November 25, 2024 • 39 mins
Conversations with Florida’s former Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the Bush supporter who presided over the 2000 recount, and self-described Republican operative and “Bush liege” who embedded in Harris’s office during the recount and helped her bring the election “in for a landing.”
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It was an unprecedented circumstance. It was fraut with politics.
I mean, we were in the process of choosing the
leader of the free world, and she was not staffed
for that.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I had I mean, I was just there. I certified
the election. It was kind of a ministerial job.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hey, Fiasco listeners, it's Leon Napok. Welcome back to this
run of special bonus episodes of Fiasco Bush Vigor. Today
we're going to focus on a Florida institution that played
an absolutely pivotal role during the recount, the Secretary of
State's Office, which, as you know, was in charge of
overseeing the recount and certifying the vote totals once all
the ballots were counted. Sitting at the controls of the
(01:08):
Secretary of State's Office was a woman who turned out
to be one of the most memorable figures of the recount,
Saga Catherine Harris.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
And, in accordance with the laws of the State of Florida,
hi hereby declare Governor George W. Bush, the winner of
Florida's twenty five electoral votes for the President of the
United States.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Harris was a Republican with ties to the Bush campaign.
And because of the power she held over which ballots
got counted in the official tally, Harris became a symbol
to Democrats of everything that was unfair about the Florida
recount process. Speculations swirled that Harris was motivated by partisanship,
that she and others in her office were trying to
help Bush win. We'll hear directly from Harris in a
(01:51):
little bit, but first we wanted to play part of
our interview with someone who wasn't officially on her staff,
but who did everything he could to exert his influence
during the recount, the lawyer and lobbyist Max Dapanovitch. You
might remember Stapanovitch from episode three of the series. He's
the guy who says he was secretly and by someone
affiliated with the Bush campaign to embed with the Secretary
(02:13):
of State's office and steer Katherine Harris towards decisions that
would benefit the Republicans. When I sat down with Stapanovitch
for our interview, he told me how he landed in
Harris's office days after the election.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I was pursuing a master's in medieval French history at FSU,
and I was in a Latin class when my phone
buzzed and I stepped outside to take it, and someone said,
can you get into Catherine Harris's office. This was on
the ninth Thursday, two days after the election, and so
(02:50):
I contacted Ben McKay, who was hurry, very young chief
of staff, and said, you guys are besieged. Do you
need any help? Ben said, boy, do we? And so
I went into Catherine's office on the afternoon of the
ninth and we went to work. The first thing we
(03:13):
did was we were sitting in his large conference room,
which was on the plaza level at the Capitol. I
had these floor to ceiling windows, and there were very
tall ceilings, and so we taped cardboard over those so
that folks wandering around the plaza and there were a
lot of media folks wandering around the plaza would not
see us because my presence, given my partisan reputation and all,
(03:37):
would have been controversial at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
What was your partisan reputation?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Well, I've always been a Republican operative. If that's the
right word. I don't know whether I like that phrase
or not. I was the executive director for Reagan Bush
in Florida and eighty four. I managed then mayor of
Tampa Bob Martinez's givenatorial campaign in nineteen eighty six he
(04:07):
was elected. I was his chief of staff. I was
a senior advisor on Jeb's first Jeb Bush's first huminatorial campaign,
and over time helped or advise others, including then Senator
Catherine Harris, who was running for Secretary of State, which
was an elective office at the time. So when it
(04:32):
was thought that Catherine could use some advice and counsel,
I was asked to provide it.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Now, when you say you had a reputation as a
part of them, is that just because you had worked
for all these folks or you were a true believer
and you were known as a true believer.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Probably depending on who you talk to, and you can
ask the others you're going to talk to about that,
the answer to your question is yes, depending on their perspective.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Sorry, yes, what, Yes?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I was very partisan and known for it. There was
no doubt about who I was, how I felt, or
why I was summoned. As Mary Madaline once said, I
am a bush leech, a bush let l I e g. E.
Bush Leech got a vassal.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So I mean beyond the very practical fact that they
needed help. Why would you say you were.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Summoned because it was an unprecedented circumstance. It was fraught
with politics. I mean, we were in the process of
choosing the leader of the free world, and she was
not staffed for that. She had very capable employees in
(05:49):
the Secretary of State's office, but this was something of
an entirely different order of magnitude.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Can you describe the atmosphere and Tallahassee in those days
after the election?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It was very tense. It was almost circus like. I mean,
there were remote trucks parked everywhere. The you know, the
biggest names and most recognizable faces in national media were
strolling up and down the plaza at the Capitol and
doing stand ups outside, and you know, were conferences with
(06:23):
Jim Baker for crying out loud and more than Christopher
was here. I mean, it was a byguide circus.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Did you feel like you were a part of it?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I did not feel all of that tension. I was
inside the building. I arrived at dawn, entered the building
through the basement where the cabinet room is, took the
stairs up to the plaza level, which accessed internally. The
Secretary of State's office, and then at night in someone
(06:53):
else's car, I was driven from the building so that
people would not know that I was in there. So
you know my feeling. My experience of the atmosphere was
a conference table in a conference room with a handful
of people.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Do you think you would have had a different role
in the recount process if you hadn't gotten that phone
call and been asked to join Secretary Harris's office?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I wouldn't have had if I hadn't been called. Uh,
I don't think I would have had. I wouldn't anticipate
I having had any role.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You don't think someone el would have called you about
some other job. I feel like everyone in Florida got
a phone call who had a law.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
No, I don't think so.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I haven't practiced law in a while. My license remains current.
But no one would call me to represent them in
a piece of litigation relating to that or a stolen dog.
I mean, just not what I did well?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So what are your special skills that they were looking for?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Oh gosh, this is somewhat difficult because while I'm not
noted for my modesty, it would be immodest. But I
will go ahead and take the chance to say that. Uh.
You know, basically, I'm a strategist. If I have a skill,
it is you can put me in the room with
a rock, you know, room full of facts, and I
will be able to ask the right question pretty quickly
(08:17):
and suggest the best answer pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Uh, what was your assessment of what Secretary Harris's office
and and the people working with her, including yourself, could
bring to the table, Like there was this whole thing
unfolding right outside of that room with the conference table. Sure,
what was your what was it you were going to
inject into that process?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, first place, she was the state's chief elections officer.
Now that sounds much more impressive than it was in
fact at the time and probably is in fact now,
because you know, the individual supervisors of elections are powerful
constitutional figures in their own right, but the Secretary of
(09:05):
State's office did have considerable oversight. And you know, the
first thing, basically I said to Catherine when I arrived
that afternoon, is this again out of hand. We have
to bring this election in for a landing. And I'm
not big on sports analogies, but it's like a football team,
(09:27):
you do your job. I'll do my job and we
might be able to win. The secretary of State's job
was not to steal the election by breaking the law
or bending the law. I took the view that it
was her job to enforce the election laws of Florida,
(09:51):
which brings me.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Actually to another to a question about her, like, I
don't know how close you are with her or anything
about your relationship, but I'm curious you could just describe
her sort of state of mind during this time. How
this was a fact her.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Is Catherine was able, and Catherine worked really hard at
that job. She was there with the first employees. This
is not having to do with the recount. This is
on any day. She was there with the first employees
in the morning and was one of the last to leave.
She took she took the job very seriously. But this
(10:25):
this was something different. This is this was it's never
it had never happened before, it may never happen again.
She was very tense, she was very nervous. She wanted
to get it right. She didn't want to be hated
(10:47):
by half the country, and so she needed to be
encouraged to do the job the way the statute said.
And if that required her to be hated by half
the country. That was part of the job. I told
(11:07):
her at the time. You know, a lot of people
run for public office, and to give them the benefit
of the doubt, I assume that most of them want
to do good do good things, and they believe that
when that moment comes, when that you know, John Kennedy
profile encourage moment arise, that they will rise to the occasion. Now,
(11:30):
what in fact happens is is that most of the
time that moment doesn't arrive, or when it does arrive
and it would cost you something to rise to the occasion,
you fail to recognize it miraculously or you rationalize it
away so that you don't have to make that sacrifice.
I told her that this is that moment. It's not
(11:53):
ten years down the road when you're in Congress or
anywhere else. This is that moment. If you're going to
do something, do it today.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
And what did you what did you tell her was
her her mission? And what was what was the thing
that you that she needed to do.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, to not be cowed, to not be browbeaten, whether
by you know, the Democrats, the judiciary, or the press,
to just do the job play a position forced the law.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
But I guess, I guess I'm what I'm trying to
get at. It is like, how overt was it in
your conversations within the state Secretary State's office that your
goal was to deliver the election to Bush.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
We didn't have to deliver the election to Bush. He'd won,
he had the votes, they'd been counted twice. The goal
was to maintain the integrity of the election and not
let it be altered by others.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
But you're smiling as you say that, so I don't
know if you're trying to you know.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Well, George Bush, with two counts statewide counts, had won
the election. I think after those two state white counts,
before some of the recounts come in by a bigger
margin than it was at the end. What kind of
damn food would sit around and say, you know what,
(13:15):
we need to just keep counting until the other side wins.
That seemed like a good thing for us to do.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
But where your critic every day? Forgive me, but what
are your critics saying, like, you guys shouldn't think of
yourselves as being on the other side of the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, that was the advantage we had one is that
we were on the side of the wall. The laws
said what the dates were, and we were on the
side of the results. They'd been counted twice. So if
you wanted to fault somebody for trying to cook the books,
I would fault ron Klean and those guys, as competent
(13:53):
as they were, because they were the ones who would
not accept what the law in Florida said and would
not accept what the two vote counts had resulted in.
They wanted to just keep working until they could figure
out how to win an election they had lost.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
To put yourself in their minds, and how to tell
me how they thought of these deadlines. You clearly thought
these were deadlines to be enforced.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
What was to them, Well, they thought, they thought, I
think I think, you know, in all fairness, I think
their perspective was is that what this entire exercise was
about was divining in some fashion the will of the
electorate and taking as much time as it was necessary
(14:44):
to do so.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
We thought, maybe a good idea, just to comply with
the law.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
And so they mean they thought of these deadlines as fungible.
They thought they were what.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
They thought they were advisory suggestions. We thought that they
were statutory deadlines that a court would enforce, and with
some deviations and some minor exceptions, we were right and
they were wrong.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
When the Florida Supreme Court issued the injunction against the
certification on November fourteenth, A couple of questions about that.
One is did that come as a surprise to you
guys in the Secretary of State's office? And two, how
did you react? Where did that put you?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I don't have a specific memory of that. I was
tempted to make one up, but I don't have a
specific memory of that. I will tell you this. There
were any number both you know, the Supreme Court level
and at the district court level, of what, from our
perspective were legal setbacks, opinions with which decisions with which
(15:59):
we did not agree. But again, no sense crying over
spilt beer. When something like that occurs, you just keep going,
You do the next thing, you play your position. So
that was a disappointment. What we wanted to happen didn't happen.
So we needed to work harder to make what we
wanted to happen happen.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
There seemed like there's so many what if moments in
the story you know, oh, if it had gone this way,
forget that way, could have been on you know, could
have had a defending Do you like a do you
have a favorite what if moment? A fork in the
road that went your way, or you know, and could
have gone the other.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I really don't. Again, I would like to say something dramatic,
but I really don't. The way that I approached it
in most of the people. When I say most of
the people, you're talking about a handful of people. Me
Adam Goodman. The lawyers, when we consulted with them, was
just keep pounding away, just keep doing it, day after
(17:01):
day after day, with nineteen days until it's done. And
so there was never a eureka moment as far as
I almost concern. I mean, on the last day, we
were keeping the office open to cut the thing off
at five o'clock. So there was never a time when
I thought, well, we want it now, this is over.
(17:22):
It's just all we got to do is just count
the bodies. No, it was right until they again, dumb
ass Sports Matter four played to the whistle.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
All right, That was Max to Panovitch. It's worth saying
here that there is some ambivalence and even disagreement among
alumni of the Florida Secretary of State's Office about how
influential Stepanovitch really was during the recount, and we heard
from a few people that his role has been inflated
over the years. That includes Catherine Harris herself. We'll hear
from her after the break. Here's how Catherine Harris reacted
(18:12):
when I asked her about Stepanovitch's role on her team.
The team He's telling me we where did he feel in?
Speaker 3 (18:19):
That's just funny. I mean, I've heard he makes quips,
and I know you've interviewed him, but I considered him
a friend. He would stop by the office occasionally, and
I could probably count how many times he did, but
he would come in and just talk about things off
the topic because I wasn't going outside. He was just
(18:39):
great to keep a calm. I've heard that he said
he advised me, which is I'm glad he thinks he did.
He was never at our legal meetings, he was never
at our strategy meetings. He was never one time at
our office meeting. Never. He was not a go between
us and the bushes. Because I shut all of that down.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
He definitely told me that he was in there.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Never, not one time in one legal meeting, not one
time with Debbie Kerns, not one time with Joe Clas.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I was at a conference table, like we blocked out
the windows. No one know I was there never.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I can't remember one thing that he directed us to do,
because the things we did we decided in our with
our attorneys. And by the way, with the attorneys were
never sitting at a conference table. We're sitting in my
office on the sofa and chairs always.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
I'm just trying to square this with what yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
No, I mean he can say that, but that's he
wants to insert himself as important, and I understand, and
I value I valued his friendship.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
This was one of many issues that Harris wanted to
set the record straight about. When I talked to her,
and when I asked her what the biggest misconception was
about her role in the two thousand election, she went
to consult a notebook where she had written down specific
claims that she wanted to address.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
There are so many misconceptions.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Is this as you bring a list, No, I start now.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I started writing on the way home from Disney World
and taking our grandchildren. I was just wondering what would
be the greatest misconception. There are so many I mean,
there were so many things perpetuated, perhaps that I stopped
the recounts, or that I arranged that some would be disenfranchised,
(20:20):
you know, which was never We were always we thought,
we were always bending over backwards to do more.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I'll be honest, I'm skeptical of this framing. To my mind,
it just doesn't square with all the decisions that Harris
and her staff made that had the effect of limiting
the scope of the recount. But I'm not here to
argue with Harris. Those thirty six days were not easy
for her. As you heard on Fiasco. She faced all
kinds of ridicule and sexist comments from the media, not
to mention death threats. She also had to make tough
(20:47):
choices in the course of enforcing laws that were contradictory
and vague. That's why I wanted to talk to her
to find out what her frame of mind was during
the recount that made her famous. But it wasn't that easy.
As Harris warned me going into our interview, she doesn't
spend a lot of time thinking about the details of
the recount, and nearly twenty years later, she just doesn't
remember the particulars of what happened or what she was
(21:09):
thinking at the time. Time Still, I think it's in
the spirit of this podcast to give everyone a chance
to explain where they were coming from as best they can,
and to make their case for Harris. Part of that
case was that a show called Fiasco shouldn't even be
tackling the Florida recount at all.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
It wasn't a fiasco, it wasn't a constitutional crisis. It
was close election. And what people didn't understand typically is
that Florida is not a red state. We're not a
blue state. We're a purple state, and we are always
going to have these close elections. And there's nothing wrong
with Florida. It's pretty remarkable that rule of law prevailed
(21:47):
and there wasn't a gunshot fired and a new president
was elected. So I would say what was fiasco esque
was the way the media handled it, and we're so
out of control with incorrect information. We had never had
this kind of situation before. They were quoting their own
state laws instead of looking at Florida's laws, and Florida
(22:08):
has unique laws. They did and understand a real critical
process called the protests and the contest face and even
al Gore's attorneys advised him illy wrongly from out of
the state, and those state attorneys that he had were saying,
don't do this like Catherine's heart. So I would not
(22:28):
say that the election was a fiasco, because the laws
were sufficient to elect a president in a peaceful manner.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah. And I've talked to now a number of people
who have told us stories about like going abroad and
talking to people in different countries, especially countries where they
aren't necessarily democratic, and kind of being telling them like,
you know, yes, this was I'm sure it looked like
a big mess from outside. We guess what. We didn't
have a single you know, there's no generals marching in
(23:01):
the street. There was no you know, there was no
no coup. Right, this was a rule of law situation
that got resolved through the courts.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
He did. In fact, the law was my only safe harbor.
I said early on that I asked my husband, who
had just become a citizen, what am I going to do?
Just kind of rhetorical question. He said it was really simple.
He was Swedish. He said, you just have to protect
your staff because Secretary of State when I finished my
(23:33):
term would become an appointed position, and I'll speak to
that in a moment, but he said, you just have
to protect your staff, to make sure that they're not
put in positions or squandered for the future, and you
have to act with the most extraordinary integrity because you
have to live with yourself the rest of your life.
And I think that advice served me well. People still
(23:55):
come up to me and say thank you a weekly.
I'm in airports every week, so I'm surprised by that.
But I've never accepted that compliment. I just say, hey,
I didn't do anything special. I just followed our laws
and they were efficient. Gratefully, I don't have liberals come
up and say anything mean to me, at least my face,
behind my back eyes, but not to my face. And
(24:16):
so I do appreciate that gesture or lack of gesture.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
You mean, the folks who are saying thank you are like,
there are people who are glad that Bush became president,
and they think that you are to thank for that.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Well I had. I mean, I was just there, I
certified the election. It was kind of a ministerial job.
Just thanked me for not caving into the pressure and
doing something that was contrary to the law.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Did you feel like you were you and your team
were Maxi's family's notwithstanding. Did you you feel like you
and your team were like in the trenches.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah, we did, and we sort of felt like we
because I never could go outside. I never could leave
the office. All of a sudden, I had death threats, windows
were shot out, people were on my property taking pictures
inside my house.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Oh on, you had windows shut up?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I had. My State Senate window was shot. I had
a guy who was a murderer and released from Brazil.
He began stalking me. It just was a crazy time.
FBI had credible threats, people calling before I went into
my very first interview, and I'd never seen a sea
of camera importers like that. I opened the door, I
saw them, and then the chief of police until last
(25:25):
he said, don't worry about that credible threat from the
FBI about blowing up your house. I've got it under control.
I shut the door that I said, what, So, I
feel like we felt like we were in the trenches
of it. Yeah. You look out the windows and you
see hundreds of people and endless media trucks, and I
(25:46):
would watch TV occasionally and see they would say things
that were so outrageous, so pat land true, and I understand.
I mean, if you look at politics today, it's become
a roadmap discredit them intellectually, discredit them their appearance, their intellect,
and then discredit their integrity. And so they were doing that,
(26:10):
and they were acting like I was some dilettante. They said,
she's the baronial Florida, She's the brahmin of the highest order,
she's old money. I mean, all these.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Crazy things, She's the baronial one.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I can't even remember what it was, you know, just
saying that I was so wealthy to be discredited anyway,
It didn't matter appearance, intellect, never mind that I did
my master's at Harvard double course load did it while
I was in office. And then they of course attacked
my integrity. So you know, none of those things are pleasant.
(26:47):
But I was elected, I swore an oath, and I
was going to do it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
When did all that stuff start with what you were
just describing day one or two? Day one or two.
What was your reaction when you learned that there were
these problems with the butterfly ballot like, I've talked to
a bunch of people are like, oh, the first time
I heard there was an issue, like someone called me
and so they were really upset. Like do you remember
(27:12):
how you learned there were robot calls?
Speaker 3 (27:13):
I knew that the Democrats had hired a big marketing
firm to do these robo calls to all the people
on beach, and they got really scared. We all of
a sudden said, what's going on? Oh, we got a
phone call that said about the butterfly ballot. So there
were these calls that went out that everyone got concerned
about the butterfly ballot. And I don't I could see
(27:34):
that there could be a confusion, But you know, I
wasn't there on the ground for that.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Did you did you get why people were upset?
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Oh? You could look at the ballot and see that
it was confusing. I don't know what the remedy was
other than what we did right, but I could see
that some people were confused. I'm sure that the phone
calls and the creation of that anxiety and fanning the
fire flames really high, that that stoked a lot more concern.
(28:02):
But of course I could see that.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I guess I'm asking not like, do you can you
imagine yourself making the same mistake on that belot, But
I'm asking like, do you get why people were sad
and freaked out?
Speaker 3 (28:13):
If you were confused? I see why they were confused.
I don't think I would have made that mistake. I
don't think it was not that hard to vote for Gore.
That was actually kind of simple. But if somebody wanted
to be confused, or I mean not wanted to be confused,
but they're getting nervous in their voting, then perhaps they were.
But I think that the robocalls that went out to
(28:33):
the voters of Pabach County really stoked it up.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Do you think a lot fewer people then, like the
three thousand something Buchanan votes, were actually trying to vote
for Gore.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I think a great number of them were certainly certainly
voting for Gore. But I can't you know, I can't
anticipate that, I can't judge that. But yes, I do
think that there would be a number, a significant number,
that would have voted for Gore. And I think there
would be dens of alsands that would have voted for
(29:03):
Bush in the Panhandle of the Media hadn't told them
that al Gore had already won.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
So then the butterfly ballot thing was entirely separate, right
from the undervote over vote problem that the Gore team
was pointing to in Miami Dade, Broward, Volusia, and Palm Beach. Right,
that's correct, they were like connected, but they weren't actually connected.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
That they weren't. They were not one and the same.
They were two separate issues.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah, but they kind of became one story in the media, right,
or at least, like, I don't know, I I'll be
promly honest with you when I started, Before I started
working on this, I didn't realize the butterfly ballot was
not really part of the legal maneuver like legal fight.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
No, the butterfly ballot was only registered for Palm Beach
County because that was only created in that county, right, And.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
So basically the problem the problem is, I understand it
was that in each each of these four counties, there
were ballots that the machine hadn't where the machine hadn't
registered to vote, right, So it was either an undervote
where it seemed like no, like the person hadn't voted
for president at all, or it was an over vote
where they seemed to have voted for two presidential candidates,
and that there were like significant numbers of these these ballots,
(30:10):
like tens of thousands of ballots, and those are the
ones that I gather, like the Gore people were trying
to get counted by hand. Was any part of you like, man,
would be really great if we could count those votes.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to count them very
first week of the recount, I mean of the election.
We petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a manual recount statewide. Therefore,
you'd have equal protection under the law and uniform standards.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
God, why haven't I read about that anywhere?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I don't know. It's kind of annoying, isn't it. I'll
get you the information.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
And why do you want to do? Why did you
want that?
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Because it would be a way too for everyone to
feel good that every vote was counted correctly by a
uniform standard and no one got special treatment, and we
knew the results we wanted. We wanted who the people
of Florida elected to be the person that was the victor.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Now I need to step in for a second here,
because this is important and it's something Katherin Harris really
pressed with me that the Secretary of State's office petitioned
the Florida Supreme Court to order a state wide hand
recount a week after the election, and that the Florida
Supreme Court turned the petition down. As far as I
can tell, this just isn't true. While the Secretary of
(31:24):
State's office did submit a petition with the Florida Supreme
Court on November fifteenth, the petition was not asking for
a statewide manual recount. It was asking for the Court
to take control of all the election related litigation that
was flying around the state, including the recounts that were
already under way and the counties where Gore had asked
for them. The petition calls on the Court to make
clear that quote, the election of the president and vice
(31:47):
president is not a matter of local pleasure. It is
at least a statewide matter of concern. This Court must
assume control over this litigation to preserve its ability to
establish standards and to protect the voters of the state.
But it does not request a statewide manual recount. As
Harris told me, all right back to the interview, and
(32:07):
you were. I mean, you were obviously you were against
the extension of the deadline. They moved the deadline all
the way from the fourteenth to the twenty sixth, right.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Right, I remember if I voiced an opinion on that
or not. I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Well, you guys argued in court against it.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
I didn't. I never went to any of the judiciary issues.
I felt I was so politically charged. I didn't want
to bring anything to the table.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
I don't feel like it's I'm saying anything controversial by
saying that you wanted to certify the election, and you
thought you're supposed to certify it on the fourteenth.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Well, and then the Supreme Court said no, no, you're
gonna have to wait till the twenty sixth. I mean,
if that's what I have to do, that's what you
have to do. You what are you going to do?
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Well, you appeal it, which.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
You guys did, which we did, and we didn't win.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
So I'm curious, like, so, why'd you peel it?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
I can't answer you that we are going back and
asking me what the legal quest was, and I absolutely
have no recall.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I'm not asking you the legal question like I'm asking, like,
why was it bad to give a little more time
to people for those kinds account of votes.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I don't remember the legal reasons.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm not asking the legal reasons.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
I don't know then, but I don't remember why.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
You don't remember why you thought it was preferable to
have the vost counted up early.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
I really, I'm not going to venture a guess on
what I thought then because I can't remember. I mean,
I was in the midst of all the legalities. I
was in the midst of all of the laws and
indivisional elections, and so there must have been grounds that
we felt that that wasn't correct, But I can't recall those,
so I don't I'm not going to even try.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Can I ask you just to I mean, I know
you said you don't want to like talk about how
you felt it or anything, but yeah, can you tell me,
like how you felt at the end.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Oh, let's see. Well, I remember my family came down
from Georgia back with me. I just said, do you
guys want to go back to tellhow Se'm for the certification?
And they did. My sister had three year old twins,
and I remember asking them in my office. What do
you think I should say to them? And the little
one of the little three year olds said, just tell.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Them thank you, say thank you to whom.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
He's the three year old to the audience.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
What audience.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So the certification occurred in the cabinet room. So there
were three of us on the certification, the head of
the Division of Elections, Clay Roberts, Bob Crawford, the ad commissioner,
and I, and our role was to add up the
(34:37):
votes of sixty seven counties and announce it. So I
announced it, I said thank you, and we left and
I flew home. I flew home that night. It was
a my husband's best friend's wife's birthday, and I had
a pilot with me, but I flew on instruments and
I said, gosh, you got to get thirty thousand feet
up because your feedback on the ground, because you know,
you could only focus on flying. You couldn't think about
(35:00):
anything else. So that's what I did that night.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
It was your role, like over after you certified.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
And it's not that we weren't highly engaged after the
for the Supreme Court issues. It's just that I didn't
go there. And I mean they were calling back. We
were talking about things, but it didn't feel the same
as as previously.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, who do you think on in Florida?
Speaker 3 (35:25):
I'm sure George Bush. Too many things could have gone differently.
We just know that indivision of elections. We felt that
we followed the law exactly and that's all we could do.
We didn't know who it would help and who it
would not help. We would hear sometimes that the Bush
camp wasn't happy, but we never heard that they were.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
But you got a lot more bouquets from Republican voters
then you got anger from the Bush campaign.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Oh gosh, I mean, I don't. I mean it was
I just heard that a few times. One time I
heard I would never get to run for politics again
and be elected.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
But but didn you say that you get thank yous
from Republican voters?
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I do, So how does that make you feel?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
It's odd that they still recognize me, because I don't
think I look the same. I'm way older. And it's
it's odd that that that's kind of a flashpoint for
people and that they feel gratitude because all I did
was follow the law and I say that and they're like, well,
thank you for following the law because other people would cave.
And I don't know what caving men. I don't know
what everybody's opinion was. But they felt that I had
(36:26):
followed the law and that the results were good. And
I don't know if they felt that someone didn't follow
the law that there would have been a contrary result.
I can't. I don't know why they say it, but
it's it is odd that you know that people were
pretty gracious about that.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I mean, would it like, would it like be like
would it like embarrass you to know that like Republican
voters like think I feel like they have you to
thank for Bush's presidency.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah, wouldn't like that. And I've never accepted the compliment,
not one time, not one moment in my life. I say, oh,
you can't thank me. All I did was follow the
law the results or that the results are what you saw.
I've always uh said that without exception.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, what's the decision that you wish you could get
a duo over on? From there? We hunt?
Speaker 3 (37:06):
Thank you? That's a really good question. I would say
that because my husband gave me the greatest advice, and
I just act with integrity. You have to live with
yourself the rest of your life. I am so grateful
for that because I don't have one single solitary regret.
I had no idea the consequence of my actions and
(37:26):
following the law every time. Like I said, there's some
things I didn't want to do at all. I had
no idea to whose benefit it would a crewe. I
just know I had had to follow the law. I
had no idea who was going to benefit. So that
I'm very grateful for and I can live with myself.
And yeah, I couldn't do it over. I mean, and
(37:48):
if I could do it over, many people say, boy,
if you could wave a wand and it never had
to happen to you, would you do it? And you know,
it's not the hallmark of my greatest and most fun
times by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm so
(38:09):
grateful and all the world that kind of it fell
on me. And I'm grateful that I had a chance
to be honorable in my actions. And so if someone
could waive a match, you wine take it away, I
wouldn't let them.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Why are you grateful for it?
Speaker 3 (38:24):
I'm just grateful that I was, you know, in a
spiritual sense, because I'm Christian. You know that maybe in
all the earth thought I got chosen to handle that.
I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I feel like I was
found worthy. There would be those who would disagree, and
they're entitled to their opinion, but I don't know what
I could have done differently in terms of following the law.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yep, I think that's everything. I think we got it great.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
I thought you know, I told you and you pushed me.
I told you I didn't remember these catchy feeling feeling stuff.
I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
It's all right. That was Catherine Harris, Florida Secretary of
State during the two thousand recount. And that's it for
this bonus episode. Fiasco Bush v. Gore is produced by
Prologue and distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced
by Madelin kaplan Ulla Culpa, Andrew Parsons and me Leon Nafak.
(39:18):
We had additional editorial support from Lisa Chase and Daniel Riley.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It was an unprecedented circumstance. It was fraut with politics.
I mean, we were in the process of choosing the
leader of the free world, and she was not staffed
for that.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I had I mean, I was just there. I certified
the election. It was kind of a ministerial job.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hey, Fiasco listeners, it's Leon Napok. Welcome back to this
run of special bonus episodes of Fiasco Bush Vigor. Today
we're going to focus on a Florida institution that played
an absolutely pivotal role during the recount, the Secretary of
State's Office, which, as you know, was in charge of
overseeing the recount and certifying the vote totals once all
the ballots were counted. Sitting at the controls of the
(01:08):
Secretary of State's Office was a woman who turned out
to be one of the most memorable figures of the recount,
Saga Catherine Harris.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
And, in accordance with the laws of the State of Florida,
hi hereby declare Governor George W. Bush, the winner of
Florida's twenty five electoral votes for the President of the
United States.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Harris was a Republican with ties to the Bush campaign.
And because of the power she held over which ballots
got counted in the official tally, Harris became a symbol
to Democrats of everything that was unfair about the Florida
recount process. Speculations swirled that Harris was motivated by partisanship,
that she and others in her office were trying to
help Bush win. We'll hear directly from Harris in a
(01:51):
little bit, but first we wanted to play part of
our interview with someone who wasn't officially on her staff,
but who did everything he could to exert his influence
during the recount, the lawyer and lobbyist Max Dapanovitch. You
might remember Stapanovitch from episode three of the series. He's
the guy who says he was secretly and by someone
affiliated with the Bush campaign to embed with the Secretary
(02:13):
of State's office and steer Katherine Harris towards decisions that
would benefit the Republicans. When I sat down with Stapanovitch
for our interview, he told me how he landed in
Harris's office days after the election.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I was pursuing a master's in medieval French history at FSU,
and I was in a Latin class when my phone
buzzed and I stepped outside to take it, and someone said,
can you get into Catherine Harris's office. This was on
the ninth Thursday, two days after the election, and so
(02:50):
I contacted Ben McKay, who was hurry, very young chief
of staff, and said, you guys are besieged. Do you
need any help? Ben said, boy, do we? And so
I went into Catherine's office on the afternoon of the
ninth and we went to work. The first thing we
(03:13):
did was we were sitting in his large conference room,
which was on the plaza level at the Capitol. I
had these floor to ceiling windows, and there were very
tall ceilings, and so we taped cardboard over those so
that folks wandering around the plaza and there were a
lot of media folks wandering around the plaza would not
see us because my presence, given my partisan reputation and all,
(03:37):
would have been controversial at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
What was your partisan reputation?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Well, I've always been a Republican operative. If that's the
right word. I don't know whether I like that phrase
or not. I was the executive director for Reagan Bush
in Florida and eighty four. I managed then mayor of
Tampa Bob Martinez's givenatorial campaign in nineteen eighty six he
(04:07):
was elected. I was his chief of staff. I was
a senior advisor on Jeb's first Jeb Bush's first huminatorial campaign,
and over time helped or advise others, including then Senator
Catherine Harris, who was running for Secretary of State, which
was an elective office at the time. So when it
(04:32):
was thought that Catherine could use some advice and counsel,
I was asked to provide it.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Now, when you say you had a reputation as a
part of them, is that just because you had worked
for all these folks or you were a true believer
and you were known as a true believer.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Probably depending on who you talk to, and you can
ask the others you're going to talk to about that,
the answer to your question is yes, depending on their perspective.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Sorry, yes, what, Yes?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I was very partisan and known for it. There was
no doubt about who I was, how I felt, or
why I was summoned. As Mary Madaline once said, I
am a bush leech, a bush let l I e g. E.
Bush Leech got a vassal.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So I mean beyond the very practical fact that they
needed help. Why would you say you were.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Summoned because it was an unprecedented circumstance. It was fraught
with politics. I mean, we were in the process of
choosing the leader of the free world, and she was
not staffed for that. She had very capable employees in
(05:49):
the Secretary of State's office, but this was something of
an entirely different order of magnitude.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Can you describe the atmosphere and Tallahassee in those days
after the election?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
It was very tense. It was almost circus like. I mean,
there were remote trucks parked everywhere. The you know, the
biggest names and most recognizable faces in national media were
strolling up and down the plaza at the Capitol and
doing stand ups outside, and you know, were conferences with
(06:23):
Jim Baker for crying out loud and more than Christopher
was here. I mean, it was a byguide circus.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Did you feel like you were a part of it?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I did not feel all of that tension. I was
inside the building. I arrived at dawn, entered the building
through the basement where the cabinet room is, took the
stairs up to the plaza level, which accessed internally. The
Secretary of State's office, and then at night in someone
(06:53):
else's car, I was driven from the building so that
people would not know that I was in there. So
you know my feeling. My experience of the atmosphere was
a conference table in a conference room with a handful
of people.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Do you think you would have had a different role
in the recount process if you hadn't gotten that phone
call and been asked to join Secretary Harris's office?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I wouldn't have had if I hadn't been called. Uh,
I don't think I would have had. I wouldn't anticipate
I having had any role.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You don't think someone el would have called you about
some other job. I feel like everyone in Florida got
a phone call who had a law.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
No, I don't think so.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I haven't practiced law in a while. My license remains current.
But no one would call me to represent them in
a piece of litigation relating to that or a stolen dog.
I mean, just not what I did well?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So what are your special skills that they were looking for?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Oh gosh, this is somewhat difficult because while I'm not
noted for my modesty, it would be immodest. But I
will go ahead and take the chance to say that. Uh.
You know, basically, I'm a strategist. If I have a skill,
it is you can put me in the room with
a rock, you know, room full of facts, and I
will be able to ask the right question pretty quickly
(08:17):
and suggest the best answer pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Uh, what was your assessment of what Secretary Harris's office
and and the people working with her, including yourself, could
bring to the table, Like there was this whole thing
unfolding right outside of that room with the conference table. Sure,
what was your what was it you were going to
inject into that process?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, first place, she was the state's chief elections officer.
Now that sounds much more impressive than it was in
fact at the time and probably is in fact now,
because you know, the individual supervisors of elections are powerful
constitutional figures in their own right, but the Secretary of
(09:05):
State's office did have considerable oversight. And you know, the
first thing, basically I said to Catherine when I arrived
that afternoon, is this again out of hand. We have
to bring this election in for a landing. And I'm
not big on sports analogies, but it's like a football team,
(09:27):
you do your job. I'll do my job and we
might be able to win. The secretary of State's job
was not to steal the election by breaking the law
or bending the law. I took the view that it
was her job to enforce the election laws of Florida,
(09:51):
which brings me.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Actually to another to a question about her, like, I
don't know how close you are with her or anything
about your relationship, but I'm curious you could just describe
her sort of state of mind during this time. How
this was a fact her.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Is Catherine was able, and Catherine worked really hard at
that job. She was there with the first employees. This
is not having to do with the recount. This is
on any day. She was there with the first employees
in the morning and was one of the last to leave.
She took she took the job very seriously. But this
(10:25):
this was something different. This is this was it's never
it had never happened before, it may never happen again.
She was very tense, she was very nervous. She wanted
to get it right. She didn't want to be hated
(10:47):
by half the country, and so she needed to be
encouraged to do the job the way the statute said.
And if that required her to be hated by half
the country. That was part of the job. I told
(11:07):
her at the time. You know, a lot of people
run for public office, and to give them the benefit
of the doubt, I assume that most of them want
to do good do good things, and they believe that
when that moment comes, when that you know, John Kennedy
profile encourage moment arise, that they will rise to the occasion. Now,
(11:30):
what in fact happens is is that most of the
time that moment doesn't arrive, or when it does arrive
and it would cost you something to rise to the occasion,
you fail to recognize it miraculously or you rationalize it
away so that you don't have to make that sacrifice.
I told her that this is that moment. It's not
(11:53):
ten years down the road when you're in Congress or
anywhere else. This is that moment. If you're going to
do something, do it today.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
And what did you what did you tell her was
her her mission? And what was what was the thing
that you that she needed to do.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, to not be cowed, to not be browbeaten, whether
by you know, the Democrats, the judiciary, or the press,
to just do the job play a position forced the law.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
But I guess, I guess I'm what I'm trying to
get at. It is like, how overt was it in
your conversations within the state Secretary State's office that your
goal was to deliver the election to Bush.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
We didn't have to deliver the election to Bush. He'd won,
he had the votes, they'd been counted twice. The goal
was to maintain the integrity of the election and not
let it be altered by others.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
But you're smiling as you say that, so I don't
know if you're trying to you know.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Well, George Bush, with two counts statewide counts, had won
the election. I think after those two state white counts,
before some of the recounts come in by a bigger
margin than it was at the end. What kind of
damn food would sit around and say, you know what,
(13:15):
we need to just keep counting until the other side wins.
That seemed like a good thing for us to do.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
But where your critic every day? Forgive me, but what
are your critics saying, like, you guys shouldn't think of
yourselves as being on the other side of the Democrats.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, that was the advantage we had one is that
we were on the side of the wall. The laws
said what the dates were, and we were on the
side of the results. They'd been counted twice. So if
you wanted to fault somebody for trying to cook the books,
I would fault ron Klean and those guys, as competent
(13:53):
as they were, because they were the ones who would
not accept what the law in Florida said and would
not accept what the two vote counts had resulted in.
They wanted to just keep working until they could figure
out how to win an election they had lost.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
To put yourself in their minds, and how to tell
me how they thought of these deadlines. You clearly thought
these were deadlines to be enforced.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
What was to them, Well, they thought, they thought, I
think I think, you know, in all fairness, I think
their perspective was is that what this entire exercise was
about was divining in some fashion the will of the
electorate and taking as much time as it was necessary
(14:44):
to do so.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
We thought, maybe a good idea, just to comply with
the law.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
And so they mean they thought of these deadlines as fungible.
They thought they were what.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
They thought they were advisory suggestions. We thought that they
were statutory deadlines that a court would enforce, and with
some deviations and some minor exceptions, we were right and
they were wrong.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
When the Florida Supreme Court issued the injunction against the
certification on November fourteenth, A couple of questions about that.
One is did that come as a surprise to you
guys in the Secretary of State's office? And two, how
did you react? Where did that put you?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I don't have a specific memory of that. I was
tempted to make one up, but I don't have a
specific memory of that. I will tell you this. There
were any number both you know, the Supreme Court level
and at the district court level, of what, from our
perspective were legal setbacks, opinions with which decisions with which
(15:59):
we did not agree. But again, no sense crying over
spilt beer. When something like that occurs, you just keep going,
You do the next thing, you play your position. So
that was a disappointment. What we wanted to happen didn't happen.
So we needed to work harder to make what we
wanted to happen happen.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
There seemed like there's so many what if moments in
the story you know, oh, if it had gone this way,
forget that way, could have been on you know, could
have had a defending Do you like a do you
have a favorite what if moment? A fork in the
road that went your way, or you know, and could
have gone the other.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I really don't. Again, I would like to say something dramatic,
but I really don't. The way that I approached it
in most of the people. When I say most of
the people, you're talking about a handful of people. Me
Adam Goodman. The lawyers, when we consulted with them, was
just keep pounding away, just keep doing it, day after
(17:01):
day after day, with nineteen days until it's done. And
so there was never a eureka moment as far as
I almost concern. I mean, on the last day, we
were keeping the office open to cut the thing off
at five o'clock. So there was never a time when
I thought, well, we want it now, this is over.
(17:22):
It's just all we got to do is just count
the bodies. No, it was right until they again, dumb
ass Sports Matter four played to the whistle.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
All right, That was Max to Panovitch. It's worth saying
here that there is some ambivalence and even disagreement among
alumni of the Florida Secretary of State's Office about how
influential Stepanovitch really was during the recount, and we heard
from a few people that his role has been inflated
over the years. That includes Catherine Harris herself. We'll hear
from her after the break. Here's how Catherine Harris reacted
(18:12):
when I asked her about Stepanovitch's role on her team.
The team He's telling me we where did he feel in?
Speaker 3 (18:19):
That's just funny. I mean, I've heard he makes quips,
and I know you've interviewed him, but I considered him
a friend. He would stop by the office occasionally, and
I could probably count how many times he did, but
he would come in and just talk about things off
the topic because I wasn't going outside. He was just
(18:39):
great to keep a calm. I've heard that he said
he advised me, which is I'm glad he thinks he did.
He was never at our legal meetings, he was never
at our strategy meetings. He was never one time at
our office meeting. Never. He was not a go between
us and the bushes. Because I shut all of that down.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
He definitely told me that he was in there.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Never, not one time in one legal meeting, not one
time with Debbie Kerns, not one time with Joe Clas.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I was at a conference table, like we blocked out
the windows. No one know I was there never.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I can't remember one thing that he directed us to do,
because the things we did we decided in our with
our attorneys. And by the way, with the attorneys were
never sitting at a conference table. We're sitting in my
office on the sofa and chairs always.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
I'm just trying to square this with what yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
No, I mean he can say that, but that's he
wants to insert himself as important, and I understand, and
I value I valued his friendship.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
This was one of many issues that Harris wanted to
set the record straight about. When I talked to her,
and when I asked her what the biggest misconception was
about her role in the two thousand election, she went
to consult a notebook where she had written down specific
claims that she wanted to address.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
There are so many misconceptions.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Is this as you bring a list, No, I start now.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I started writing on the way home from Disney World
and taking our grandchildren. I was just wondering what would
be the greatest misconception. There are so many I mean,
there were so many things perpetuated, perhaps that I stopped
the recounts, or that I arranged that some would be disenfranchised,
(20:20):
you know, which was never We were always we thought,
we were always bending over backwards to do more.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I'll be honest, I'm skeptical of this framing. To my mind,
it just doesn't square with all the decisions that Harris
and her staff made that had the effect of limiting
the scope of the recount. But I'm not here to
argue with Harris. Those thirty six days were not easy
for her. As you heard on Fiasco. She faced all
kinds of ridicule and sexist comments from the media, not
to mention death threats. She also had to make tough
(20:47):
choices in the course of enforcing laws that were contradictory
and vague. That's why I wanted to talk to her
to find out what her frame of mind was during
the recount that made her famous. But it wasn't that easy.
As Harris warned me going into our interview, she doesn't
spend a lot of time thinking about the details of
the recount, and nearly twenty years later, she just doesn't
remember the particulars of what happened or what she was
(21:09):
thinking at the time. Time Still, I think it's in
the spirit of this podcast to give everyone a chance
to explain where they were coming from as best they can,
and to make their case for Harris. Part of that
case was that a show called Fiasco shouldn't even be
tackling the Florida recount at all.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
It wasn't a fiasco, it wasn't a constitutional crisis. It
was close election. And what people didn't understand typically is
that Florida is not a red state. We're not a
blue state. We're a purple state, and we are always
going to have these close elections. And there's nothing wrong
with Florida. It's pretty remarkable that rule of law prevailed
(21:47):
and there wasn't a gunshot fired and a new president
was elected. So I would say what was fiasco esque
was the way the media handled it, and we're so
out of control with incorrect information. We had never had
this kind of situation before. They were quoting their own
state laws instead of looking at Florida's laws, and Florida
(22:08):
has unique laws. They did and understand a real critical
process called the protests and the contest face and even
al Gore's attorneys advised him illy wrongly from out of
the state, and those state attorneys that he had were saying,
don't do this like Catherine's heart. So I would not
(22:28):
say that the election was a fiasco, because the laws
were sufficient to elect a president in a peaceful manner.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah. And I've talked to now a number of people
who have told us stories about like going abroad and
talking to people in different countries, especially countries where they
aren't necessarily democratic, and kind of being telling them like,
you know, yes, this was I'm sure it looked like
a big mess from outside. We guess what. We didn't
have a single you know, there's no generals marching in
(23:01):
the street. There was no you know, there was no
no coup. Right, this was a rule of law situation
that got resolved through the courts.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
He did. In fact, the law was my only safe harbor.
I said early on that I asked my husband, who
had just become a citizen, what am I going to do?
Just kind of rhetorical question. He said it was really simple.
He was Swedish. He said, you just have to protect
your staff because Secretary of State when I finished my
(23:33):
term would become an appointed position, and I'll speak to
that in a moment, but he said, you just have
to protect your staff, to make sure that they're not
put in positions or squandered for the future, and you
have to act with the most extraordinary integrity because you
have to live with yourself the rest of your life.
And I think that advice served me well. People still
(23:55):
come up to me and say thank you a weekly.
I'm in airports every week, so I'm surprised by that.
But I've never accepted that compliment. I just say, hey,
I didn't do anything special. I just followed our laws
and they were efficient. Gratefully, I don't have liberals come
up and say anything mean to me, at least my face,
behind my back eyes, but not to my face. And
(24:16):
so I do appreciate that gesture or lack of gesture.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
You mean, the folks who are saying thank you are like,
there are people who are glad that Bush became president,
and they think that you are to thank for that.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Well I had. I mean, I was just there, I
certified the election. It was kind of a ministerial job.
Just thanked me for not caving into the pressure and
doing something that was contrary to the law.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Did you feel like you were you and your team
were Maxi's family's notwithstanding. Did you you feel like you
and your team were like in the trenches.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah, we did, and we sort of felt like we
because I never could go outside. I never could leave
the office. All of a sudden, I had death threats, windows
were shot out, people were on my property taking pictures
inside my house.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Oh on, you had windows shut up?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I had. My State Senate window was shot. I had
a guy who was a murderer and released from Brazil.
He began stalking me. It just was a crazy time.
FBI had credible threats, people calling before I went into
my very first interview, and I'd never seen a sea
of camera importers like that. I opened the door, I
saw them, and then the chief of police until last
(25:25):
he said, don't worry about that credible threat from the
FBI about blowing up your house. I've got it under control.
I shut the door that I said, what, So, I
feel like we felt like we were in the trenches
of it. Yeah. You look out the windows and you
see hundreds of people and endless media trucks, and I
(25:46):
would watch TV occasionally and see they would say things
that were so outrageous, so pat land true, and I understand.
I mean, if you look at politics today, it's become
a roadmap discredit them intellectually, discredit them their appearance, their intellect,
and then discredit their integrity. And so they were doing that,
(26:10):
and they were acting like I was some dilettante. They said,
she's the baronial Florida, She's the brahmin of the highest order,
she's old money. I mean, all these.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Crazy things, She's the baronial one.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I can't even remember what it was, you know, just
saying that I was so wealthy to be discredited anyway,
It didn't matter appearance, intellect, never mind that I did
my master's at Harvard double course load did it while
I was in office. And then they of course attacked
my integrity. So you know, none of those things are pleasant.
(26:47):
But I was elected, I swore an oath, and I
was going to do it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
When did all that stuff start with what you were
just describing day one or two? Day one or two.
What was your reaction when you learned that there were
these problems with the butterfly ballot like, I've talked to
a bunch of people are like, oh, the first time
I heard there was an issue, like someone called me
and so they were really upset. Like do you remember
(27:12):
how you learned there were robot calls?
Speaker 3 (27:13):
I knew that the Democrats had hired a big marketing
firm to do these robo calls to all the people
on beach, and they got really scared. We all of
a sudden said, what's going on? Oh, we got a
phone call that said about the butterfly ballot. So there
were these calls that went out that everyone got concerned
about the butterfly ballot. And I don't I could see
(27:34):
that there could be a confusion, But you know, I
wasn't there on the ground for that.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Did you did you get why people were upset?
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Oh? You could look at the ballot and see that
it was confusing. I don't know what the remedy was
other than what we did right, but I could see
that some people were confused. I'm sure that the phone
calls and the creation of that anxiety and fanning the
fire flames really high, that that stoked a lot more concern.
(28:02):
But of course I could see that.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I guess I'm asking not like, do you can you
imagine yourself making the same mistake on that belot, But
I'm asking like, do you get why people were sad
and freaked out?
Speaker 3 (28:13):
If you were confused? I see why they were confused.
I don't think I would have made that mistake. I
don't think it was not that hard to vote for Gore.
That was actually kind of simple. But if somebody wanted
to be confused, or I mean not wanted to be confused,
but they're getting nervous in their voting, then perhaps they were.
But I think that the robocalls that went out to
(28:33):
the voters of Pabach County really stoked it up.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Do you think a lot fewer people then, like the
three thousand something Buchanan votes, were actually trying to vote
for Gore.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I think a great number of them were certainly certainly
voting for Gore. But I can't you know, I can't
anticipate that, I can't judge that. But yes, I do
think that there would be a number, a significant number,
that would have voted for Gore. And I think there
would be dens of alsands that would have voted for
(29:03):
Bush in the Panhandle of the Media hadn't told them
that al Gore had already won.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
So then the butterfly ballot thing was entirely separate, right
from the undervote over vote problem that the Gore team
was pointing to in Miami Dade, Broward, Volusia, and Palm Beach. Right,
that's correct, they were like connected, but they weren't actually connected.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
That they weren't. They were not one and the same.
They were two separate issues.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah, but they kind of became one story in the media, right,
or at least, like, I don't know, I I'll be
promly honest with you when I started, Before I started
working on this, I didn't realize the butterfly ballot was
not really part of the legal maneuver like legal fight.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
No, the butterfly ballot was only registered for Palm Beach
County because that was only created in that county, right, And.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
So basically the problem the problem is, I understand it
was that in each each of these four counties, there
were ballots that the machine hadn't where the machine hadn't
registered to vote, right, So it was either an undervote
where it seemed like no, like the person hadn't voted
for president at all, or it was an over vote
where they seemed to have voted for two presidential candidates,
and that there were like significant numbers of these these ballots,
(30:10):
like tens of thousands of ballots, and those are the
ones that I gather, like the Gore people were trying
to get counted by hand. Was any part of you like, man,
would be really great if we could count those votes.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to count them very
first week of the recount, I mean of the election.
We petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a manual recount statewide. Therefore,
you'd have equal protection under the law and uniform standards.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
God, why haven't I read about that anywhere?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I don't know. It's kind of annoying, isn't it. I'll
get you the information.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
And why do you want to do? Why did you
want that?
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Because it would be a way too for everyone to
feel good that every vote was counted correctly by a
uniform standard and no one got special treatment, and we
knew the results we wanted. We wanted who the people
of Florida elected to be the person that was the victor.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Now I need to step in for a second here,
because this is important and it's something Katherin Harris really
pressed with me that the Secretary of State's office petitioned
the Florida Supreme Court to order a state wide hand
recount a week after the election, and that the Florida
Supreme Court turned the petition down. As far as I
can tell, this just isn't true. While the Secretary of
(31:24):
State's office did submit a petition with the Florida Supreme
Court on November fifteenth, the petition was not asking for
a statewide manual recount. It was asking for the Court
to take control of all the election related litigation that
was flying around the state, including the recounts that were
already under way and the counties where Gore had asked
for them. The petition calls on the Court to make
clear that quote, the election of the president and vice
(31:47):
president is not a matter of local pleasure. It is
at least a statewide matter of concern. This Court must
assume control over this litigation to preserve its ability to
establish standards and to protect the voters of the state.
But it does not request a statewide manual recount. As
Harris told me, all right back to the interview, and
(32:07):
you were. I mean, you were obviously you were against
the extension of the deadline. They moved the deadline all
the way from the fourteenth to the twenty sixth, right.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Right, I remember if I voiced an opinion on that
or not. I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Well, you guys argued in court against it.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
I didn't. I never went to any of the judiciary issues.
I felt I was so politically charged. I didn't want
to bring anything to the table.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
I don't feel like it's I'm saying anything controversial by
saying that you wanted to certify the election, and you
thought you're supposed to certify it on the fourteenth.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Well, and then the Supreme Court said no, no, you're
gonna have to wait till the twenty sixth. I mean,
if that's what I have to do, that's what you
have to do. You what are you going to do?
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Well, you appeal it, which.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
You guys did, which we did, and we didn't win.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
So I'm curious, like, so, why'd you peel it?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
I can't answer you that we are going back and
asking me what the legal quest was, and I absolutely
have no recall.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
I'm not asking you the legal question like I'm asking, like,
why was it bad to give a little more time
to people for those kinds account of votes.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I don't remember the legal reasons.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm not asking the legal reasons.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
I don't know then, but I don't remember why.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
You don't remember why you thought it was preferable to
have the vost counted up early.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
I really, I'm not going to venture a guess on
what I thought then because I can't remember. I mean,
I was in the midst of all the legalities. I
was in the midst of all of the laws and
indivisional elections, and so there must have been grounds that
we felt that that wasn't correct, But I can't recall those,
so I don't I'm not going to even try.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Can I ask you just to I mean, I know
you said you don't want to like talk about how
you felt it or anything, but yeah, can you tell me,
like how you felt at the end.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Oh, let's see. Well, I remember my family came down
from Georgia back with me. I just said, do you
guys want to go back to tellhow Se'm for the certification?
And they did. My sister had three year old twins,
and I remember asking them in my office. What do
you think I should say to them? And the little
one of the little three year olds said, just tell.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Them thank you, say thank you to whom.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
He's the three year old to the audience.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
What audience.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So the certification occurred in the cabinet room. So there
were three of us on the certification, the head of
the Division of Elections, Clay Roberts, Bob Crawford, the ad commissioner,
and I, and our role was to add up the
(34:37):
votes of sixty seven counties and announce it. So I
announced it, I said thank you, and we left and
I flew home. I flew home that night. It was
a my husband's best friend's wife's birthday, and I had
a pilot with me, but I flew on instruments and
I said, gosh, you got to get thirty thousand feet
up because your feedback on the ground, because you know,
you could only focus on flying. You couldn't think about
(35:00):
anything else. So that's what I did that night.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
It was your role, like over after you certified.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
And it's not that we weren't highly engaged after the
for the Supreme Court issues. It's just that I didn't
go there. And I mean they were calling back. We
were talking about things, but it didn't feel the same
as as previously.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, who do you think on in Florida?
Speaker 3 (35:25):
I'm sure George Bush. Too many things could have gone differently.
We just know that indivision of elections. We felt that
we followed the law exactly and that's all we could do.
We didn't know who it would help and who it
would not help. We would hear sometimes that the Bush
camp wasn't happy, but we never heard that they were.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
But you got a lot more bouquets from Republican voters
then you got anger from the Bush campaign.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Oh gosh, I mean, I don't. I mean it was
I just heard that a few times. One time I
heard I would never get to run for politics again
and be elected.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
But but didn you say that you get thank yous
from Republican voters?
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I do, So how does that make you feel?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
It's odd that they still recognize me, because I don't
think I look the same. I'm way older. And it's
it's odd that that that's kind of a flashpoint for
people and that they feel gratitude because all I did
was follow the law and I say that and they're like, well,
thank you for following the law because other people would cave.
And I don't know what caving men. I don't know
what everybody's opinion was. But they felt that I had
(36:26):
followed the law and that the results were good. And
I don't know if they felt that someone didn't follow
the law that there would have been a contrary result.
I can't. I don't know why they say it, but
it's it is odd that you know that people were
pretty gracious about that.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I mean, would it like, would it like be like
would it like embarrass you to know that like Republican
voters like think I feel like they have you to
thank for Bush's presidency.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah, wouldn't like that. And I've never accepted the compliment,
not one time, not one moment in my life. I say, oh,
you can't thank me. All I did was follow the
law the results or that the results are what you saw.
I've always uh said that without exception.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, what's the decision that you wish you could get
a duo over on? From there? We hunt?
Speaker 3 (37:06):
Thank you? That's a really good question. I would say
that because my husband gave me the greatest advice, and
I just act with integrity. You have to live with
yourself the rest of your life. I am so grateful
for that because I don't have one single solitary regret.
I had no idea the consequence of my actions and
(37:26):
following the law every time. Like I said, there's some
things I didn't want to do at all. I had
no idea to whose benefit it would a crewe. I
just know I had had to follow the law. I
had no idea who was going to benefit. So that
I'm very grateful for and I can live with myself.
And yeah, I couldn't do it over. I mean, and
(37:48):
if I could do it over, many people say, boy,
if you could wave a wand and it never had
to happen to you, would you do it? And you know,
it's not the hallmark of my greatest and most fun
times by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm so
(38:09):
grateful and all the world that kind of it fell
on me. And I'm grateful that I had a chance
to be honorable in my actions. And so if someone
could waive a match, you wine take it away, I
wouldn't let them.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Why are you grateful for it?
Speaker 3 (38:24):
I'm just grateful that I was, you know, in a
spiritual sense, because I'm Christian. You know that maybe in
all the earth thought I got chosen to handle that.
I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I feel like I was
found worthy. There would be those who would disagree, and
they're entitled to their opinion, but I don't know what
I could have done differently in terms of following the law.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yep, I think that's everything. I think we got it great.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
I thought you know, I told you and you pushed me.
I told you I didn't remember these catchy feeling feeling stuff.
I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
It's all right. That was Catherine Harris, Florida Secretary of
State during the two thousand recount. And that's it for
this bonus episode. Fiasco Bush v. Gore is produced by
Prologue and distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced
by Madelin kaplan Ulla Culpa, Andrew Parsons and me Leon Nafak.
(39:18):
We had additional editorial support from Lisa Chase and Daniel Riley.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
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