Shootout In The Sun

Like any good soap opera, this one was full of colorful characters and behind-the-scenes maneuvering. While both candidates repeatedly intoned that they wished to do what was right for the country, their minions were doing whatever it took to win. Florida has always had a high tolerance for eccentricity and a rich tradition of hardball politics, and both were on vivid display last week. "Weirdness is so ubiquitous here that people just shrug their shoulders and live with it," said journalist Eliot Kleinberg of The Palm Beach Post. "I'm not even surprised this happened here. I expected it to happen in Florida."

The star of the show, Katherine Harris, looked as if she had stepped off the set of "Dynasty." Tastefully bejeweled, usually heavily made up, Harris, 43, had turned a largely ceremonial post--secretary of State--into a kind of roving cultural ambassadorship. The granddaughter of a citrus bar- on, she once said she wanted to transform Florida into the "Hong Kong of Latin America." Criticized in the local press for junketing (she spent more than $100,000 on travel her first two years on the job), Harris is known for her ambition and toughness. She was "passionately interested," she said, in a real ambassadorship--in a new Bush administration. The Democrats tried to make a mockery of her as a Bush flunky. Reporters received a three-page dossier on her background, pointing out that she was Bush-Cheney co-chairman in Florida and had even trudged through the snows of New Hampshire campaigning for Bush. Gore spokesman Chris Lehane called her a "hack" and "commissar." Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, one of the battery of Democratic lawyers who descended on Florida, called her a "crook," and former Clinton aide Paul Begala said she looked like "Cruella De Vil coming to steal the puppies."

Harris presented herself as a lone but resolute figure caught in the vortex. "She was acutely aware of the historical ramifications of her decision," said an adviser. Harris said to an aide: "Whatever I do, I'm going to get hammered." She let it be known that she had at no time spoken with her boss, Gov. Jeb Bush, who has recused himself. When the time came to ponder whether to allow the manual recount to go forward or exercise her "discretion" under the law to certify the final vote, she cleared her office--overflowing with flowers and bouquets from admirers and supporters--of all aides and hangers-on. She needed to be alone, she said. When her advisers returned, however, they included a powerful local lawyer-lobbyist with unusually close ties to Jeb Bush: J. M. (Mac) Stipanovich, also known as Mac the Knife. After last year's session of the state legislature, Stipanovich, who represents Big Sugar, among other interests, was overheard telling Jeb Bush, "I got everything. I don't know what the poor people got. But the rich people are happy, and I'm ready to go home." One of Harris's lawyers, Joe Klock, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Stipanovich was advising Harris as an "old family friend." (Stipanovich refused to comment.)

The Republicans weren't the only ones with apparent conflicts of interest. Even as the Democrats were complaining about Harris's serving as a front woman for Bush, the state's Democratic Attorney General Bob Butterworth--the state chairman of the Gore campaign--was using his official position to advance the Gore cause. Or so the Republicans charged. When a state official working for Harris ruled that local election boards had no legal authority to recount votes by hand, Butterworth countered with a memo insisting that they did. A Volusia County judge, Michael McDermott, told NEWSWEEK that he challenged the attorney general--who was calling the Volusia County election board by speakerphone--about his role. "Mr. Butterworth," asked Judge McDermott, "in what capacity are you calling us?" Butterworth at first replied, "As the attorney general of Florida," prompting McDermott to point out that the A.G. was also "the state campaign chairman for Al Gore." According to McDermott, Butterworth replied, "Well, I was, but that's over." Recalled McDermott: "I almost laughed when he said that." At McDermott's insistence, Butterworth got off the conference call. "You could hear the door slamming," recalled the judge.

There were a few individuals who seemed to rise above the partisan bickering. In Palm Beach County, Judge Jorge Labarga found himself confronted with one of the most maddening issues of the vote recount. On many of the ballots, the chad had not been punched all the way through the hole, or even torn, but merely indented. Should such a "dimpled" or "pregnant" chad be counted as a vote? If Labarga said yes, he would be boosting Al Gore, who stood to gather more votes in Democratic Palm Beach. Labarga had raised $100,000 for Jeb Bush in 1994. But after bringing order to a chaotic courtroom ("Did anybody in Florida not sue in this case?" he good-naturedly inquired from the bench), Labarga decided to allow Palm Beach to count the dimpled ballots. Labarga, whose father had fled Castro's Cuba, later said, "The right to vote to me is as precious as life itself."

The Democrats immediately heralded Labarga as a profile in courage. But his decision underscored the chaotic and at times absurd nature of the vote count that straggled along last week. Left without any new standard, the Republicans argued, the vote counters would have to go through every ballot to determine, chad by chad, the intent of each voter. In neighboring Broward County, on the other hand, officials were counting votes only if the chad had been ripped at two corners, thereby excluding votes that would count in Palm Beach County. Only late in the week did a Broward County judge step in and adopt the more expansive "dimpled chad" standard. Behind "crime scene" police tape in a grim concrete bunker--a hurricane shelter--the Palm Beach vote counters could be seen disputing and arguing. One particularly outspoken commissioner, Carol Roberts, 64, who has a gravelly smoker's voice and a Gore-Lieberman sticker on her car, had announced that she was "willing to go to jail" in defiance of Harris's order to stop counting ballots by hand. "Go, girl!" cried her backers in the noisy crowd outside. All week, a mishmash of riled-up senior citizens, union agitators and even a few white supremacists waving Confederate flags marched and shouted for the cameras. "Dimpled babies, not chads!" read one placard.