November 18, 2024 • 26 mins
An interview with Brian Noyes, who worked on the Bush 2000 presidential campaign, and what it was like to feel like an election is being stolen. Noyes oversaw an oral history project with recount alums from the Bush campaign.
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We felt like we had won, and when we got
there and there were all these contests and all these questions,
we thought that there was a effort in place to
steal the election. Using the word stealing the election is
just political hyperbole, and I don't usually use that, but
I definitely felt that emotion.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Hey, Fiasco listeners, this is Leon Apok. I hope you
enjoyed listening to Bush v.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Gore.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Now that you've heard the whole show, we wanted to
share with you some bonus material related to the two
thousand election that we collected during our reporting process. We
talked to around sixty people for the series, and though
we included bits and pieces of most of those interviews
in the episodes you've heard, there were a bunch of
conversations where after we thought to ourselves, man, people should
(01:12):
really hear more of this than we're able to include.
So in the spirit of using every part of the buffalo,
we are bringing you six additional episodes in which you
will hear my conversations with some of the most interesting
people we spoke to. Today bringing you an interview I
conducted with a Bush campaign staffer named Brian Noys. Noise
served as a regional political director on the Bush campaign
(01:34):
in two thousand. We were eager to talk to him
because we wanted to talk to as many people from
the Bush side as we could. But we became even
more interested when we learned about something he had been
working on, an oral history project about the Bush Camp's
experience of the Florida recount. As someone who had talked
to dozens of people to try to piece together what
happened during that process and why, I was immediately excited
(01:56):
to compare notes with someone who had been doing something similar.
When we spoke, Noise told me about his experience working
on the oral history project and what it was like
for him and his colleagues back in two thousand when
they were working on the ground in Florida. Noise started
out by telling me where the idea for a Bush
Team oral history came from.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
We were coming up to the twentieth anniversary, and I
actually have an older daughter who is in college, and
one of her friends asked about me being involved in politics,
and I went back through all my old boxes that
were very unorganized. It just kind of shoved in the
garage and came across a lot of information from the
election in two thousand and realized I had some memorabilia,
(02:44):
and that started me reminiscing with friends, and we decided
that instead of just telling each other these stories forever,
we should probably record a few of them for my
daughter and people like her friends who wanted to get
kind of a first hand account of a historical event.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
And so how long ago they just start working on it.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I think the idea germinated for a while, but we
really took it on in earnest at the end of
twenty eighteen. So we started, you know, identifying who we
would want to be on, what kind of technical issues
we would have to get over to record, the kind
of things. But we we really kind of an interesting
(03:27):
point for you is we are not recording Carl Rove
or Karen Hughes or Joe albar Ben Ginsberg. We're trying
to get the individuals that haven't been captured in all
the historical reviews in the past. There may be some crossover,
but our real goal is to get, you know, people
that are from Florida, the local representatives, as well as
(03:50):
kind of a group of colleagues that were either Bush
campaign or the volunteers professional volunteers that were part of it.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
It's funny, it's so great to hear you. I mean
to describe it that way, because you know, that's really
the purpose of our show, too, is to try to
find people who haven't those barely been canonized as part
of the you know, people who get top billing in
a in a movie like Recount or something.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sure, well, let's view them as complementary projects exactly, all right,
because we made a conscious decision to not do both
sides and just literally focus on the Bush Cheney staff
volunteers in Florida folks, and large part because after the election,
a lot of us just didn't tell the stories on
(04:37):
the record. And so I actually have interviewed somebody who
has since passed, and so we're realizing our own mortality
and the number of years that have passed since this.
And then if we're going to capture this for posterity,
we need to do it in a way that you know,
is respectful of the Bush legacy that we all worked for,
but is personal enough that is interesting. And you know,
(05:00):
otherwise people like me and a lot of the people
they're involved in here wouldn't be in a historical record.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, well, that's great, what are you gonna do with that?
I mean, are you gonna just really you sell the
interviews or what's like the end product.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
So we're really looking at probably three different products. One
a book or some contemporary story or condensed narraty above
it that we would hopefully release next year sometime, not
a profit making thing, just to have it as a record,
an oral history of all these and finding a presidential
center or a museum that's interested in housing this, some
(05:35):
reunions to kind of gather everybody twentieth adversary you do
that type of thing, and hopefully have that in multiple
cities so that we would be able to maximize the
people that can come together.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And you've heard all the stories, No, not all of.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Them, not all of them. There were probably a couple
that people didn't want recorded.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
There's one thing I've noticed, I wonder if you've if
you've had this experience at all, there's been like a
surprising number of competing theories of the case, Like what
was the decisive thing that you know, led to the
outcome that we had, And so everyone has like a
moment in their mind where they think it, you know,
decisively turned. Have you had that experience at all hearing
(06:13):
that from people.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
You know, what's funny is the majority of people I'm
talking to are not attorneys, and so our experience, my
experience in theirs was I had that gut feeling that
we were going to win and that all was lost
probably fifteen times during the thirty six days. So looking
back at it now, it's kind of, you know, not
(06:36):
the same perspective that I had at the time is
to when it was really truly over. And that is
one of the questions that I ask is you know,
when was it that you felt like it was over?
And the majority of people that I talked to didn't
release until the Supreme Court made his decision. There wasn't
that moment after the first seventy two hours where you
(06:57):
didn't feel like another shoe was going to drop, that
another court case would help you or hurt you. And
whenever you felt good, you just weren't allowing yourself to
celebrate and feel like you had hit a conclusion because
you know, you just never knew when you know, another
level of court or another level official was going to
review this and change the rules. And this is not
(07:19):
the project. This is kind of my personal recollection. You know,
when we were in the counting room in Palm Beach,
the Emergency Operations Center, when we had moved to the
bigger platform and we're doing all the precincts. Particularly in
the first few days, there were so many moments where
we thought they were getting an advantage, then all of
a sudden they thought we were getting an advantage, and
(07:41):
just never knew, you know, whether one counting station was
going too fast and putting too many core votes out there,
or whether you had, you know, things going into your
advantage and it would just go minute by minute.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Well, it was like the lowest moment for you when
you when you remember thinking that like you really were
going to lose, or that the chances were, you know,
as high as they felt at any at any other point.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Probably the two biggest points for me were when the
Palm Beach County canvassing Board went from the one percent
test to the full manual recount, because we knew it
was a county that Gore had covered very well and
(08:25):
there was a higher presented chance that he might make
gains that would overturn us. The second time was when
the Florida Supreme Court stepped in on right before Catherine
Harris was going to certify, and they basically prevented her
from certifying. And so those were probably the two worst
(08:47):
moments for me, because when loser draw, you accept it.
When it's over, right, it's over, we move on to
the next campaign. Well, this was never over. This was
always in perpetually a state of anxiety as to when
would it be over. And that's just kind of counterintuitive
to a political operative.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Why that's specifically counter intuitive to a political operative.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Because you want an end date, So election day, when
loser draw, it's over. And then each one of these
decisions that would extend the election was just kind of
new territory for me. It didn't compute. What do you mean,
the campaign's continuing this efforts continuing the election was X
number of days ago. You know, I was already away
(09:31):
from my family for six months, and every day was
just more excruciating that I wasn't with my wife and
young child. And you know, again, sometimes when you're that exhausted,
you'll take a loss just because you want it to
be over.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
I can imagine before we get any further, I wanted
just to make sure that I understand your job correctly.
You served as the regional political director from all the
states that touched the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.
Is that right correct? And you had Florida correct? How
much of your like brain space did Florida take up
during the campaign leading up to the election.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It was fifty percent for most of the time, and
then going into the last month it was ninety percent.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Was there a time when when it felt to the
Bush campaign like Florida was in the bag.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
No, we always thought it was competitive.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You always thought they had a chance there.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, we always thought it was competitive. I mean the
number is too big. I mean there's you look at Florida,
this very diverse. We had advantages and they had advantages.
You know, Jeb Bush is the name and the governor,
and everybody pays attention to that. But you know, you
had you know, law and Childs had just been the
governor before him, and you had Democratic US senators. You
(10:47):
had a balance of huge voter bases in the southeast
that counterweighted the entire rest of the state. So we
knew we needed to have turnout in order to be successful.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It's interesting to hear you say that, because I think
the Jeb Bush thing. It was what made them, the Democrats,
or at least the Gore folks in Tallahassee, pretty pretty pessimistic.
They felt like they gave the Bush campaign an advantage
that they would were unlikely to overcome.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Well, I mean, think about it, Florida has had Democratic
leaders on the state wide level too, and so they
had just as many major donors, just as many volunteers
historically that were available to them. They had, you know,
Bob Butterworth, the Attorney General, was a you know, the
top ranking Democrat I think on the state level. So
(11:38):
there's a lot of counterbalances to it. I mean the
other thing too is from a practical level, Jeb was
on the state canvassing board, but other than that, he
had no authority over how the elections were managed at
the local level.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And so why I think I think the people I
talked to were saying more that it was an advantaged
during the campaign because, for instance, because there were a
lot of people in Florida who were would be reluctant
to say donate to Gore because they didn't want, you know,
to be out of favor with with the governor.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well, I think there are some people in that category certainly,
but there were also equal people that would want to
be in favor with the incoming president and they would
be working to get their favor with the Senator Gore.
And so it again, the state was not clearly a
red or blue state at the time. There was a
lot of counterbalance.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I wonder if there was any sense on your end
on the Bush side that, like after the convention specifically,
they seemed to really focus on Florida and really it
seemed to be in good position there, like post Lieberman's nomination, right,
which obviously helped there. And then you know, I've been
(12:53):
talking to folks about how after Jeb Bush's Action education
policy there was a really really huge surge in African
American voter registration.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I would concur with that, And I think technology and
the way that you had information was just differ for
twenty years ago, and so a lot of what you
had was word of mouth and anecdotal and polling. So
polling was a king at the time, but you could
measure with a lot of that with any definitive level,
and really not until we changed it in two thousand
(13:25):
and four and then Obama changed it to another ratchet.
It to another level. You really couldn't tell your intensity.
So we gazed our intensity by the absentee ballot program,
and we had a very extensive absentee ballot program with
a large turnout, and we thought we were doing extremely well.
And our Miami Dade kind of on the ground organizer,
(13:47):
Cuban Fella, did tell me now in retrospect, you know,
nineteen years later, that he did not anticipate the large
numbers of African Americans and the turnout to match hours
because he was so focused on it, and because Eleon
Gonzales situation was so intense and there was so much
(14:08):
of a fervor, they thought that, you know, our intensity
couldn't be matched. And then on election day they did
match it, and I mean it turned out to be
neck and neck all the way up and down. So
I think he was probably a little surprised, only because
he was so focused on our side and he knew
we had an intensity. It wasn't that he underestimated. I
just don't think he was even aware of it.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
It's really satisfied to talk to you about this, and
it's like, this is exactly the feeling we've been trying
to conjure in the in the show, just that like
there's so many little things that could be determinative.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Oh yeah, well, when there's I mean, when there's five
hundred and thirty seven votes out of six million casts,
you know, I probably can't even fathom all the different
things that really could have affected it. From a state
the size and is geographically diverse in two time zones
as Florida, who knows what could have happened. That's why
(15:02):
when we argue about the early call in the Central
time zone, how many votes does that affect? How many
people turned around, didn't go to the polling stations in
the Panhandle or left or whatever because they felt like
it was a lost cause.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
I've seen some Republicans say there was like ten thousand votes,
which strikes me as a little bit.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
It was a billion. You No, I can't quantify it.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
So just let's let's le's boom zoom forward a little
bit to the actual recount period. What was your understanding
of what the Democrats were doing? Like did you think
they were trying to steal the election? Did it that
what it felt like or how did you conceive of
like what they were up to?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
We felt like we had won and when we got
there and there were all these contests and all these questions,
we thought that they were an effort in place to
steal the election. And I say that with the political
hyperbole that it is I personally the way I would
describe it just day to day, I would say that,
you know, we thought we had the lead, and they
(16:24):
were taking efforts to you know, to change the rules
that they would They were trying every way they could
to win, which is what you do. But you know,
using the word stealing the election is just political hyperbole,
and I don't usually use that, but I definitely felt
that emotion at the time. I mean, the rules were
(16:46):
the rules the day of election, and every time that
there was a standard that was changed or a court
decision that reset certain parameters, we felt like they were
changing the rules after the election.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
What rules.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So the butterfly ballot from the first twenty four hours
and so on had become a political they were they
were a political controversy. Rather so the the idea that
you know, the election was not held in an appropriate
(17:21):
fashion just didn't we We didn't agree with that that
the butterfly ballot had been agreed to by the canvassing board.
You know that in a county that was largely controlled
by local Democrats, a canvassing board that was you know,
one elected official and two Democrats, and so we felt
that there was no inherent Jeb Bush you know, fixed
(17:46):
to change, you know Palm Beach. That actually was the reverse,
is that the county officials were the ones that had
determined the voting methods, and so if there was a
disadvantage to Gore, it was probably a mistake, not an
intentional issue.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
I know this sounds cheesy, but I'm curious just if
you could describe from sort of what it felt like
to be on the receiving end of what you perceived
to be an attempt to do something really unfair.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
You know, Leon, to some degree, there wasn't a whole
lot of feeling. You were just plowing through your day
trying to figure out what a task you had accomplish.
You know, what was the situation, How many people did
you have to get in the room, you know, that
level of basic logistics. There wasn't a whole lot of feeling.
And then you know, you're working twenty hour days and
(18:31):
at the end of the day, there wasn't much time
for feeling because you were just basically falling exhausted into
a hotel room. I mean it was chaos for me
personally too, because I had packed for three days. I
went to one hotel and I changed in the first
three days, I changed three different hotels because they weren't
(18:52):
booking them for thirty six days. The logistics people, or
even when I would just go sometimes to find an
open hotel, they were like, say, how long are you
gonna stay? And I would have to guess, you know,
I'm not sure, maybe a week this time, and that
you had to restart. I got kicked out of one
hotel one time in Palm Beach because of a girl
(19:15):
softball tournament had come in and they would only book
me up to like Saturday, And I said, but I
have to stay through Sunday and they said, well tough.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Well, I know a lot of people got displaced in
Tallahassee because of the Florida State game. Yeah, and they
had to because I guess you will rent those hotel
rooms like a year in advance.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Football is important.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah. So one thing I'm interested in was this idea
that the approach that the Bush side or the Republican
side took during the recount process during those thirty six
days was sort of a new thing for them. You know.
Before the mid nineties, sure, Democrats were the ones who
(19:54):
were sort of better at you know, on the ground
activism or whatever, and that this election kind of changed
that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
From my perspective, in the nineties, we were looking at
a historical perspective where Republicans had not had complete control
of Congress, meeting both House and Senate for probably four decades,
and it wasn't until ninety four when that was my
first real election in Georgia. Were working around new gamers
(20:21):
and those folks when we took control of Congress, and
that was historic because it had been decades since that
change had happened. And part of the political structure was
Republicans had this, you know persona of being you know,
presidential white, you know, more wealthy, economically oriented, and Democrats
(20:43):
were viewed as more bootstrap union, you know, working on
the ground kind of people. And Republican campaigns during that
period were learning how to go knock on doors and
do more of that type of stuff. But we really
depended institutionally on direct mail and phone calls and television ads.
Well newt in that quote revolution started that change, but
(21:05):
it didn't really come to fruition until after the two
thousand election because that was that kind of wake up
call that institutionally, the RNC and the political organizations outside
of you know where like New York or Ohio, or
those political organizations that existed forever in new places like Georgia,
(21:27):
the Republican Party hadn't really existed, so we didn't have
the same kind of level grassroots. So in that two
thousand election, we had the opinion that if we got
into a scrap on the ground that we were going
to get out numbered, that they were just going to
institutionally have a better ground game than we did. And
so we countered.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
That, say you what does ground game mean? During the
recount though, like the campaign's over, like what do you
what's what's there to do?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Well, we had to learn so some of that was
just an unknown, but we made the assumption that they
were going to be better organized by filling those roles
once we found them out. And so as we started
learning what those roles were, we we filled volunteers in
from every direction. So there's been a lot of historical
(22:15):
view of the people who flew in from out of
the state, but those were only a small subjection of
the total people that were volunteers. I can tell you
for a fact, on the ground, particularly those first few
days before planes could start flying in with other folks,
ninety percent of the volunteers we had doing counting at
the Emergency Operation Center were local Florida people. And then
(22:39):
over time it probably evened out to a little bit
more fifty to fifty. And as a counting process was
going along for more than a week or so, we
would see we had a little bit of a system
that would get worked out.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
You're talking about the partisan the deservers.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yes, but we didn't have one of those political organizations
built at that level in Florida. We had an educations
for Bush chair in every county. We had a veteran
for Bush chair in every county. We had those law
enforcement you know, for Bush organization in every county. But
that was like a few people. We needed like literally
(23:15):
hundreds of people to show up, and we threw everything
we could at it, and we did feel like that
the Democrats would have the advantage, but it didn't end
up being that way. I look back at it now,
and I feel like we at least countered and then
even to some points we actually outdid the Gore effort
on that kind of local, grassroots bootstrap kind of a campaign.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
All right, And I want to ask you one last
question here. I haven't really no particularly strong instinct one
way or the other as to whether you know Bus
should have won or Gore should have won, or whether
it was I just I sincerely just don't know and
haven't known. But I've noticed myself sort of gravitating towards
(23:58):
the Gore perspective, and as I'm writing the show, and
I've been wondering why. And it's not because I think,
you know, it's not because I wanted Gore to win.
It's because I think that it's because he lost, and
because he was the one trying to reduce the margin
and while Bush was just defending his margin, that there's
sort of more inherently more interesting or inherently more dramatic story.
(24:21):
And I'm curious if you've in reading the books you
know that have been written about this, and watching Recount
and other other documentaries that have been made about this,
do you feel like the Gore perspective is favored and
do you think that the reaction that I'm having is
in any way sort of related to it.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Well, yeah, it makes makes perfect sense that it would
be more dramatic and be more intriguing because quote, what
don't what don't we know or what could have changed
to have changed the outcome? And you know, I'm pretty
confident that we vetted it about as thoroughly as you
possibly could. And the question is still it was really, really,
(24:57):
really close, and Bush barely narrowed him out, but he
did in fact narrow him out at every point in time,
so there was a lot of counterbalance. But on election
day we had the win, and all the way through
through Catherine Harris certifying and all the legal cases, the
count never changed to favor Gore. So I have every
(25:20):
confidence that we won by the narrowest of margins. But
it's not as much fun to say, Okay, it's over.
You know, you're looking at this because people do still
have a question in their mind. So if you're intellectually curious,
you could continue to just say, well, what if what
(25:42):
if that had changed? Or what if this had changed?
And you're exactly right, but what if it is done?
When the election is over?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Brian, this is such a pleasure, a truly unique interviewer,
to be able to talk to someone who's who's seen
it from from both inside and outside. The way you're
doing with this oral history.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Well, I'll tell you I was I was not sure
if I wanted to do this. I listened to your
Clinton Lewinsky podcast burn and was very impressed. I thought
you did a great job. Thank you so much, and
I enjoyed it, and I hope you do as good
a job with.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
This me too. Thanks again. I look forward to someday
hoping to hear those interviews.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Okay, great, all right, Thanks bye.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Fiasco. Bush v. Gore is produced by Prologue Projects and
distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Mattewan,
kaplan Ulla Culpa, Andrew Parsons and me Leon Nafok. We
had additional editorial support from Lisa Chase and Daniel Riley.
Thanks for listening, See you next week.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We felt like we had won, and when we got
there and there were all these contests and all these questions,
we thought that there was a effort in place to
steal the election. Using the word stealing the election is
just political hyperbole, and I don't usually use that, but
I definitely felt that emotion.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Hey, Fiasco listeners, this is Leon Apok. I hope you
enjoyed listening to Bush v.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Gore.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Now that you've heard the whole show, we wanted to
share with you some bonus material related to the two
thousand election that we collected during our reporting process. We
talked to around sixty people for the series, and though
we included bits and pieces of most of those interviews
in the episodes you've heard, there were a bunch of
conversations where after we thought to ourselves, man, people should
(01:12):
really hear more of this than we're able to include.
So in the spirit of using every part of the buffalo,
we are bringing you six additional episodes in which you
will hear my conversations with some of the most interesting
people we spoke to. Today bringing you an interview I
conducted with a Bush campaign staffer named Brian Noys. Noise
served as a regional political director on the Bush campaign
(01:34):
in two thousand. We were eager to talk to him
because we wanted to talk to as many people from
the Bush side as we could. But we became even
more interested when we learned about something he had been
working on, an oral history project about the Bush Camp's
experience of the Florida recount. As someone who had talked
to dozens of people to try to piece together what
happened during that process and why, I was immediately excited
(01:56):
to compare notes with someone who had been doing something similar.
When we spoke, Noise told me about his experience working
on the oral history project and what it was like
for him and his colleagues back in two thousand when
they were working on the ground in Florida. Noise started
out by telling me where the idea for a Bush
Team oral history came from.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
We were coming up to the twentieth anniversary, and I
actually have an older daughter who is in college, and
one of her friends asked about me being involved in politics,
and I went back through all my old boxes that
were very unorganized. It just kind of shoved in the
garage and came across a lot of information from the
election in two thousand and realized I had some memorabilia,
(02:44):
and that started me reminiscing with friends, and we decided
that instead of just telling each other these stories forever,
we should probably record a few of them for my
daughter and people like her friends who wanted to get
kind of a first hand account of a historical event.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
And so how long ago they just start working on it.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I think the idea germinated for a while, but we
really took it on in earnest at the end of
twenty eighteen. So we started, you know, identifying who we
would want to be on, what kind of technical issues
we would have to get over to record, the kind
of things. But we we really kind of an interesting
(03:27):
point for you is we are not recording Carl Rove
or Karen Hughes or Joe albar Ben Ginsberg. We're trying
to get the individuals that haven't been captured in all
the historical reviews in the past. There may be some crossover,
but our real goal is to get, you know, people
that are from Florida, the local representatives, as well as
(03:50):
kind of a group of colleagues that were either Bush
campaign or the volunteers professional volunteers that were part of it.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
It's funny, it's so great to hear you. I mean
to describe it that way, because you know, that's really
the purpose of our show, too, is to try to
find people who haven't those barely been canonized as part
of the you know, people who get top billing in
a in a movie like Recount or something.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sure, well, let's view them as complementary projects exactly, all right,
because we made a conscious decision to not do both
sides and just literally focus on the Bush Cheney staff
volunteers in Florida folks, and large part because after the election,
a lot of us just didn't tell the stories on
(04:37):
the record. And so I actually have interviewed somebody who
has since passed, and so we're realizing our own mortality
and the number of years that have passed since this.
And then if we're going to capture this for posterity,
we need to do it in a way that you know,
is respectful of the Bush legacy that we all worked for,
but is personal enough that is interesting. And you know,
(05:00):
otherwise people like me and a lot of the people
they're involved in here wouldn't be in a historical record.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, well, that's great, what are you gonna do with that?
I mean, are you gonna just really you sell the
interviews or what's like the end product.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
So we're really looking at probably three different products. One
a book or some contemporary story or condensed narraty above
it that we would hopefully release next year sometime, not
a profit making thing, just to have it as a record,
an oral history of all these and finding a presidential
center or a museum that's interested in housing this, some
(05:35):
reunions to kind of gather everybody twentieth adversary you do
that type of thing, and hopefully have that in multiple
cities so that we would be able to maximize the
people that can come together.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And you've heard all the stories, No, not all of.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Them, not all of them. There were probably a couple
that people didn't want recorded.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
There's one thing I've noticed, I wonder if you've if
you've had this experience at all, there's been like a
surprising number of competing theories of the case, Like what
was the decisive thing that you know, led to the
outcome that we had, And so everyone has like a
moment in their mind where they think it, you know,
decisively turned. Have you had that experience at all hearing
(06:13):
that from people.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
You know, what's funny is the majority of people I'm
talking to are not attorneys, and so our experience, my
experience in theirs was I had that gut feeling that
we were going to win and that all was lost
probably fifteen times during the thirty six days. So looking
back at it now, it's kind of, you know, not
(06:36):
the same perspective that I had at the time is
to when it was really truly over. And that is
one of the questions that I ask is you know,
when was it that you felt like it was over?
And the majority of people that I talked to didn't
release until the Supreme Court made his decision. There wasn't
that moment after the first seventy two hours where you
(06:57):
didn't feel like another shoe was going to drop, that
another court case would help you or hurt you. And
whenever you felt good, you just weren't allowing yourself to
celebrate and feel like you had hit a conclusion because
you know, you just never knew when you know, another
level of court or another level official was going to
review this and change the rules. And this is not
(07:19):
the project. This is kind of my personal recollection. You know,
when we were in the counting room in Palm Beach,
the Emergency Operations Center, when we had moved to the
bigger platform and we're doing all the precincts. Particularly in
the first few days, there were so many moments where
we thought they were getting an advantage, then all of
a sudden they thought we were getting an advantage, and
(07:41):
just never knew, you know, whether one counting station was
going too fast and putting too many core votes out there,
or whether you had, you know, things going into your
advantage and it would just go minute by minute.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Well, it was like the lowest moment for you when
you when you remember thinking that like you really were
going to lose, or that the chances were, you know,
as high as they felt at any at any other point.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Probably the two biggest points for me were when the
Palm Beach County canvassing Board went from the one percent
test to the full manual recount, because we knew it
was a county that Gore had covered very well and
(08:25):
there was a higher presented chance that he might make
gains that would overturn us. The second time was when
the Florida Supreme Court stepped in on right before Catherine
Harris was going to certify, and they basically prevented her
from certifying. And so those were probably the two worst
(08:47):
moments for me, because when loser draw, you accept it.
When it's over, right, it's over, we move on to
the next campaign. Well, this was never over. This was
always in perpetually a state of anxiety as to when
would it be over. And that's just kind of counterintuitive
to a political operative.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Why that's specifically counter intuitive to a political operative.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Because you want an end date, So election day, when
loser draw, it's over. And then each one of these
decisions that would extend the election was just kind of
new territory for me. It didn't compute. What do you mean,
the campaign's continuing this efforts continuing the election was X
number of days ago. You know, I was already away
(09:31):
from my family for six months, and every day was
just more excruciating that I wasn't with my wife and
young child. And you know, again, sometimes when you're that exhausted,
you'll take a loss just because you want it to
be over.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
I can imagine before we get any further, I wanted
just to make sure that I understand your job correctly.
You served as the regional political director from all the
states that touched the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.
Is that right correct? And you had Florida correct? How
much of your like brain space did Florida take up
during the campaign leading up to the election.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It was fifty percent for most of the time, and
then going into the last month it was ninety percent.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Was there a time when when it felt to the
Bush campaign like Florida was in the bag.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
No, we always thought it was competitive.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You always thought they had a chance there.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, we always thought it was competitive. I mean the
number is too big. I mean there's you look at Florida,
this very diverse. We had advantages and they had advantages.
You know, Jeb Bush is the name and the governor,
and everybody pays attention to that. But you know, you
had you know, law and Childs had just been the
governor before him, and you had Democratic US senators. You
(10:47):
had a balance of huge voter bases in the southeast
that counterweighted the entire rest of the state. So we
knew we needed to have turnout in order to be successful.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It's interesting to hear you say that, because I think
the Jeb Bush thing. It was what made them, the Democrats,
or at least the Gore folks in Tallahassee, pretty pretty pessimistic.
They felt like they gave the Bush campaign an advantage
that they would were unlikely to overcome.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Well, I mean, think about it, Florida has had Democratic
leaders on the state wide level too, and so they
had just as many major donors, just as many volunteers
historically that were available to them. They had, you know,
Bob Butterworth, the Attorney General, was a you know, the
top ranking Democrat I think on the state level. So
(11:38):
there's a lot of counterbalances to it. I mean the
other thing too is from a practical level, Jeb was
on the state canvassing board, but other than that, he
had no authority over how the elections were managed at
the local level.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And so why I think I think the people I
talked to were saying more that it was an advantaged
during the campaign because, for instance, because there were a
lot of people in Florida who were would be reluctant
to say donate to Gore because they didn't want, you know,
to be out of favor with with the governor.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well, I think there are some people in that category certainly,
but there were also equal people that would want to
be in favor with the incoming president and they would
be working to get their favor with the Senator Gore.
And so it again, the state was not clearly a
red or blue state at the time. There was a
lot of counterbalance.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
I wonder if there was any sense on your end
on the Bush side that, like after the convention specifically,
they seemed to really focus on Florida and really it
seemed to be in good position there, like post Lieberman's nomination, right,
which obviously helped there. And then you know, I've been
(12:53):
talking to folks about how after Jeb Bush's Action education
policy there was a really really huge surge in African
American voter registration.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I would concur with that, And I think technology and
the way that you had information was just differ for
twenty years ago, and so a lot of what you
had was word of mouth and anecdotal and polling. So
polling was a king at the time, but you could
measure with a lot of that with any definitive level,
and really not until we changed it in two thousand
(13:25):
and four and then Obama changed it to another ratchet.
It to another level. You really couldn't tell your intensity.
So we gazed our intensity by the absentee ballot program,
and we had a very extensive absentee ballot program with
a large turnout, and we thought we were doing extremely well.
And our Miami Dade kind of on the ground organizer,
(13:47):
Cuban Fella, did tell me now in retrospect, you know,
nineteen years later, that he did not anticipate the large
numbers of African Americans and the turnout to match hours
because he was so focused on it, and because Eleon
Gonzales situation was so intense and there was so much
(14:08):
of a fervor, they thought that, you know, our intensity
couldn't be matched. And then on election day they did
match it, and I mean it turned out to be
neck and neck all the way up and down. So
I think he was probably a little surprised, only because
he was so focused on our side and he knew
we had an intensity. It wasn't that he underestimated. I
just don't think he was even aware of it.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
It's really satisfied to talk to you about this, and
it's like, this is exactly the feeling we've been trying
to conjure in the in the show, just that like
there's so many little things that could be determinative.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Oh yeah, well, when there's I mean, when there's five
hundred and thirty seven votes out of six million casts,
you know, I probably can't even fathom all the different
things that really could have affected it. From a state
the size and is geographically diverse in two time zones
as Florida, who knows what could have happened. That's why
(15:02):
when we argue about the early call in the Central
time zone, how many votes does that affect? How many
people turned around, didn't go to the polling stations in
the Panhandle or left or whatever because they felt like
it was a lost cause.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
I've seen some Republicans say there was like ten thousand votes,
which strikes me as a little bit.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
It was a billion. You No, I can't quantify it.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
So just let's let's le's boom zoom forward a little
bit to the actual recount period. What was your understanding
of what the Democrats were doing? Like did you think
they were trying to steal the election? Did it that
what it felt like or how did you conceive of
like what they were up to?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
We felt like we had won and when we got
there and there were all these contests and all these questions,
we thought that they were an effort in place to
steal the election. And I say that with the political
hyperbole that it is I personally the way I would
describe it just day to day, I would say that,
you know, we thought we had the lead, and they
(16:24):
were taking efforts to you know, to change the rules
that they would They were trying every way they could
to win, which is what you do. But you know,
using the word stealing the election is just political hyperbole,
and I don't usually use that, but I definitely felt
that emotion at the time. I mean, the rules were
(16:46):
the rules the day of election, and every time that
there was a standard that was changed or a court
decision that reset certain parameters, we felt like they were
changing the rules after the election.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
What rules.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So the butterfly ballot from the first twenty four hours
and so on had become a political they were they
were a political controversy. Rather so the the idea that
you know, the election was not held in an appropriate
(17:21):
fashion just didn't we We didn't agree with that that
the butterfly ballot had been agreed to by the canvassing board.
You know that in a county that was largely controlled
by local Democrats, a canvassing board that was you know,
one elected official and two Democrats, and so we felt
that there was no inherent Jeb Bush you know, fixed
(17:46):
to change, you know Palm Beach. That actually was the reverse,
is that the county officials were the ones that had
determined the voting methods, and so if there was a
disadvantage to Gore, it was probably a mistake, not an
intentional issue.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
I know this sounds cheesy, but I'm curious just if
you could describe from sort of what it felt like
to be on the receiving end of what you perceived
to be an attempt to do something really unfair.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
You know, Leon, to some degree, there wasn't a whole
lot of feeling. You were just plowing through your day
trying to figure out what a task you had accomplish.
You know, what was the situation, How many people did
you have to get in the room, you know, that
level of basic logistics. There wasn't a whole lot of feeling.
And then you know, you're working twenty hour days and
(18:31):
at the end of the day, there wasn't much time
for feeling because you were just basically falling exhausted into
a hotel room. I mean it was chaos for me
personally too, because I had packed for three days. I
went to one hotel and I changed in the first
three days, I changed three different hotels because they weren't
(18:52):
booking them for thirty six days. The logistics people, or
even when I would just go sometimes to find an
open hotel, they were like, say, how long are you
gonna stay? And I would have to guess, you know,
I'm not sure, maybe a week this time, and that
you had to restart. I got kicked out of one
hotel one time in Palm Beach because of a girl
(19:15):
softball tournament had come in and they would only book
me up to like Saturday, And I said, but I
have to stay through Sunday and they said, well tough.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Well, I know a lot of people got displaced in
Tallahassee because of the Florida State game. Yeah, and they
had to because I guess you will rent those hotel
rooms like a year in advance.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Football is important.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah. So one thing I'm interested in was this idea
that the approach that the Bush side or the Republican
side took during the recount process during those thirty six
days was sort of a new thing for them. You know.
Before the mid nineties, sure, Democrats were the ones who
(19:54):
were sort of better at you know, on the ground
activism or whatever, and that this election kind of changed
that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
From my perspective, in the nineties, we were looking at
a historical perspective where Republicans had not had complete control
of Congress, meeting both House and Senate for probably four decades,
and it wasn't until ninety four when that was my
first real election in Georgia. Were working around new gamers
(20:21):
and those folks when we took control of Congress, and
that was historic because it had been decades since that
change had happened. And part of the political structure was
Republicans had this, you know persona of being you know,
presidential white, you know, more wealthy, economically oriented, and Democrats
(20:43):
were viewed as more bootstrap union, you know, working on
the ground kind of people. And Republican campaigns during that
period were learning how to go knock on doors and
do more of that type of stuff. But we really
depended institutionally on direct mail and phone calls and television ads.
Well newt in that quote revolution started that change, but
(21:05):
it didn't really come to fruition until after the two
thousand election because that was that kind of wake up
call that institutionally, the RNC and the political organizations outside
of you know where like New York or Ohio, or
those political organizations that existed forever in new places like Georgia,
(21:27):
the Republican Party hadn't really existed, so we didn't have
the same kind of level grassroots. So in that two
thousand election, we had the opinion that if we got
into a scrap on the ground that we were going
to get out numbered, that they were just going to
institutionally have a better ground game than we did. And
so we countered.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
That, say you what does ground game mean? During the
recount though, like the campaign's over, like what do you
what's what's there to do?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Well, we had to learn so some of that was
just an unknown, but we made the assumption that they
were going to be better organized by filling those roles
once we found them out. And so as we started
learning what those roles were, we we filled volunteers in
from every direction. So there's been a lot of historical
(22:15):
view of the people who flew in from out of
the state, but those were only a small subjection of
the total people that were volunteers. I can tell you
for a fact, on the ground, particularly those first few
days before planes could start flying in with other folks,
ninety percent of the volunteers we had doing counting at
the Emergency Operation Center were local Florida people. And then
(22:39):
over time it probably evened out to a little bit
more fifty to fifty. And as a counting process was
going along for more than a week or so, we
would see we had a little bit of a system
that would get worked out.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
You're talking about the partisan the deservers.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yes, but we didn't have one of those political organizations
built at that level in Florida. We had an educations
for Bush chair in every county. We had a veteran
for Bush chair in every county. We had those law
enforcement you know, for Bush organization in every county. But
that was like a few people. We needed like literally
(23:15):
hundreds of people to show up, and we threw everything
we could at it, and we did feel like that
the Democrats would have the advantage, but it didn't end
up being that way. I look back at it now,
and I feel like we at least countered and then
even to some points we actually outdid the Gore effort
on that kind of local, grassroots bootstrap kind of a campaign.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
All right, And I want to ask you one last
question here. I haven't really no particularly strong instinct one
way or the other as to whether you know Bus
should have won or Gore should have won, or whether
it was I just I sincerely just don't know and
haven't known. But I've noticed myself sort of gravitating towards
(23:58):
the Gore perspective, and as I'm writing the show, and
I've been wondering why. And it's not because I think,
you know, it's not because I wanted Gore to win.
It's because I think that it's because he lost, and
because he was the one trying to reduce the margin
and while Bush was just defending his margin, that there's
sort of more inherently more interesting or inherently more dramatic story.
(24:21):
And I'm curious if you've in reading the books you
know that have been written about this, and watching Recount
and other other documentaries that have been made about this,
do you feel like the Gore perspective is favored and
do you think that the reaction that I'm having is
in any way sort of related to it.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Well, yeah, it makes makes perfect sense that it would
be more dramatic and be more intriguing because quote, what
don't what don't we know or what could have changed
to have changed the outcome? And you know, I'm pretty
confident that we vetted it about as thoroughly as you
possibly could. And the question is still it was really, really,
(24:57):
really close, and Bush barely narrowed him out, but he
did in fact narrow him out at every point in time,
so there was a lot of counterbalance. But on election
day we had the win, and all the way through
through Catherine Harris certifying and all the legal cases, the
count never changed to favor Gore. So I have every
(25:20):
confidence that we won by the narrowest of margins. But
it's not as much fun to say, Okay, it's over.
You know, you're looking at this because people do still
have a question in their mind. So if you're intellectually curious,
you could continue to just say, well, what if what
(25:42):
if that had changed? Or what if this had changed?
And you're exactly right, but what if it is done?
When the election is over?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Brian, this is such a pleasure, a truly unique interviewer,
to be able to talk to someone who's who's seen
it from from both inside and outside. The way you're
doing with this oral history.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Well, I'll tell you I was I was not sure
if I wanted to do this. I listened to your
Clinton Lewinsky podcast burn and was very impressed. I thought
you did a great job. Thank you so much, and
I enjoyed it, and I hope you do as good
a job with.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
This me too. Thanks again. I look forward to someday
hoping to hear those interviews.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Okay, great, all right, Thanks bye.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Fiasco. Bush v. Gore is produced by Prologue Projects and
distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Mattewan,
kaplan Ulla Culpa, Andrew Parsons and me Leon Nafok. We
had additional editorial support from Lisa Chase and Daniel Riley.
Thanks for listening, See you next week.
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