Reversal
of Fortune
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The Bush aides at campaign headquarters were beside themselves that the networks would call Florida even before polls had closed in the more heavily Republican panhandle, which is in the Central time zone. Also, the raw numbers the Bush people were seeing were telling them they were slightly ahead of Gore statewide, not behind. "I don't believe some of these states they've called," Bush said. Rove and strategist Ed Gillespie called the networks to complain. "I don't know how you can call a state that's this close!" Bush media adviser Stu Stevens protested. "It's ridiculous! It's an outrage!" It was Rove's idea to summon the camera pool into the Governor's mansion so Bush could break into the newscasts and question the Florida results himself on network television. "It's going to be a long night," Bush said.
The calls were desperate because the steam was coming out of the Bush effort out West. In California, the Florida call hit just at the wrong moment: drive time. Voters and volunteers have to be wooed on their way to work or coming home. Once they get home, it's a lot harder to get them out of their comfy chairs into dark cafeterias and libraries to vote. After Florida was called, Bush volunteers just started going home or not showing up at all.
At 8:15, Gore was surfing the time zones, calling tiny radio stations in rural New Mexico, urging people to vote. Lieberman was working Arizona and Minnesota. Gore's geeks were hunched over their computers hunting for paths to the magic 270 electoral votes in states where the polls were still open. Once they lost New Hampshire, their eyes turned to New Mexico; if that collapsed it would come down to Oregon. Even back in New York, President Clinton had quickly concluded that with Florida, Gore had 262 electoral votes locked up. So at the moment his wife was declared the winner of her historic Senate race, the leader of the free world was talking to a Las Vegas radio station, trolling for the last eight votes.
Down in Austin, Rove and polling analyst Matthew Dowd were in their adjacent offices, glued to their computers and telephones. "They were like mad scientists with those calculators," says media strategist Mark McKinnon. "They were punching them so hard and so fast it sounded like a machine gun." At various points one of them would shout that they were a thousand votes down or a thousand votes up. "We lived and died a thousand times tonight," said McKinnon. Spectators hovered outside Rove's office, looking in through a glass window. "We were all standing around like expectant fathers," says Jim Ferguson, a member of Bush's outside ad team. "We were all looking through the window hoping the baby wouldn't come out with three heads." On several occasions, Rove ordered people to stand back from his door, as though his office - or he himself - were a victim of exhaustion, collapsed on the ground on a hot day and in need of both air and medical attention.
At 9:55, cnn took Florida back from Gore, and the other networks shortly followed, declaring it too close to call. The lobby of the Loews was suddenly empty. Campaign chairman Bill Daley was on his cell phone, and he looked sick.
For his part, Bush "was like a prizefighter pulling himself off the mat," said a source who was in frequent touch with those at the mansion with him. He kept calling Rove at the headquarters, demanding new information. "How's it look?" he would ask. "Anything new?" By 1:30 most states had tumbled one way or the other, and both men had a total of 242 electoral votes. The counts were unimaginably, unbearably close. Florida was still undecided, but by 1 a.m., the Bush camp had more than a 200,000-vote cushion. His staff members knew Dade and Broward counties still hadn't reported, but their models told them they had a lead that was insurmountable. The margin would shrink, but then "it was just a matter of hanging on to the cliff by our fingers," remembers McKinnon. The problem is, "each finger kept getting stepped on." He and Ferguson nipped out for a little tequila to calm their nerves. Rove, who was wearing his phone headset all evening, was calling a statistics professor in Texas for his analysis of how the numbers were running, and then yelling, "Get me Dowd!" to his secretary, whereupon Dowd would turn up from an adjacent office where he had been doing his own number crunching while checking the cbs website.
Around 2 a.m., Rove called the Governor. "Mr. President," he began, and then he told him what they'd just learned. They had won enough votes in Florida's Hillsborough County to win the state - and the whole prize. Ninety-eight percent of the precincts were in, and they were ahead by more than 50,000 votes.
At 2:15 a.m., the networks gift-wrapped Florida once more and this time handed it to Bush. "Everyone went insane, screaming and crying," McKinnon says. Virtually the entire staff in the headquarters left the building, forming a dance line up Congress Avenue along the eight blocks to the celebration site. The colored lights were flashing on the capitol; it's a miracle no one was electrocuted in the sweeping rain. At the rally the television screens switched to a video of Bush on the trail, at home and on the ranch, all to the tune of Signed, Sealed, Delivered.
Gore was watching the final returns in the staff room on the seventh floor of the Loews. Of his family, only Karenna was with him, her arm around him, rubbing his back, other times sitting on the floor. When it was finally called for Bush, there was a moment of stunned silence. Then as Gore stood and thanked his aides, they began to cry and hug one another. The Vice President made it clear that he wanted to move with swift grace to say his goodbye to his waiting supporters and the country. He started working on his concession speech with what an aide described as a "let's get it over with" resolve. He returned to his private family suite on the ninth floor as a resolute Tipper stood with him. Gore comforted his sobbing daughters.
What happened next has Democrats still baffled. The man who was willing to fight so long and work so hard and campaign until he dropped seemed in a hurry to drop out. He had been up for 50 hours straight by this time. But Tipper was ready to hold on a while longer, and so were some other aides, including former chief of staff Jack Quinn, who was in the lobby on the phone. Lieberman too wanted to fight. Brazile got an e-mail from her assistant saying it had been called. She wrote back, "Never surrender. It's not over yet." As they headed to the motorcade, Brazile's gut told her they were moving too quickly. The somber mood was too premature. "It was like going to a funeral, but without a corpse."
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November 20,
2000 | NO. 46
US
ELECTION 2000
STANDOFF
2000: The Cliffhanger
Nancy Gibbs tells the story of Al Gore and George W. Bush's never-ending
election night and the constitutional trapdoors that may lie ahead for
a country in political limbo
BACK
TO SCHOOL: An Electoral College Primer
Why the winner will be chosen by 538 men and women
Public
Eye: Margaret Carlson urges calm and patience
FLORIDA
KEY: The Sunshine State Keeps Counting
The turbulent quest for the State's 25 electoral votes
CAPITOL
HILL: The First Lady is a Senator
How Hillary Clinton won her race for Congress
HISTORY:
No Surprises
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. on White House history repeating
Vote:
Barbara Ehrenreich on why she's not sorry
SOCIETY
IDEAS:
A Hardy Constitution
Australia's chief justice is a fan of the country's "rules"
T
H E A R T S
EXHIBITIONS:
Pursuing the delusion of Utopia
MUSIC:
PJ Harvey in a New York state of mind
CINEMA:
Philip Seymour Hoffman, the prince of perversity
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
PACIFIC
OBSERVED: The legacy of Whitlam's dismissal
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