Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Oh The Days Dwindle Down ...

Friday November 17, 2000

The deadline for accepting the somewhat mysterious overseas absentee ballots in Florida is midnight tonight. Assuming the existing count plus those absentee ballots show George W. Bush ahead, Secretary of State Kathleen Harris is expected to certify the election in Florida for Governor Bush - along with its 25 electoral votes.

If (and it is a big if) that happens, then the Gore campaign has a difficult challenge. It will find itself not jousting in state and federal courts over what should be counted and when. It will find itself in the unenviable position of asking a court - or courts - to overturn the results of an election. That is something courts tend to be loathe to do.

The other side of the coin, is the 537 court cases, all of which will be decided today at some point, may well come down on the side of the Gore campaign and Palm Beach County will continue to count in whatever manner is necessary to give Al Gore enough votes to win Florida.

And if THAT happens (also a big if), when you look at Democratic Palm Beach County board of canvassers member, Carol Roberts, you are looking at the next Ambassador to the Bahamas.

Speaking of favored women in government and politics, reports from Tallahassee are that Secretary of State Katherine Harris is receiving bouquets of flowers from around the country for hanging tough. If this thing goes on past Saturday, Tallahassee may begin to look like Princess Diana's funeral.

Maybe Elton John will re-write one of his songs in her honor. How about "Goodbye Royal Palm Way"?

Harris did not exactly fall off a grapefruit truck on her way to becoming Secretary of State. According to a Reuters bio, Ms. Harris is "a fourth generation Floridian. She has a history degree and a master's degree in international trade from Harvard University and studied art and Spanish at the University of Madrid."

A bit of color from the recount operation: Larry Halloran is the staff director of Rep. Chris Shays' Subcommittee on National Security, International Relations and Veterans Affairs and one of America's great legal logicians. Sam Dawson is the senior political advisor to the National Republican Congressional Committee and one of America's great political tacticians.

Stay with me, here. Halloran and Dawson oversaw the recount in Volusia County Tuesday for the Bush team. At about midnight they were ordered down to Palm Beach County to do a repeat performance. They got into their hotel at a little after 3:00 am Wednesday morning.

A scant four hours later, they were walking toward the emergency operations center for an early morning meeting when a person wearing an Oscar Meyer Weiner outfit walked past them.

Halloran to Dawson: "Please tell me you saw that, too!"

On Wednesday night, the official portrait of Newt Gingrich was unveiled in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol prior to being moved to its permanent location in the Speaker's Lobby. There were several hundred current and former Members, staff, friends and family who showed up for the occasion.

From Adam Clymer's NY Times reporting:
  "If there is any lesson out of this last election," [Gingrich] said, "it
   is that Republicans have to slow down and listen to Latinos and
   African-Americans and come to understand the genuine pain and
   the genuine fears of those communities."

   He continued, "If there is any lesson out of this last election, it is
   that Democrats have to slow down and listen to conservative
   Americans and their fears about the secularization and the gradual
   disintegration of American life."

When he was good, he was very, very good.

How many people in the post dot-com boom period agree with this Reuters headline? "Starbucks Profit Rises; Web Losses Bite" which was a story about how Starbucks showed operating earnings which grew 35 percent for the quarter but, "heavy losses in Internet investments gobbled up almost all that profit."

Matt Labash's "Weekly Standard" report on the competing street demonstrations in West Palm Beach contains the following line, "The crowd grows restless waiting for [Jesse] Jackson's arrival. And as one doesn't usually see scores of black people on this side of town, every time a minority ministerial type arrives on the scene, confused white people surge around him in a scrum.

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