are you?”

“No, I’m not all bad,” Terrell says.

Douglass notes that Terrell has stayed pretty low-key with the media. “I haven’t seen you grabbing the microphone,” he says.

“That’s true,” Terrell acknowledges. “I have seen people grab the mike, and it didn’t serve them very well.” He tells him
a little about the
Pennzoil
case, how Jamail burned his friend, how he himself thought his shit didn’t stink for a spell there. Things have been OK on
this case, though. Some of the Bush lawyers grouse when Barry Richard books himself on
Larry King Live
—he and King are old friends from Miami. And of course, there’s the tension with Bartlit, much of which goes on behind Bartlit’s
back. But things are relatively serene.

The conversation soon turns to Douglass’s Herefords,and cattle,and Boies.

“You really got yourself a horse there,” Terrell says, motioning to the lead Gore lawyer.

“That’s true,” says Douglass. “But my horse gets tired.”

The Republicans get to call their witnesses now, and they start with Burton. At the front of the room, Sauls is rocking back
and forth in his leather chair, his lips pursed like he’s about to whistle.

Having been slammed by both sides in Palm Beach, Burton is embraced by the Republicans in Tallahassee. And why not? With his
chad standard, Gore picked up only 174 votes, and under his leadership, the count wasn’t completed in time. Palm Beach could
have blown everything for Bush. But with Burton, it’s pretty much blown over.

Bartlit walks Burton through the evolving process by which they assessed ballots in West Palm: LePore, Carol Roberts, Dennis
Newman, Ben Kuehne, LaBarga, Jackie Winchester, the 1990 standard, one-corner rule, two-corner rule, hanging chad, dimples,
patterns of dimples, and on and on.

“Basically three Democrats?” Bartlit says of the canvassing board.

“Three people trying to do the best job they can, yes sir,” Burton replies.

Boies, interestingly, doesn’t attempt to undermine the Palm Beach standard as too rigid in his cross-examination. Instead,
he decides to try showing that Palm Beach found votes—legitimate, actual, real-life votes—in its hand recount, thus hoping
that Sauls will include them even though they were a little late and also force the same standard on the 9,000 yet-tobe-hand-recounted
ballots of Miami-Dade.

Sauls wants to know more about the 1 percent recount, if there was any established rule as to when the results from it would
necessitate a full county recount.

“I felt not,” Burton says, “because, quite honestly, I think statistically to say that would mean nineteen hundred votes,
that was incorrect…. I wanted to go about this in a more reasoned approach and analysis, and I wasn’t given that opportunity.
And I guess since that day, I guess I’ve been the one accused of trying to block this recount, which is not the case.”

“Absolutely not,” Sauls says. “I’ll have to salute you as a great American, as a matter of fact.”

A great American?
Boies thinks. OK, well, clearly Dexter’s right, Sauls is not inclined to rule for us.

Even Burton thinks Sauls’s comment is “weird.” Commenting on what a witness was saying, giving his editorial take on it? “OK,
whatever,” Burton thinks.

He steps down. Outside the courtroom, Barry Richard approaches him. “I really want to get together when this is all over,”
Richard says to him. “One Democrat to another.”

Beck brings a rubber expert before the court, Richard Grossman, technical director for the the Hammond Group’s Halstead Division,
which manufactures “heat stabilizers and other additives for rubber and plastic composition.” But Zack points out that Grossman
told him in yesterday’s deposition that he has never seen a Votomatic. He gets Sauls to go along with the thesis that Grossman
can talk only about the composition of rubber—not the operation of the Votomatic—and when Beck even
thinks
about anything other than that, Zack objects over and over. To Sauls’s clear annoyance.

“This is
an expert,
Mr. Zack,” Sauls says. “Overruled.”

But Zack gets some points in on cross-examination—for what they’re worth, since Sauls seems to be showing his cards. Zack
gets Grossman to acknowledge that he knows nothing about the maintenance of the rubber in the Votomatics. Soon it becomes
pretty clear that Grossman doesn’t really have much to offer.

The clock strikes 6:20
P.M.
Sensing no end in sight, Sauls, weary, impulsively hammers it all to a close until Sunday morning, bright and early.

The Gore attorneys are mixed on how the day went. Klain and Douglass think that the witnesses were inexperienced and pretty
horrible. Boies thinks that it doesn’t really matter that much, the important evidence is the ballots, and they just need
to get to the Florida Supreme Court. Zack has a more positive spin on it, of course. Brace was adequate, he thinks—better
than Beck’s rubber guy!

Of course, the onus is on what Beck has taken to derisively referring to as “the Gore legal team” to put on stellar witnesses.
The Bush team has no obligation to prove a thing. They’re just here to waste time and lay groundwork for an appeal, which
would waste more time. And they’re doing a swell job.

Outside, the attorneys host dueling press conferences. Gore aides point to a
Miami Herald
analysis of the 175,000 discarded ballots from all over the state, somehow ending up with Gore winning Florida by 23,000
votes. The
Herald
analysis is ridiculous, assuming, as it does, that everybody voted successfully, assuming that everybody voted for president,
that no one abstained.

The Bush team tries to explain contesting procedures it filed earlier in the morning, challenging the election results in
Volusia, Broward, and Seminole Counties. They say they did so because in order for Sauls to rule in Gore’s favor, the outcome
of the election needs to be in question; by throwing these counties on the table, it will become clear that anything and everything
can be disputed when you get down to it. It’s as if by making an even bigger mess, they’ll make the prospects of cleanup well
nigh impossible.

Meanwhile, the lovely little town of Tallahassee is hosting a parade and
winter celebration. Citizens have a fun run, cheered on by spectators, while rides and treats and festive lights wow the town’s
kids. As the town joins together to light the ceremonial Christmas tree, locals seem happily apathetic about the political
and legal manipulations taking place only yards away.

Immersing yourself in one state’s politics is like attending a Royal Family reunion: the incestuous relationships you come
across are just staggering.

You have Miami-Dade assistant county attorney Murray Greenberg, who attended junior high school with Barry Richard, who lost
his primary race for attorney general to Jim Smith, whose law partner is Brian Ballard, whose sister is Palm Beach County
commissioner McCarty, whose nemesis is Carol Roberts… and on and on…

Holland & Knight attorney Steve Uhlfelder of Tallahassee embodies this web. Within a few days of the Election Night anticlimax,
Uhlfelder—who served as counsel for the ’96 Clinton-Gore state campaign and was a member of Democrats for Bush this year—was
called to work for Gore, for Bush, and for ABC News. He chose the last. Uhlfelder is close with Jeb, whom a few years ago
he introduced to his good friend Barry Richard. He’s a law partner of Richard’s wife, Allison Tant, ran the judicial retention
campaign of both justices Lewis and Anstead; as a student at the University of Florida, he, Steve Zack, and Donald Middlebrooks
met “Walkin’” Lawton Chiles at the Gainesville city limits; his dad was close friends with Carol Roberts and her husband when
president of the Palm Beach synagogue Temple Israel. When he was at Steel Hector & Davis, he hired Donna Blanton, one of Katherine
Harris’s attorneys; his wife, Miffie, and Jeb’s wife, Columba, take yoga together; he was counsel to Democratic governor Reubin
Askew in ’78 and is GOP senate president John McKay’s business attorney now. And on and on.

On Saturday night, December 2, the Uhlfelders and the Richards go out to eat at the Governor’s Club. Soon, of course, the
straight-laced Richard announces that he has to call it a night. “I’m really tired; I need to go home to prepare for tomorrow,”
the attorney says.

It’s a nice night; the town’s Jingle Bell Run is in full operation. And, in keeping with the nature of state politics, after
they bid Barry and Allison adieu, whom should they stumble upon but David Boies, holding an empty wine bottle in one hand
on his way back to the Governor’s Inn.

“Hey, Steve,” Boies says, having met him through his commentary work for ABC News. “What’s going on?”

Boies says that he’s returning from a great dinner at the Silver Slipper
with Zack. As a connoisseur of wines, he enjoyed the bottle he’s holding and didn’t want to forget the vintage.

“Let’s have some more!” Uhlfelder says. At the Governor’s Inn, they do.

Uhlfelder tells Boies that his team seems pretty disorganized; he’d spoken to Gore attorney Deeno Kitchen earlier, and Kitchen
said that he didn’t quite know who was in charge. They talk about Microsoft, about civil rights; Boies, on his third or fourth
screwdriver, says that he doesn’t quite get why the Bushies are putting up such a stink about counting the Miami-Dade undervotes—he’s
not even sure that Gore would gain votes there, when all is said and done.

Uhlfelder studies Boies. He likes him. Thinks he’s one of the most honest and open people he’s ever met. But he also wonders
if Boies is the kind of guy who has to be all things to all people. He’s boozing it up with him tonight, he’s been interviewed
on TV every morning. And then, of course, there’s that court case.