Florida’s Republican leaders are preparing to convene a special session to choose the state’s 25 electors in the presidential race without involving Gov. Jeb Bush.
Their solution: If the election remains deadlocked, the House and Senate would adopt a resolution naming the electors that would take effect without the governor’s signature.
Democrats, meanwhile, are making their own move in the legislative chess match with a proposal that would give Vice President Al Gore the electoral votes he needed by parceling out the state’s 25 electoral votes by congressional district.
Democrats realized their idea would have little or no chance in the Republican-dominated Legislature. Even so, they feel they need a plan to counter what they consider a political move by Republican House Speaker Tom Feeney to choose 25 electors who would cast their votes for Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
The partisan rancor created by a legislative endgame would be bitter and not quickly forgotten. For Feeney and Senate President John McKay–and dozens of new legislators, most of them Republican–the prospect of setting the tone for the next two years with a vote that’s all but guaranteed to be split strictly along party lines is daunting.
“We’re going to set back partisan politics 100 years when we’re through with this thing,” state Sen. Jim Horne said. “It’ll break down into something like you’ve never seen.”
But with a Bush in the governor’s mansion, and control of the presidency and both houses of Congress within their reach–not to mention a hot, bright national spotlight beaming down–coalition-building is simply not a priority for most Republicans.
Wary of the potential political consequences, GOP legislators turned to a public-relations campaign Sunday that emphasized constitutional duty over partisanship.
State Rep. Mike Fasano was designated by Feeney to be the Republican spokesman. He said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Legislature simply wants to make sure the clock doesn’t run out on the chance for Florida’s 6 million votes to be counted in the Electoral College.
Electors must be chosen by Dec. 12, and they must vote on Dec. 18.
“I and my colleagues have great concern this is not going to happen,” Fasano said. “We’re concerned about Floridians not being represented.”
A joint legislative committee on “electoral certification, accuracy and fairness” meets for the first time Tuesday. This meeting could lead to a special session during which lawmakers would pick Florida’s electors.
Committee co-chairman Rep. Johnnie Byrd said a decision on a special session likely would not be made until the U.S. Supreme Court case is resolved. The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Friday after accepting an appeal by the Bush campaign on the ruling last week by Florida’s Supreme Court.
But state lawmakers must be ready to act as the calendar creeps closer to Dec. 12, Byrd said. And that means a special session at least one week before that date.
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With Gov. Jeb Bush staying as far away from the controversy as possible, Feeney and McKay would have to call the special session themselves.
Among the possibilities being explored is a one-day session at which all 160 members of the Legislature would meet as one body and cast one vote on whatever proposal is drawn up by the joint committee.
“That’d be a hoot,” Byrd said.
To avoid a conflict over his brother’s candidacy, Jeb Bush likely would not sign any bill passed in such a session. Instead, he likely would wait the required seven days for it to become law without his signature.
However, Feeney is thinking of another possibility that would not necessitate Bush’s signature. That would be a concurrent resolution, which Republicans in both houses could pass in about three days. And it would take effect immediately.
House Democratic Leader Lois Frankel knows she and her party are nearly powerless against the will of Feeney and McKay. But Sunday, she threw out a proposal of her own: Call a special session and change the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes to a method that splits electors according to the popular vote.
“Let’s do something, if we do it, that truly reflects the will of the people,” said Frankel, a Democrat from West Palm Beach.
“You and I both know that if they’re [GOP leaders] able to force a vote in a timely fashion, we won’t be able do that,” she said. “It’s more of a rhetorical question on my part. Let’s stop beating around the bush: They just want George W. Bush elected president.”
Because Gore needs only three votes to reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes to win the White House, such a move would be extremely unlikely.
“The Legislature could do that, divide the vote and it might provide something of a more legitimate outcome,” said T. Wayne Bailey, a political science professor at Stetson University and a Democratic elector. “But the problem, from the viewpoint of Mr. Feeney, is that it would make Mr. Gore the president, and he would be a very unpopular leader.”
Only two states, Maine and Nebraska, award their electoral votes to more than one candidate. In those states, the winner in each congressional district gets that electoral vote, with the statewide winner taking the two at-large votes.
In 1992, the then-Democratic majority in the Legislature tried but failed to bring that system to Florida.
“I’d say there’s not hardly any chance of us doing anything like that,” said Horne, a McKay lieutenant who will sit on the joint committee. “There is a sense of outrage between what happened with the Florida Supreme Court and the recounts in South Florida. I don’t see any of these cute little compromises in the middle that will declare Al Gore the winner being acceptable.”
GOP leaders have the votes: a 77-43 majority in the House, and a 25-15 majority in the Senate. And even if a special session wrecks any hope of a bipartisan spirit, Republicans can get most of what they want next spring without Democrats.
“At this point, nearly everybody involved is working from a position of partisanship,” Bailey said. “That’s painful, but not totally unexpected, to be honest with you.”
That’s obvious, Frankel said, because Feeney and McKay rejected all but one of the five senior Democratic House members–all lawyers–whom she recommended for the joint committee. A farmer, a school administrator and one lawyer will represent House Democrats on the 14-member panel, while three of the four House Republicans are lawyers.
Frankel said the Florida Legislature is no place for either presidential campaign to be meddling.
“I believe this is all being set up by the Republican Party,” she said. “We’re talking about everything other than the fact that we haven’t finished counting the votes.”