December 2, 2024 • 22 mins
A conversation with Craig Waters, spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court, about becoming the face of an embattled, apolitical institution during a partisan battle.
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin when they had offered me the bulletproof vest I
think that scared me more than anything else. Dead this
idea I have to wear a bulletproof vests. My god,
what's going on here? That's not the tall hassee I know.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Hey, Fiasco listeners, it's Leon Napok. This is the third
and a series of bonus episodes featuring standout interviews from
our season, Bush v. Gore. We're sharing these extras for
anyone who wants to go deeper into the story of
the two thousand election and to hear more from the
central players we spoke to over the course of our
reporting process. We spent a lot of time this season
(00:58):
talking to people who live and breathe politics, strategists, advisors, journalists,
and lawyers. Lots and lots of lawyers. But some of
the people and institutions that got caught up in the
Florida recount were not partisan or political at all. In fact,
they were supposed to be anything But today I wanted
to share a conversation I had with one such person.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
One of the funny aspects of being the spokesman for
any institution is generally, if someone is getting credit for something,
it's not me. It's going to be one of my bosses.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
This is Craig Waters, the former Public Information Officer of
the Florida Supreme Court, a role he held during the
two thousand recount.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
But if things aren't going well, if things are controversial,
or if there's trouble, then I'm the one who has
to go out and do the talking.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
In two thousand, the Florida Supreme Court became the epicenter
of the political universe, and it made decisions that were
hugely consequential and controversial. First, the Court prevented Secretary of
State Catherine Harris from certifying the results at the usual deadline.
Then it ruled that Harris had to wait until at
least November twenty sixth to allow counties to finish their recounts.
(02:05):
And then on December eighth, the Court shocked just about
everyone by ordering a statewide manual recount.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
The Circuit Court sall order a manual recount of all
under votes in any Florida county where such a recount
has not yet occurred. Because time is of the essence,
the recount shall commence immediately.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Waters read summaries of each opinion to the press after
the Court handed them down, and for each decision, conservative
pundits and Bush campaign staffers were outraged. They attacked the
Court as a group of partisan democratic judges. It was
Craig Waters's job to defend the institution that he believed
in and to keep the public informed. In the process.
He became a public figure in his own right. When
(02:48):
I talked to Waters about what this was like. We
began in the morning after the two thousand election. Waters
was staying at a hotel in Orlando, and the next
morning he went downstairs to check the news. He realized
pretty quickly that the Florida Supreme Court was probably going
to be involved.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I went down to the hotel desk and found stacks
of the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. All of them would contradictory headlines.
One said Gore had won, one said Bush had won.
Another one said too close to call. I couldn't figure
out what was going on.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
These were different editions.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
These were different editions that had come out at different
times during the evening. So I went back, and I
didn't want to call the Chief Justice right then. I
knew that there was a problem, but I called the
Associated Press here in Tallahassee they tended to stay on
top of things. The Associated Press was the biggest of
all the news organizations at that point in time, and
they filled me in on what had happened overnight in Florida,
(03:40):
so I felt I had the latest information. And then
I called the Chief Justice, who was Charlie Wells at
the time, and his first words to me were, get
back here as soon as you can.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Why did he tell you to get back as soon
as you could.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Because crowds at that point were already forming between the
Florida Supreme Court Building and the Capitol. The Florida Supreme
Court Building is directly across Duval Street from the Capitol Building,
and there's a large terraced plaza area between the two buildings,
and there already were news setting up. There were cameras
all over the place, There were reporters, some sight seers
(04:15):
were starting to gather as well. There was a general sense,
I think, until I asked you, that something was going
on that was going to involve the city in a
big way.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
So it was clear to you that the Florida Supreme
Court would have a role to play in resolving it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It wasn't clear at that point it seemed likely. When
I sat down with Chief Justice Wells when I got back,
he told me that his hope was that it would
remain in federal courts, and there was some basis for that.
I mean, federal laws were involved.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And the Bush lawyers had filed shot.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, the very first lawsuits were filed in the federal court,
I think because everybody assumed it was going to be
a federal matter. The problem with that, after you start
thinking about it, is that the United States has a
peculiar way of dealing with elections. Under the federal system
that was established by the founding fathers, the supervision of elections,
including national elections, was left to the states themselves, and therefore,
(05:09):
as a matter of state law, the federal courts, when
they got these first lawsuits, after they realized you know this,
that the the issues involved too many state law issues,
began kicking it out and saying, no, you're going to
have to go to state court on this, because because
what you're talking about is state laws, not federal law.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
What was the first occasion you had to get up
in front of the courthouse and address reporters.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
It started very gradually. One of the things that happened
very early on was that our marshal locked our doors,
which infuriated me. We've always been an open courthouse and
I did not like anything that looked like we, you know,
that we were closing ourselves off. I went to the
Chief Justice, to Charlie Wells at the time, and said,
the Marshal just locked the doors, please reverse him immediately.
(05:56):
But we did have large crowds that were gathering, and
there were problems inside the Capitol building with the crowds already,
you know, people getting into public spaces and causing disruptions.
And Chief Justice Wells was unwilling to countermand the Marshal,
so he told me right then and there, and this
was just after the election had happened, he said, well,
why don't you just go out and talk to people,
Go out and talk to the press, talk to whoever
(06:19):
you know. You're our communications director. So I actually started
just walking out in front on the front steps in
a very casual way, you know, like you know, the
people milling, and I'd go up and start talking with
some of the ones that I knew. I knew a
lot of the reporters here in town already, and that's
really how it started me having very informal conversations with
people outside the building, and as the event progressed, it
(06:39):
just became more and more formal, and the crowds grew
more and more large over time, until we reached the
point where one day there were so many people and
so many microphones, somebody said, well, let's get a podium,
so we can put all the microphones on the podium.
And then the podium came out, and then the podium
gradually moved up the steps, and then all of a
(07:00):
sudden there were lights, and then they were putting a
microphone on my tie. So it evolved pretty.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Rapidly, and so it's not like you always read decisions.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
We here at the Florida Supreme Court have actually operated
under a rule for a very long time that the
opinions of the court speak for themselves. So generally I
do not comment on the opinions. I certainly don't try
to interpret what they mean. You find any two attorneys
and they'll disagree over what any opinion means, because that's
what attorneys do. But one of the problems we face
with Bush v. Gore was that we had huge crowds
(07:33):
of reporters. At the heights of it, we would have
two or three hundred reporters standing outside the building waiting
for a decision from the court. Trying to be fair
to two or three hundred people is very difficult. If
you start releasing paper opinions, someone's going to be first
in line and someone's going to be last in line,
and of course the people who are last in line
are going to be very unhappy with that situation. We
(07:54):
didn't have social media at the time. Today I could
do the same thing on Twitter, but I didn't have
Twitter back then. So what happened when we began to
realize what a big controversy Bush v. Gore was going
to become. I sat down with the on site assignment
editors of all the big TV networks that were here
in Tallahassee. And it was not just the American networks.
(08:17):
There was also some foreign networks as well, and I
had a big powwow, and I said, what could we
do that's going to make this fairer? What's going to
work best for you? And the consensus that they reached
was they needed someone to come out and just read
a brief, bottom line announcement of what each decision meant
when there was a major decision coming out of the court,
(08:39):
and they wanted thirty minutes notice so that they would
have time to break into programming because this was going
to go live worldwide. And they agreed that I did
not have to take questions and answers because I think
the Court would not have agreed to that. The justices
would not have liked that.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
What did it feel like delivering that summary? It was
like a you know, as a private citizen terned oracle.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well, it was very surreal to see the process. I
mean because I was really, as I said, I was
going out and just talking with people casually, like I'm
talking to you right now. And it had been and
you know, all of a sudden, when when that order
came out and there were all these people and all
these microphones, all of a sudden, that changed. Everything had
to become more formal, It had to become a much
(09:21):
more predictable process. The crowds were larger, the security presence
grew all of a sudden. I had armed police officers
around me at all the all times. And it was
very strange to go from this role that I had had,
which was very much a behind the scenes role to
all of a sudden, I'm the guy out front, and
(09:43):
it was very strange to watch that process happen, and
you know, to understand the in real time, the logic
of why it was happening.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
What do you mean?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
We were very accustomed to openness here, We were very
accustomed to being welcoming to people. We had a Southern
y all comattitude. Tallahassee is a very small town. Everybody
knows everybody. Everybody in the press knows everybody. I mean,
I know everybody in the press here, and it's been
that way for a long time. But all of a sudden,
and we had these newcomers coming in from out of town.
(10:13):
Initially at the very beginning phases, if I had a
reporter from New York City saying, well, I don't understand
how you do these things, I could say, well, there's
Lucy Morgan from the Saint Pete Times. Go talk to hers.
She'll explain it to you. But once you start getting
larger and larger crowds, you can't do that kind of
thing anymore. So I had to start trying to figure
out how to get that information across myself, and all
(10:36):
of a sudden. I was having to have meetings with
the Capitol Police, Florida Highway Patrol, Florida Department of Law Enforcement,
City of Tallahassee Police Department, Leon County Sheriff's Office. All
these people were coming in because they had concurrent jurisdiction
over the areas where the crowds were forming, and so
they had to be brought in and consulted on everything
I did. The crowds were later would become enormous.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
More of my conversation with Craig Waters after the break.
I suppose it was when the Florida Spreme Court ruled
to extend the certification deadline to the twenty sixth that people,
perhaps on the Bush side, started to really see the
(11:21):
institution as being against them. And is that when you
started getting threats and stuff like that?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
From my perspective, After the issuance of that particular opinion
on November twenty first, that was when the spin began
to try to portray the Florida Supreme Court as being
biased toward the Democratic side. I'm sure that was driven
by some sense of fear. You don't launch that kind
of elaborate public relations effort without some reason.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
What do they do exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
That was when I began noticing people going on television
and really criticizing the Florida Supreme Court. And it was
very interesting here from the perspective at the Florida Supreme
Court because directly across the street, on the terraces of
the Capitol building, that was where the press had pitched
their tents. Literally, there are all these white tents, and
every major news organization had a white tint. My office
(12:13):
actually looks out over that area, and I could see
all of these very major political figures going from tent
to tent to tent to tent doing interviews. Then I
could watch what they were saying on television, and they
were conducting spin against the Florida Supreme Court. I, of course,
I was trying to do media interviews as well to
(12:34):
get as much good information as I could. During that
particular point in time that I was contacted by a
television news program that I did not know that much
about at the time. If I recall correctly, it was
called Hannity and Colmbs. I actually got into this interview
and realized that the other person on the other end
(12:59):
of the interview was someone I also had never heard
of whose name was Anne Colter, and she launched into
a tirade against the Florida Supreme Court. I was particularly
irritated with that because Sean Hannity's people had told me
they only wanted me to come and talk about procedural matters,
which is really all I'm qualified to talk about, And
(13:20):
all of a sudden, there was Anne Culter trying to
debate me about the merits of Florida Supreme Court opinions.
So I literally ended up saying over and over and
over again to Sean Hannity that his people had asked
me to appear only for procedural issues, and that they
had apparently brought me under this interview under false pretenses.
(13:41):
That was probably one of the most vivid examples of
the spin that I encountered.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Was it accompanied by personal attacks on you Outside the
media I managed.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
There were two public email accounts. They were the email
accounts that were listed on most of the web pages
of the Florida Supreme Court. So we started getting tens
of thousands of emails. I couldn't even go through all
the emails. You know, some of them really were personal attacks,
and if you read them, you would begin to realize that.
But these people were extremely confused about the process. Many
of them thought that I was the one who was
(14:15):
personally making the decisions that I was announcing on the
steps of the Florida Supreme Court, and then they would
treat me accordingly. And some of it was very vulgar
and some of it was threatening. We handed some of
it over to law enforcement because of the threatening nature.
I didn't want to get a pulled in that direction
at that point in time. I had too many other
(14:36):
pots on the stove at that point, and so I
actually stopped even opening those email accounts at some point
because it just was too much of a distraction.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And repe were calling your cell phone that you had
posted online.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah, the cell phone we ended up just turning off.
It became useless. I got another cell phone during that
period of time and we started using that, and my
office phone number also became unusable. I'd also put that
on the web page when I first put put that
out there. We actually tried for a while to bring
in staff to answer my phone because it was ringing constantly,
and then we finally just gave up on that and
(15:06):
just turned We unplugged the phone and let it go
all good a voicemail. Of course, the voicemail quickly filled up.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
There was such a novel experience. I mean, I know
this happens all the time now to people who are
in the middle of the news, but to like just
be on the receiving end of such easy like the
the barrier to entry on that communication for the people
who were contacting you were so low. It had been higher,
like even quite recently in history.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It was certainly my first encounter with this sort of
twenty four hour news phenomenon that can take someone who's
unknown and turned them into a household name overnight.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Is what happened to you.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I mean, it is very much. It was amazing to watch,
and it wasn't something that I liked. Even for a
period of about six months after it was over. People
would stop and point and stare at me in airports.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Did you feel compelled to undermine the perception that the
Florida Supreme Court was biased towards gloor in your self presentation,
especially when you were actually giving those reading those orders
and reading those decisions.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The first episode of that where the optics played a
major role in a decision I made was right before
I went out to make the December eighth announcement about
the statewide recount. Enormous crowds had formed outside and they
were quite boisterous. The police were very concerned. I was
inside the rotun to the building. The building was closed,
(16:30):
of course, and there was no one in the rotunda
area except me in the law enforcement. I was there
with my prepared statement and was getting ready, and one
of the law enforcement officers came up and said, we
have a bulletproof vest for you, and we would really
like you to wear this because we're concerned. And the
thing that flashed into my head was something I remembered.
(16:52):
I've always been something of a student of public relations,
and I remember back when Hillary Clinton was working for
her husband, who was president at the time, on his
healthcare initiative, which had become very controversial, and she was
going to an airport and she was television cameras were
following her, and there was an image of her walking
(17:14):
through this airport wearing a bulletproof veest and she looked
scared and mistrustful and afraid. That was the image that
popped into my mind, and that was the image that
I did not want to project, and thinking of the optics.
I decided not to wear the bulletproof fest. I just
thought that was completely the wrong image to project at
that particular point in time.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Well would have projected, it.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Would have projected closure. Fear.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Mistrust was the reason that they proposed the bulletproof fest.
That they understood that substance of a decision would be
so provocative.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
The problem wasn't, really, I think, so much the nature
of the decision, because the whole thing had been controversial.
The problem was that the crowds were so large. The
streets were absolutely jam packed. The area between here and
the Capitol was full of people. They didn't tell me
at the time, but thank god they didn't tell me
they were actually police snipers on the roofs of nearby
(18:09):
buildings while I was out there for my minute in
forty five seconds making the announcement. Someone later showed me
photographs that were taken from the top of the Capitol,
which is twenty two stories and you can clearly see
a police sniper laying on his stomach on the roof
of City Hall, just a block away from where I
was making the announcement.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Is it because they were getting threat threats?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
There were threats coming into all different places, the email
threats that I've already told you about, threats to different offices.
I know Catherine Harris was getting some serious threats. So
the general atmosphere among those of us who were the
public figures in mass you know, was we understood that
there were crazy people who had become obsessed with this
particular event.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
You stipulated that you didn't want to project fear or mistrust.
Did you feel it? Did you feel fear?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
It was a frightening thing in a lot of ways
going out onto the steps, particularly that evening in December eighth,
when they had offered me the bulletproof vest. I think
that scared me more than anything else. Dead this idea
I have to wear a bulletproof vests. My god, what's
going on here? That's not the Tallahassee, I know. And
there was a moment I got out onto the you know,
(19:19):
to the podium, and I began reading. I had these
lights shining in my face, so I couldn't see the
crowds very well because I was blinded, and there was
a large piece of metallic equipment nearby that fell over.
And the thought that went through my head at that
particular point in time is my God, there's the bullet,
you know. But I just at that point, I just
kept reading and kept thinking of, well, if I can
(19:42):
get through this, it's a minute in forty five seconds,
then I'm okay. It was frightening in a lot of ways,
but it was something that I also knew that needed
to be done and had to be done.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I know that you are not, in fact the embodiment
of the Florida Stroom Court, and I know that you
don't identify with it necessarily as if it's views and
it's rulings are yours. But to the extent that you
do work here, to the extent that you were the
voice of it, did you have any feelings in response
to the US Supreme Court issuing a stay and ending
the thing that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to begin?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
When the U. S. Supreme Court issued its stay and
the arguments that followed, I really got the impression that
the US Supreme Court had been listening to the press
too much, and to the spin machine in particular. I knew,
because of the thirteen years I'd worked here that what
the Florida Supreme Court was trying to do was apply
precedent that was more than a century old about how
(20:40):
you count disputed votes in Florida that got lost when
the spin machine took over, and instead the spin machine
was portraying the Florida Supreme Court as this out of control,
runaway body that was trying to throw the election. And
I knew that was not true. And I really feel
like that that impression succeeded to some extent and that
(21:04):
it did have some influence on the role the U. S.
Supreme Court later took. I think the US Supreme Court
to a degree came to believe that the Florida Supreme
Court was out of control.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
There was even a specific thing I remember reading somewhere
that like I think it wasist. Rnquist had a problem
with you being.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yes, you did.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
That's been quite personal or not, you know, personal.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
But well, David Kaplan in his book The Accidental President,
actually wrote about it. Renquist apparently did think it was
it was an improper thing for a court to have
someone go out and make announcements about what was happening.
I don't think that that was the correct view. It
certainly is not the view that has been endorsed by history.
(21:48):
Every court in the nation with the possible exception still
of the US Supreme Court does what the Florida Supreme
Court was pioneering back then, and the scenes at the
US Supreme Court where they were handing out paper copies
and you had reporters crawling over each other trying to
get copies and then running back to television cameras flipping
(22:09):
through pages trying to find that one key sentence. It
was chaos. It created a horrible impression here at the
Florida Supreme Court. We avoided that by having me go
out on the steps and read a simple statement that
was usually no more than two minutes.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Thanks for listening to this special episode of Fiasco. Fiasco
Bush v. Gore is produced by Prolog Projects and distributed
by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Madelin Kaplan,
Lulla Culpa, Andrew Parsons, and me Leon Nathock. We had
additional editorial support from Lisa Chase and Daniel Riley. Thanks
for listening. See you next week.
Pushkin when they had offered me the bulletproof vest I
think that scared me more than anything else. Dead this
idea I have to wear a bulletproof vests. My god,
what's going on here? That's not the tall hassee I know.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Hey, Fiasco listeners, it's Leon Napok. This is the third
and a series of bonus episodes featuring standout interviews from
our season, Bush v. Gore. We're sharing these extras for
anyone who wants to go deeper into the story of
the two thousand election and to hear more from the
central players we spoke to over the course of our
reporting process. We spent a lot of time this season
(00:58):
talking to people who live and breathe politics, strategists, advisors, journalists,
and lawyers. Lots and lots of lawyers. But some of
the people and institutions that got caught up in the
Florida recount were not partisan or political at all. In fact,
they were supposed to be anything But today I wanted
to share a conversation I had with one such person.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
One of the funny aspects of being the spokesman for
any institution is generally, if someone is getting credit for something,
it's not me. It's going to be one of my bosses.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
This is Craig Waters, the former Public Information Officer of
the Florida Supreme Court, a role he held during the
two thousand recount.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
But if things aren't going well, if things are controversial,
or if there's trouble, then I'm the one who has
to go out and do the talking.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
In two thousand, the Florida Supreme Court became the epicenter
of the political universe, and it made decisions that were
hugely consequential and controversial. First, the Court prevented Secretary of
State Catherine Harris from certifying the results at the usual deadline.
Then it ruled that Harris had to wait until at
least November twenty sixth to allow counties to finish their recounts.
(02:05):
And then on December eighth, the Court shocked just about
everyone by ordering a statewide manual recount.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
The Circuit Court sall order a manual recount of all
under votes in any Florida county where such a recount
has not yet occurred. Because time is of the essence,
the recount shall commence immediately.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Waters read summaries of each opinion to the press after
the Court handed them down, and for each decision, conservative
pundits and Bush campaign staffers were outraged. They attacked the
Court as a group of partisan democratic judges. It was
Craig Waters's job to defend the institution that he believed
in and to keep the public informed. In the process.
He became a public figure in his own right. When
(02:48):
I talked to Waters about what this was like. We
began in the morning after the two thousand election. Waters
was staying at a hotel in Orlando, and the next
morning he went downstairs to check the news. He realized
pretty quickly that the Florida Supreme Court was probably going
to be involved.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I went down to the hotel desk and found stacks
of the Orlando Sentinel newspaper. All of them would contradictory headlines.
One said Gore had won, one said Bush had won.
Another one said too close to call. I couldn't figure
out what was going on.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
These were different editions.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
These were different editions that had come out at different
times during the evening. So I went back, and I
didn't want to call the Chief Justice right then. I
knew that there was a problem, but I called the
Associated Press here in Tallahassee they tended to stay on
top of things. The Associated Press was the biggest of
all the news organizations at that point in time, and
they filled me in on what had happened overnight in Florida,
(03:40):
so I felt I had the latest information. And then
I called the Chief Justice, who was Charlie Wells at
the time, and his first words to me were, get
back here as soon as you can.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Why did he tell you to get back as soon
as you could.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Because crowds at that point were already forming between the
Florida Supreme Court Building and the Capitol. The Florida Supreme
Court Building is directly across Duval Street from the Capitol Building,
and there's a large terraced plaza area between the two buildings,
and there already were news setting up. There were cameras
all over the place, There were reporters, some sight seers
(04:15):
were starting to gather as well. There was a general sense,
I think, until I asked you, that something was going
on that was going to involve the city in a
big way.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
So it was clear to you that the Florida Supreme
Court would have a role to play in resolving it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It wasn't clear at that point it seemed likely. When
I sat down with Chief Justice Wells when I got back,
he told me that his hope was that it would
remain in federal courts, and there was some basis for that.
I mean, federal laws were involved.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And the Bush lawyers had filed shot.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, the very first lawsuits were filed in the federal court,
I think because everybody assumed it was going to be
a federal matter. The problem with that, after you start
thinking about it, is that the United States has a
peculiar way of dealing with elections. Under the federal system
that was established by the founding fathers, the supervision of elections,
including national elections, was left to the states themselves, and therefore,
(05:09):
as a matter of state law, the federal courts, when
they got these first lawsuits, after they realized you know this,
that the the issues involved too many state law issues,
began kicking it out and saying, no, you're going to
have to go to state court on this, because because
what you're talking about is state laws, not federal law.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
What was the first occasion you had to get up
in front of the courthouse and address reporters.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
It started very gradually. One of the things that happened
very early on was that our marshal locked our doors,
which infuriated me. We've always been an open courthouse and
I did not like anything that looked like we, you know,
that we were closing ourselves off. I went to the
Chief Justice, to Charlie Wells at the time, and said,
the Marshal just locked the doors, please reverse him immediately.
(05:56):
But we did have large crowds that were gathering, and
there were problems inside the Capitol building with the crowds already,
you know, people getting into public spaces and causing disruptions.
And Chief Justice Wells was unwilling to countermand the Marshal,
so he told me right then and there, and this
was just after the election had happened, he said, well,
why don't you just go out and talk to people,
Go out and talk to the press, talk to whoever
(06:19):
you know. You're our communications director. So I actually started
just walking out in front on the front steps in
a very casual way, you know, like you know, the
people milling, and I'd go up and start talking with
some of the ones that I knew. I knew a
lot of the reporters here in town already, and that's
really how it started me having very informal conversations with
people outside the building, and as the event progressed, it
(06:39):
just became more and more formal, and the crowds grew
more and more large over time, until we reached the
point where one day there were so many people and
so many microphones, somebody said, well, let's get a podium,
so we can put all the microphones on the podium.
And then the podium came out, and then the podium
gradually moved up the steps, and then all of a
(07:00):
sudden there were lights, and then they were putting a
microphone on my tie. So it evolved pretty.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Rapidly, and so it's not like you always read decisions.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
We here at the Florida Supreme Court have actually operated
under a rule for a very long time that the
opinions of the court speak for themselves. So generally I
do not comment on the opinions. I certainly don't try
to interpret what they mean. You find any two attorneys
and they'll disagree over what any opinion means, because that's
what attorneys do. But one of the problems we face
with Bush v. Gore was that we had huge crowds
(07:33):
of reporters. At the heights of it, we would have
two or three hundred reporters standing outside the building waiting
for a decision from the court. Trying to be fair
to two or three hundred people is very difficult. If
you start releasing paper opinions, someone's going to be first
in line and someone's going to be last in line,
and of course the people who are last in line
are going to be very unhappy with that situation. We
(07:54):
didn't have social media at the time. Today I could
do the same thing on Twitter, but I didn't have
Twitter back then. So what happened when we began to
realize what a big controversy Bush v. Gore was going
to become. I sat down with the on site assignment
editors of all the big TV networks that were here
in Tallahassee. And it was not just the American networks.
(08:17):
There was also some foreign networks as well, and I
had a big powwow, and I said, what could we
do that's going to make this fairer? What's going to
work best for you? And the consensus that they reached
was they needed someone to come out and just read
a brief, bottom line announcement of what each decision meant
when there was a major decision coming out of the court,
(08:39):
and they wanted thirty minutes notice so that they would
have time to break into programming because this was going
to go live worldwide. And they agreed that I did
not have to take questions and answers because I think
the Court would not have agreed to that. The justices
would not have liked that.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
What did it feel like delivering that summary? It was
like a you know, as a private citizen terned oracle.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well, it was very surreal to see the process. I
mean because I was really, as I said, I was
going out and just talking with people casually, like I'm
talking to you right now. And it had been and
you know, all of a sudden, when when that order
came out and there were all these people and all
these microphones, all of a sudden, that changed. Everything had
to become more formal, It had to become a much
(09:21):
more predictable process. The crowds were larger, the security presence
grew all of a sudden. I had armed police officers
around me at all the all times. And it was
very strange to go from this role that I had had,
which was very much a behind the scenes role to
all of a sudden, I'm the guy out front, and
(09:43):
it was very strange to watch that process happen, and
you know, to understand the in real time, the logic
of why it was happening.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
What do you mean?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
We were very accustomed to openness here, We were very
accustomed to being welcoming to people. We had a Southern
y all comattitude. Tallahassee is a very small town. Everybody
knows everybody. Everybody in the press knows everybody. I mean,
I know everybody in the press here, and it's been
that way for a long time. But all of a sudden,
and we had these newcomers coming in from out of town.
(10:13):
Initially at the very beginning phases, if I had a
reporter from New York City saying, well, I don't understand
how you do these things, I could say, well, there's
Lucy Morgan from the Saint Pete Times. Go talk to hers.
She'll explain it to you. But once you start getting
larger and larger crowds, you can't do that kind of
thing anymore. So I had to start trying to figure
out how to get that information across myself, and all
(10:36):
of a sudden. I was having to have meetings with
the Capitol Police, Florida Highway Patrol, Florida Department of Law Enforcement,
City of Tallahassee Police Department, Leon County Sheriff's Office. All
these people were coming in because they had concurrent jurisdiction
over the areas where the crowds were forming, and so
they had to be brought in and consulted on everything
I did. The crowds were later would become enormous.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
More of my conversation with Craig Waters after the break.
I suppose it was when the Florida Spreme Court ruled
to extend the certification deadline to the twenty sixth that people,
perhaps on the Bush side, started to really see the
(11:21):
institution as being against them. And is that when you
started getting threats and stuff like that?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
From my perspective, After the issuance of that particular opinion
on November twenty first, that was when the spin began
to try to portray the Florida Supreme Court as being
biased toward the Democratic side. I'm sure that was driven
by some sense of fear. You don't launch that kind
of elaborate public relations effort without some reason.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
What do they do exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
That was when I began noticing people going on television
and really criticizing the Florida Supreme Court. And it was
very interesting here from the perspective at the Florida Supreme
Court because directly across the street, on the terraces of
the Capitol building, that was where the press had pitched
their tents. Literally, there are all these white tents, and
every major news organization had a white tint. My office
(12:13):
actually looks out over that area, and I could see
all of these very major political figures going from tent
to tent to tent to tent doing interviews. Then I
could watch what they were saying on television, and they
were conducting spin against the Florida Supreme Court. I, of course,
I was trying to do media interviews as well to
(12:34):
get as much good information as I could. During that
particular point in time that I was contacted by a
television news program that I did not know that much
about at the time. If I recall correctly, it was
called Hannity and Colmbs. I actually got into this interview
and realized that the other person on the other end
(12:59):
of the interview was someone I also had never heard
of whose name was Anne Colter, and she launched into
a tirade against the Florida Supreme Court. I was particularly
irritated with that because Sean Hannity's people had told me
they only wanted me to come and talk about procedural matters,
which is really all I'm qualified to talk about, And
(13:20):
all of a sudden, there was Anne Culter trying to
debate me about the merits of Florida Supreme Court opinions.
So I literally ended up saying over and over and
over again to Sean Hannity that his people had asked
me to appear only for procedural issues, and that they
had apparently brought me under this interview under false pretenses.
(13:41):
That was probably one of the most vivid examples of
the spin that I encountered.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Was it accompanied by personal attacks on you Outside the
media I managed.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
There were two public email accounts. They were the email
accounts that were listed on most of the web pages
of the Florida Supreme Court. So we started getting tens
of thousands of emails. I couldn't even go through all
the emails. You know, some of them really were personal attacks,
and if you read them, you would begin to realize that.
But these people were extremely confused about the process. Many
of them thought that I was the one who was
(14:15):
personally making the decisions that I was announcing on the
steps of the Florida Supreme Court, and then they would
treat me accordingly. And some of it was very vulgar
and some of it was threatening. We handed some of
it over to law enforcement because of the threatening nature.
I didn't want to get a pulled in that direction
at that point in time. I had too many other
(14:36):
pots on the stove at that point, and so I
actually stopped even opening those email accounts at some point
because it just was too much of a distraction.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And repe were calling your cell phone that you had
posted online.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah, the cell phone we ended up just turning off.
It became useless. I got another cell phone during that
period of time and we started using that, and my
office phone number also became unusable. I'd also put that
on the web page when I first put put that
out there. We actually tried for a while to bring
in staff to answer my phone because it was ringing constantly,
and then we finally just gave up on that and
(15:06):
just turned We unplugged the phone and let it go
all good a voicemail. Of course, the voicemail quickly filled up.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
There was such a novel experience. I mean, I know
this happens all the time now to people who are
in the middle of the news, but to like just
be on the receiving end of such easy like the
the barrier to entry on that communication for the people
who were contacting you were so low. It had been higher,
like even quite recently in history.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It was certainly my first encounter with this sort of
twenty four hour news phenomenon that can take someone who's
unknown and turned them into a household name overnight.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Is what happened to you.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I mean, it is very much. It was amazing to watch,
and it wasn't something that I liked. Even for a
period of about six months after it was over. People
would stop and point and stare at me in airports.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Did you feel compelled to undermine the perception that the
Florida Supreme Court was biased towards gloor in your self presentation,
especially when you were actually giving those reading those orders
and reading those decisions.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The first episode of that where the optics played a
major role in a decision I made was right before
I went out to make the December eighth announcement about
the statewide recount. Enormous crowds had formed outside and they
were quite boisterous. The police were very concerned. I was
inside the rotun to the building. The building was closed,
(16:30):
of course, and there was no one in the rotunda
area except me in the law enforcement. I was there
with my prepared statement and was getting ready, and one
of the law enforcement officers came up and said, we
have a bulletproof vest for you, and we would really
like you to wear this because we're concerned. And the
thing that flashed into my head was something I remembered.
(16:52):
I've always been something of a student of public relations,
and I remember back when Hillary Clinton was working for
her husband, who was president at the time, on his
healthcare initiative, which had become very controversial, and she was
going to an airport and she was television cameras were
following her, and there was an image of her walking
(17:14):
through this airport wearing a bulletproof veest and she looked
scared and mistrustful and afraid. That was the image that
popped into my mind, and that was the image that
I did not want to project, and thinking of the optics.
I decided not to wear the bulletproof fest. I just
thought that was completely the wrong image to project at
that particular point in time.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Well would have projected, it.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Would have projected closure. Fear.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Mistrust was the reason that they proposed the bulletproof fest.
That they understood that substance of a decision would be
so provocative.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
The problem wasn't, really, I think, so much the nature
of the decision, because the whole thing had been controversial.
The problem was that the crowds were so large. The
streets were absolutely jam packed. The area between here and
the Capitol was full of people. They didn't tell me
at the time, but thank god they didn't tell me
they were actually police snipers on the roofs of nearby
(18:09):
buildings while I was out there for my minute in
forty five seconds making the announcement. Someone later showed me
photographs that were taken from the top of the Capitol,
which is twenty two stories and you can clearly see
a police sniper laying on his stomach on the roof
of City Hall, just a block away from where I
was making the announcement.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Is it because they were getting threat threats?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
There were threats coming into all different places, the email
threats that I've already told you about, threats to different offices.
I know Catherine Harris was getting some serious threats. So
the general atmosphere among those of us who were the
public figures in mass you know, was we understood that
there were crazy people who had become obsessed with this
particular event.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
You stipulated that you didn't want to project fear or mistrust.
Did you feel it? Did you feel fear?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
It was a frightening thing in a lot of ways
going out onto the steps, particularly that evening in December eighth,
when they had offered me the bulletproof vest. I think
that scared me more than anything else. Dead this idea
I have to wear a bulletproof vests. My god, what's
going on here? That's not the Tallahassee, I know. And
there was a moment I got out onto the you know,
(19:19):
to the podium, and I began reading. I had these
lights shining in my face, so I couldn't see the
crowds very well because I was blinded, and there was
a large piece of metallic equipment nearby that fell over.
And the thought that went through my head at that
particular point in time is my God, there's the bullet,
you know. But I just at that point, I just
kept reading and kept thinking of, well, if I can
(19:42):
get through this, it's a minute in forty five seconds,
then I'm okay. It was frightening in a lot of ways,
but it was something that I also knew that needed
to be done and had to be done.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I know that you are not, in fact the embodiment
of the Florida Stroom Court, and I know that you
don't identify with it necessarily as if it's views and
it's rulings are yours. But to the extent that you
do work here, to the extent that you were the
voice of it, did you have any feelings in response
to the US Supreme Court issuing a stay and ending
the thing that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to begin?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
When the U. S. Supreme Court issued its stay and
the arguments that followed, I really got the impression that
the US Supreme Court had been listening to the press
too much, and to the spin machine in particular. I knew,
because of the thirteen years I'd worked here that what
the Florida Supreme Court was trying to do was apply
precedent that was more than a century old about how
(20:40):
you count disputed votes in Florida that got lost when
the spin machine took over, and instead the spin machine
was portraying the Florida Supreme Court as this out of control,
runaway body that was trying to throw the election. And
I knew that was not true. And I really feel
like that that impression succeeded to some extent and that
(21:04):
it did have some influence on the role the U. S.
Supreme Court later took. I think the US Supreme Court
to a degree came to believe that the Florida Supreme
Court was out of control.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
There was even a specific thing I remember reading somewhere
that like I think it wasist. Rnquist had a problem
with you being.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yes, you did.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
That's been quite personal or not, you know, personal.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
But well, David Kaplan in his book The Accidental President,
actually wrote about it. Renquist apparently did think it was
it was an improper thing for a court to have
someone go out and make announcements about what was happening.
I don't think that that was the correct view. It
certainly is not the view that has been endorsed by history.
(21:48):
Every court in the nation with the possible exception still
of the US Supreme Court does what the Florida Supreme
Court was pioneering back then, and the scenes at the
US Supreme Court where they were handing out paper copies
and you had reporters crawling over each other trying to
get copies and then running back to television cameras flipping
(22:09):
through pages trying to find that one key sentence. It
was chaos. It created a horrible impression here at the
Florida Supreme Court. We avoided that by having me go
out on the steps and read a simple statement that
was usually no more than two minutes.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Thanks for listening to this special episode of Fiasco. Fiasco
Bush v. Gore is produced by Prolog Projects and distributed
by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Madelin Kaplan,
Lulla Culpa, Andrew Parsons, and me Leon Nathock. We had
additional editorial support from Lisa Chase and Daniel Riley. Thanks
for listening. See you next week.
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